IBM executives called older workers 'dinobabies'
businessinsider.com
businessinsider.com
In year 1, I was determined to accomplish X and ignored the skeptical comments of some colleagues who'd been at the company longer than me. I failed and wasted some time. In years 4 and 5, new colleagues were determined to accomplish X and ignored my skeptical comments.
I learned so much at that job.
If the laws of physics or information theory prevent something, by all means be a wet blanket. Loudly and often
If cultural turf wars in the company prevent something, often the New Guy can succeed where others have failed. If they fall flat enough they can join the Cynics Club with the rest of you, but telling them they will fail just cements your notion of what can and can't be done. Being repeatedly asked the same question by different people at different times and using different phrasing does occasionally get people to reflect on their assumptions. It is in my experience worth letting them invest the time and energy into the attempt. They're new, what's really the opportunity cost of letting them 'waste time on a lost cause'?
VR was tried again a few years ago, it got quite successful
Has it been successful? It looks like a dead end to me.
Interestingly enough that's rarely brought up.
To me that is success. VR games are great deal of fun too and provide novel experiences.
this isn't playstation level success but it's a joke to say it's a dead end
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VuZonQVN4uw
Older hackers should recognize a few familiar faces in there!
I'd also be pretty pissed if someone tried to dump book references on me if it's their job to be the expert on that subject. My gut reaction to that sentiment is that this person is going to refuse to actually discuss content.
This hypothetical dinobaby is immediately one of my least favorite people.
Honestly, if I worked for someone who got angry and called someone a moron immediately for questioning their new strategy I'd be looking for another job. Nothing is worth dealing with that kind of person.
Of course
> As in, you shouldn't try this unless you know why it failed before and why it will be different this time.
Also correct
> That isn't on someone else to figure out for you, unless you want to task them with figuring it out for you I guess.
No, completely wrong. You're in a meeting. Collaborate. You are nothing but a huge detriment if you just voice your opinion, put your head down, and smugly say "told ya so" if they do it and it doesn't work. It is on the team collectively to solve problems together and you get 0 points for being right in retrospect.
But too often it's just a pendulum swing between two competing options that are both painful, and familiarity breeds contempt. Those glorious moments at the bottom of the pendulum swing are the only time we have any peace. If 1 of something is awful, 100 of them is probably awful too. 3 might be wonderful, but half the team steamrolls right past it without stopping to look around.
Where the technology treadmill concerns new languages and tools, it's in the interest of young people for there to be upheaval because from their perspective, they have a level playing field if we are using a tool that is 2 years old. They also haven't experienced the heartbreak of pouring too much of yourself into a doomed technology and so they are willing to rathole on just about anything. That 'cynicism' they see might just be someone with an advanced case of Same Shit, Different Day. "This didn't work the last three times," is offered on its own merits, but some people put a lot more thought behind it. It could mean "don't try new things just because they're new" or it could mean, "the new thing has not solved any of the problems that killed it the last three times." I think if you mean the latter, it's partly on you that you get lumped in with the former, because you could chose to invest 10% more effort into your reply and sound less like a naysayer. But honestly it's exhausting chasing after kids every time they pick up something new and put it immediately in their proverbial mouth.
Right. Discuss it. That's my whole point. Maybe they haven't changed. Maybe you are correct and you are completely correct to aggressively fight the idea. That's fine. But if you don't engage people on the team you're not a useful team member.
Saying I saw this in the 70s and it didn't work is the least impressive argument possible, and frankly is just begging for ageist biases. It looks like you haven't considered that things might have changed. If I tried last week, I would still emphasize the reasons why it didn't work rather than when it didn't work.
Sounds like you'd be a natural pick to run a company with 270,00 employees.
<Drop book references with further context and justifications for why your case falls right in line with those discussed in the literature, like an expert in the field would be expected to do>
I mean, don't get pissed because it's been tried before, and no one will let you recultivate low hanging fruit to pick anymore. The fact more people are not well read on this type of stuff, is mind boggling.
Even more mind boggling is people being upset about someone directing them away from the pit of misery, wailing, and gnashing teeth.
These are the individuals who are dinosaurs. and they are dinosaurs for being incapable of realizing that employment ages are getting extended due to longer, healthy and vital lifetimes.
This is one of the crises of our time. That is the wholesale reevaluation of what work and careers are, how long they last, the effect on traditional workplaces, and so on. These companies are discriminating out of ignorance and because there is a ground-swell of pressure from younger generations to "move out" older workers so there's room for them to move up.
Shorter work weeks and flatter organizational structures can play a role in remediating some of these issues. But 21st century "life" reality seminars are critical - more so than the dross of diversity trainings.
It reads like a onion article.
I suspect there is a good amount of projection happening. They view themselves as old, overpaid, not doing enough work, lacking creativity and ability to engage with the “digital” community. So they assume that is true for everyone under them and took drastic measures to “fix” the problem.
It would be interesting to see who exactly sent those emails. Will they publicly stand by those words and defend them?
Also, it seemed so weird to me that IBM's primary goal had to be to pump share value to $200 by selling whatever they could sell, with the sole long term advantage was for the very same managers who held share options, and were close to retirement.
I left in 2012.
How many people had their parents work at a company for along time? that would be bad advice to give to a kid now a days.
If you like things the way they are and believe the new stuff is wrong well thats politics and you better be good at arguing your case. some cases the dinos actually win. i know young people are getting hip to right to repair which was a given back in the day when things were simpler so sometimes old ideas are refreshed. other times like (on prem) kinda died off and cloud is the way most people are going (i remember aruging with a freind in 2011 about using aws and he thought it was the dumbest thing but here were are with most stuff in the cloud now)
As for "here were are with most stuff in the cloud now" that is 100% a function of what industry you're in. Healthcare, banking (consumer and investment), security, very little of that is in the cloud and they're huge industries controlling hundreds of billions of dollars a year.
And if you think all of that is bad then wait until you read up on their role in Hitler’s final solution - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
That is older than median. I can understand the position of executives who are worried.