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Comment by ChrisMarshallNY | Hacker News Reader

I hope that's not true (or falls through). I have a good friend that works for HashiCorp. He's 42, and will undoubtedly be on the chopping block.

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Do you mean he's too young for IBM, whose workforce has a median age of 48 years?

What does it have to do with him being 42?

Older, more expensive workers are targeted by IBM to be pushed out of the org. They run on cheap offshore, domestic visa, and younger labor, except near the top of the org.

https://www.google.com/search?q=ibm+ageism

https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=ibm+&job=&city=&year=2023

https://features.propublica.org/ibm/ibm-age-discrimination-a...

https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/15/ibm_ceo_pay_jumps_23/

IBM has a median age of 48 as of 2020. While it's true that they've repeatedly done stuff that smells a lot like age discrimination, it's still a pretty old company all things considered. Compare that to Google, Facebook, etc.

I work for Red Hat, acquired by IBM. None of the older developers working for Red Hat have been laid off. Actually developers as a group were mostly left intact by the one layoff we did have.

IBM doesn't like dinobabies.

If he's on the tech side he should be fine.

IBM is loaded with boomers with amazing jobs and pension plans that they're eager to dump if they can. They seem to want to keep good tech people while dumping the sweet deal boomers and non-tech where possible.

t. IBMer

Thanks.

He's a really good guy, and an excellent, and enthusiastic tech. One of the better folks that I've had the privilege to work with.

The stories (and there's a lot of smoke) that I hear, coming from IBM, are not comforting.

It always depends where you are. IBM is huge and mostly stupid, but they do have some good people and teams via their "hire by acquisition " strategy that are golden handcuffed.

While I appreciate the sentiment, surely that is not the reason why we should wish acquisitions to happen or fall through? There's something to be said about solving for maximum societal welfare—which may or may not be the case here, but in any event doesn't depend on any specific individual

I think the parent comment may be a reference to IBM being caught in the past deliberately firing older workers.

Yup.

Allegedly, but not proven, right?

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/ibm-wins-another-ru...

https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/23/ibm_supreme_court/

The lawsuit hasn't been brought precisely because IBM fought tooth and nail to cut off access to the courts.

Not the sort of thing you do for the hell of it.

I think it's important to contemplate the human component of mergers. If lots of gainfully employed people get let go so that fewer people can consolidate expenses and raise shareholder value I think it should be considered as part of the decision making framework.

It is a consideration; redundancies are eliminated in acquisitions. It's capitalism; not laborism.

> While I appreciate the sentiment, surely that is not the reason why we should wish acquisitions to happen or fall through?

I have another reason (whether or not that's "better" is arguable): because too big to fail is a thing and we've already seen what happens in other industries when big players buy out smaller ones.

I see "too big to fail" most commonly referenced when talking about the GFC of '08-'09. Nothing there happened because big players bought out smaller ones. Lehman Brothers wasn't even big, comparatively speaking

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