Cutting ‘Old Heads’ at IBM [illegally replaces aged with foreigners]

ProPublica ^ | 3/22/2018 | Peter Gosselin and Ariana Tobin

[catnipman]

It slashed IBM’s U.S. workforce by as much as three-quarters from its 1980s peak, replacing a substantial share with younger, less-experienced and lower-paid workers and sending many positions overseas.

ProPublica estimates that in the past five years alone, IBM has eliminated more than 20,000 American employees ages 40 and over, about 60 percent of its estimated total U.S. job cuts during those years.

In making these cuts, IBM has flouted or outflanked U.S. laws and regulations intended to protect later-career workers from age discrimination, according to a ProPublica review of internal company documents, legal filings and public records, as well as information provided via interviews and questionnaires filled out by more than 1,000 former IBM employees.

Among ProPublica’s findings, IBM:

Denied older workers information the law says they need in order to decide whether they’ve been victims of age bias, and required them to sign away the right to go to court or join with others to seek redress.

Targeted people for layoffs and firings with techniques that tilted against older workers, even when the company rated them high performers. In some instances, the money saved from the departures went toward hiring young replacements. Converted job cuts into retirements and took steps to boost resignations and firings. The moves reduced the number of employees counted as layoffs, where high numbers can trigger public disclosure requirements.

Encouraged employees targeted for layoff to apply for other IBM positions, while quietly advising managers not to hire them and requiring many of the workers to train their replacements.

Told some older employees being laid off that their skills were out of date, but then brought them back as contract workers, often for the same work at lower pay and fewer benefits.

[Cronos]

That is not true. The fact of the matter is that big integrators ie companies like IBM services, DXC etc. that get money integrating or managing other companies systems are going to die.

The reason is the increasing value of putting stuff on the cloud and paying Amazon or Google or Microsoft to manage your servers en masse.

And why do I want to pay a company to integrate SAP data with Oracle etc. when I can have business analyssts who know Azure or AWS and can connect the boxes (we're not there yet, but close)

I predict that the big services companies will die by 2020 and be replaced by multiple smaller companies that are of two kinds:

1. local, on-hands consultants (body shops you can say) who have a close relationship with the customers and work in a devops kind of mode. This may include business systems analysts - those who can build the blocks of different apps on the cloud together for the client
2. Guru level develoeprs who will create COMponents on the cloud or will maintain data centers

[Cronos]

What are you doing now?

[Mr. Jeeves]

Great post - I think you are right on. The dinosaurs can’t compete using their existing business models. Any group of experienced local consultants should be able to run rings around them.

[Cronos]

I wish I could call myself a visionary to have said that, but what I wrote is what I see happening right now

There is this large FMCG company that nearly 15 years ago sold off its technology dev + support to a large American outsourcer

Thigns soon broke down as people didn't want to treat their former colleagues as customers

nimbler companies (including one I worked for) tore off pieces of business

Then cloud computing came in and a massive chunk of support died. Then the fad for devops and more of the outsourcers work died

Then the outsourcer split into three companies and the services dinosaur merged with another services dinosaur - to the detriment of the customer

Now the merged dinosaur doesn't do anything but cut headcount and show "great numbers" to the financial analysts. Meanwhile the CEO sells off chunks of his stocks to make million$$

[StolarStorm]

I run IT at my church. Unpaid, but fulfilling. I’m taking some time off and doing charity work.

[Cronos]

Have you thought to work on Guru.com or elancer? Or getting out of IT altogether? I hope to finally have paid off my mortgage this year and having enough nest egg to “retire” ie have enough savings so I can survive on small jobs here and there. But still would liek to set up my own business, just no idea what (or rather too many ideas but not settled on any)