IBM Is Being Sued for Age Discrimination After Firing Thousands

Re:IBM Is Being Sued for Age Discrimination After Firing Tho... by AnimalMuppet on Monday September 17, 2018 @05:52PM (#18010447)

If you fire the 20 younger engineers, you're also firing the people who will be the "10 older engineers" in a decade. You're killing the future.

But firing the 10 older engineers, you may be killing the present. Even with no bias, it's not easy to know what the right answer is.

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Re:IBM Is Being Sued for Age Discrimination After Firing Tho... by dj-wonk on Monday September 17, 2018 @06:07PM (#18010556)

You've made two good points. I would suggest the next step is to synthesize them. As with many things, moderation is important. A strategy that balances the two downsides is probably better.

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Re:IBM Is Being Sued for Age Discrimination After Firing Tho... by rosege on Monday September 17, 2018 @07:00PM (#18010859)

Odds are that each group has a bit of dead wood so taking some from each group would be best - identifying that is the harder part for those several rungs higher

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Re:IBM Is Being Sued for Age Discrimination After Firing Tho... by dunpeal on Monday September 17, 2018 @11:23PM (#18012229)

As if in today's job market, keeping any engineer provides any sort of guarantee that the engineer will stay with the company "for the future".

Most likely he'll stay until he gets a better offer (if he's a good performer) or gets laid off in a couple of years (if he's a poor performer).

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Re:IBM Is Being Sued for Age Discrimination After Firing Tho... by chii on Monday September 17, 2018 @06:53PM (#18010818)

you'd fire 5 older engineers, and 10 young ones.

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Re:IBM Is Being Sued for Age Discrimination After Firing Tho... by zentiggr on Monday September 17, 2018 @06:55PM (#18010829)

Fire 5 old and 10 young? QED

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