Happens even among private contractors. As we get older and more experienced, in effect, more valuable, and our rates go up, people go with younger and cheaper.
The points system IBM used, according to the article, is pretty clearly set to target those who are older more than those with higher prices. ...and with much less regard for performance.
Corporations try to justify their evil doings with older workers via the “voodoo new age lingo of paradigm shifts”. Well such workers may need to undergo paradigm shifts of thinking of their own, network with each other to form ventures that drive IBM and other corporations into the dust. To hell with non-compete clauses when a particularly good worker is “cost shifted” out of work but is told he can’t work for anybody else for 5 years. Do a Stormy Daniels(in terms of nondisclosure agreements, not false sex allegations) on such employers and dare them to sue you...they can’t get blood from stones anyway so what’s to lose!
The younger ageist discriminators in these Corporations HR departments who think that anybody older than 40 needs to be gone from tech forget one thing...those older boomers invented the bones and infrastructure upon which modern tech now rests and math is still math. Those older boomers know where the “bodies are buried” where as the younger workers have no experienced insight as to how things work as they do now.
Corporations need to fear one thing...that is to have fear of American Employees they are screwing deciding to unify against them and form new seed businesses. Patents be damned!