Intel under investigation over age discrimination in massive job cuts | Hacker News Reader

Intel under investigation over age discrimination in massive job cuts

mercurynews.com

121 pointsmasonic60 comments

If true, that's both sad and stupid. I've learned so much from my more senior engineers 10-20-30yrs older than me; everything from the "craft" of writing software, to better ways of debugging, to more practical software engineering methods, hell to how to deal with the business side. I can't imagine anyone with any real knowledge would can them.

The only valid reason to can older engineers is to reduce labor costs by both getting higher paid employees off the books and keep around the 23yr olds who will work 60hrs a week.

Keeping the juniors might not always be the best. You might find out just how much hand holding they got from seniors and reap the "benefits" then.

Something very similar happens when companies outsource to lower skilled much cheaper overseas engineers. I'm not aware of a single example of that where the company hasn't lost ground as a result.

But hey it looks good on a spreadsheet.

On the converse side I think there are dozens of startups who've made awesome products using remote developers which wouldn't have been able to get started/got to MVP paying SF engineering salaries.

That's fine for a startup when everything is being built from the ground up. A company that's been around for 20,30,40+ years the old folks have a lot of domain knowledge that has been built up that no amount of documentation and technical savvy is going to overcome.

> Keeping the juniors might not always be the best.

The real issue is that the government isn't putting CEOs in prison for creating software with security issues, so companies are able to reduce their expenses by shifting the costs of bad software onto the general public.

do you really want to live in a world where founders can be put in jail for writing insecure code?

Yes. People can go to prison for malpractice in other areas, like medicine or civil engineering, why should software development be any different?

Because mind your own business, that's why.

Or do you want to force the software industry overseas?

I'd rather people be held accountable for what they create, especially when it involves me, my stuff, or my data.

I'd rather firms like Equifax be regulated into the ground than get a free pass due to scaremongering. (coincidentally, Equifax is in an industry that will NEVER be forced overseas.)

All you want is a scapegoat for your bloodlust.

Software comes with an EULA typically indemnifying the creator from any negative effects of using the software.

It's still not right, but if the cuts were targeted based on age I do wonder how much it would really be to do with salary/overtime versus protecting their position over the long term.

I'd expect for a tech company in Intel's position they'd be more concerned about the brain drain caused by a retiring workforce over the next 10-15 years, especially if many of those cuts would be expected to land at a resurgent AMD in the near term.

I'd be interested to see how the break down of technical vs managerial is in those layoffs - could it be that older workers have been "promoted" out of technical roles into business roles that are easier to cull?

I've very much experienced both sides of it. Older engineers who have so much valuable wisdom, and older engineers who are stuck in tech 10 years ago, getting pretty upset about why we are bothering to use ES6 features at all.

I'd hate to lose the former.

Agreed, I've had mentors who were decades my senior that provided me both with engineering advice as well as solid professional advice.

Unfortunately, I've worked with plenty more individuals in the previous category than the former. Maybe it's got something to do with my industry (medical) but it seems like a lot of the senior engineers in this field have just lost motivation or have moved their focus elsewhere. Knowledge and experience only get you so far, it's useless if you can't (or won't) do anything with it.

Hopefully it's easy to tell.

I once interviewed a guy from a very large computer manufacturer with 12 years of "software development" experience who couldn't write a single line of code when prompted.

I badly want to spend a single summer at a company where you can gain experience as a developer without actually knowing anything. I bet it's a bloated bureaucracy. I want to understand that.

40 percent of those laid off were over 40.

Doesn't really sound bad considering over 50 percent of one's working life happens over the age of 40

You can’t really evaluate if it was bad or not unless you know what percentage of the total workforce was over 40 before the layoffs. The lower that number is (below 40%), the more disproportionate the action was.

Yeah the math is a LOT more complicated than that. You just say say "only 25% of employees are 41+ therefore this was discriminatory" unless the goal of the layoffs is a normal distribution of ages company-wide, which I think is unlikely.

What departments were affects most? Was seniority a factor? Was pay a factor? Were certain projects, departments, or teams exempt from layoffs? Without having very detailed data about who was let go and what the justification was nobody can say whether it was discriminatory.

discrimination vs. discrepancy. I find it odd that many people jump to the first while simultaneously holding the belief that corporations only care about profit.

What do you meant as far as discrimination v. discrepancy? Just because numbers don't line up doesn't automatically mean there is nefarious intent. Corporations can care only about profit and still operate within the bounds of the law.

thats what I'm saying. many people jump to 'discrimination' when its merely a discrepancy. discrepancies exist everywhere for entirely benign reasons. furthermore, believing its discrimination for its own sake (like age discrimination) would contradict the belief that companies optimize for profit (which I don't think is a bad thing) since there no absolute causality there.

not sure how it is handled elsewhere but friends having gone through a reduction in force (the polite term) both gave me similar documents which listed affected positions and age of employee. no further details were given but in small enough shops its easy to know who is who. the interesting part is that they detailed all positions and not just those let go.

I have to assume that age discrimination is the easier one to hit on as the others are to blatantly obvious if they occur outside of government positions

The company makes those sheets up to show that they are not discriminating on age. https://www.dol.gov/general/topic/discrimination/agedisc

I don’t know their motivation but if their goal was “fewest layoffs with most money saved short-term”, it would be hard not to bias layoffs toward more senior people. Senior, highest-paid employees don’t have to be the oldest but probably are.

Of course, that isn’t necessarily a good idea for other reasons (losing all that ingrained knowledge and experience, etc.). It would mainly make sense as a desperate short-term cost savings.

This is certainly possible, but I'd be a bit surprised if Intel was cutting costs that naively - I don't think they're as strapped for cash as the businesses that make this move.

When IBM did this, they were intentionally targeting age qua age - their internal documents set age/experience targets rather than salary ones, and claimed that a younger "tech-native" workforce would produce better results. Admittedly, they seem to have had some monetary motives too, but even those were shady: by firing older workers who couldn't get new jobs, they turned them into a pool of contract workers without pensions or benefits.

I don't think anything will come of this, Intel I think has a pretty good cover. Internally it's no secret that one of the big criteria were the results of your most recent performance evaluation. If you received a certain stock grant that highlighted you for reduction -- however the kicker is only people of a certain pay grade could receive that certain stock level. Most people who are in that grade are at least 30 years old.

Perhaps Intel made too many promotions based on time served and not merit and the cuts was a time to correct.

Can someone explain to me why it is acceptable to force unwanted employees on company's payroll?

Is about discrimination, say if you have 2 employees A and B, you have to fire one of them, if you use criteria like who is more sexy,or race, or political views,religion or family relation then you are not fair and workers had to pay with their life in the past to have fair working conditions and some other groups again had to made sacrifices to have equal rights.

In this case maybe Intel is not guilty and the age issue is a correlation with the salary.

How long are we going to accept, "Oops, the computer was racist!" as an excuse?

Its about as transparent as Roseanne on Ambien at this point.

Ok, but how is that a problem? If employer doesn't want you, you look for another job.

Because only work related criteria should be considered, the employer should not ask for sex and decide who to keep based on sexual performance, or ask the employees to vote for X to keep their job.

The laws are in place because of bad behavior and were not created as a solution for a non existing problem.

I'm saddened to see Intel has taken a good gulp of the "Young people are smarter"-Kool Aid

*cheaper

This. You're a bean counter and you are tasked with making up as much money as possible via layoff, while losing as few people as possible. You possibly don't even know the age of the people on your spreadsheet beyond what you can assume from titles and roles. You go down the list and cut the big numbers in teams with more people than average (likely more juniors that are mentored by the seniors with big numbers next to their name). End result: you "discriminated" against older people. Though really you just discriminated against higher salaries. It will hurt the company but all layoffs do.

It is a combination of cost and populism, where younger people are attracted to companies that pander to them and they are willing to accept less pay for more work. It's a fascinating phenomenon and to see identity politics enter this situation is equally fascinating.

> where younger people are attracted to companies that pander to them

because older people don't wnat companies that offer better benefits, easier leave for family issues, less hours, etc...?

> they are willing to accept less pay for more work

in an effort to get ahead and make more for the last 30 working years of their lives, so that when they do have a family at home they can afford it.

It's actually established science that your fluid intelligence drops after hitting 30's, and the skills for certain tasks even earlier. It's sad, but it's dumb to deny biological reality.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-SBJ2KTl2f3c/VjPN9JeWLiI/AAAAAAAAVd...

https://study.com/cimages/multimages/16/adultintelligence.jp...

https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-496a52a13eaee1e99f39e3...

That's why everyone prefers the 25 year old doctor, said no one ever.

Straw man argument. Being a doctor is not only about fluid intelligence.

I would say any job requires more than just raw intelligence.

Being an anything is not only about fluid intelligence. Intelligence, while helpful, is not a good indicator of any metric of success or competence. High childhood intelligence levels are in fact associated with below average adult outcomes - turns out intelligence is paid for with tenacity. Tenacity trumps intelligence as a predictor of adult success.

I don't usually cry for a source in casual conversation, but if you are going to suggest that discriminating against the majority of people,people in their 30s+, then you are going to have to back that up with more than pretty graphs

I said nothing about discriminating against anybody. Please don't make shit up.

>It's actually established science that your fluid intelligence drops after hitting 30's, and the skills for certain tasks even earlier. It's sad, but it's dumb to deny biological reality.

Maybe you did not mean it but using the phrase "biological reality" when discussing a demographic of people is a common refrain of people who want to discriminate those groups. If I misread your message, I apologise

You misread my message.

Even if some group of people is objectively dumber, we shouldn't treat them horribly. But it still means that they will likely perform certain tasks worse (and certain other tasks better).

The issue is whether greater fluid intelligence is better or not for a particular job and whether crystallized intelligence plays any role. Who is better as a linux kernel developer: Linus Torvalds who is 48 but has 28 years of active involvement in the Linux kernel or a 22 year old who has 2 years involvement in writing code for the Linux kernel?

Perhaps a 50 year old wouldn't be your first choice for a startup who is looking at a blank slate for their codebase. But there just aren't that many companies who are starting the platform completely from scratch.

That's an unfair comparison though. Take an average 22 year old and an average 50 year old, and the choice might be factually clear.

It illustrates the point, however, that your typical 50 year old tech worker has several decades involvement in tech. Some of the knowledge accumulated over those years is no longer directly applicable because things have moved on, but some is still very applicable and will lead to them making better informed decisions.

I'll take wisdom and experience over dubious claims of "fluid intelligence" for most roles.

It's somewhat taboo to mention that though. Reminds me of a Charles Murray's The Bell Curve, which merely pointed out that various races have differing average intelligence. Despite clarifying that the standard deviation was much wider than any of the differences (so you cannot judge an individual based on the results), the author was shamed, blacklisted, and threatened for his work.

Some people just like to live in a fairy tale where how everyone should be treated is the same as how everyone actually is.

The reason for age discrimination is almost never capability. The majority of older engineers, especially in more established professions like Civil, Mechanical and Electronic Engineering are obviously and demonstrably better engineers than younger ones. This comes from simple experience and time spent on a subject. In less established professions where techniques and processes are more in flux, not enough time is spent on any topic to produce true masters - in software, there are only apprentices and journeymen. Principal level Civil Engineers can expect to make about 120% more than juniors - so firing one principal saves a lot of money on the books this quarter. These companies wither and die as they bleed away core competencies and corporate memory.

Has anyone ever referenced that work and not been a complete racist piece of crap?

Charles Murray?

your magic fluid intelligence does not account for many, many aspects of systems.. not the least of which is, where does this lead?

Biological reality is that under 30's need every iota of evolutionary advantage they can get to at least try and compete against the experience and survival skills of The Vetted. This and the sometimes unfortunate tendency of not eating our young is all that gives <30 younglings an inkling of a chance.

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