IBM fired me because I'm not a millennial, says axed cloud sales star in age discrim court row A laid-off IBM cloud sales ace is suing the IT giant for age discrimination, alleging he was forced out for being too old. Jonathan Langley joined Big Blue in 1993, and worked his way up the ranks over the next 24 years. Then, in 2017, as worldwide program director and sales lead of the Bluemix software-as-a-service, he was …
Agreed. IBM hasn't been the IBM it once was for many many years (since 1999?). The existing lot should all be replaced and the company reborn!
IBM has some great tech to exploit. The old boys simply are no longer interested in taking risks. They are all just waiting for their retirement.
As it currently stands, I would absolutely hate to work for IBM which is sad because I love AIX and XL C/C++ and love their developerWorks platform. Their focus on Java is a bit crappy, but we can work with that ;)
> The old boys simply are no longer interested in taking risks.
Perhaps the ones at IBM are, but generally it's a case-by-case thing. I know many older IT people who are extremely competent and still at the leading edge of things they're interested in.
It sounds like this guy wasn't the "old and set in his ways" type that IBM is trying to get rid of. Sadly, they've clearly been treating everyone over some specific age line as if they're all crap.
Somebody with 23 years seniority is going to be, generally, earning a larger salary as a new hire, so is a bigger target, when trying to cut costs - although redundancy costs would also have to be taken into consideration, although I expect the US laws aren't any better for the employee in this area either, compared to Europe.
Without seeing all the facts, it sounds like they were trying to push him out and got themselves caught up in their own lies.
I got caught up in a case a few years back, where I was given a role where I couldn't be fired (legal termination protection for the duration of the role + 24 months), then fired. It cost the employer a decent wedge, because they got caught up in their own lies and stupidity.
"I got caught up in a case a few years back, where I was given a role where I couldn't be fired (legal termination protection for the duration of the role + 24 months), then fired. It cost the employer a decent wedge, because they got caught up in their own lies and stupidity"
When any scumbag company treats any employee badly, as in your case and Jonathan Langley's case, I hope there's blowback for the bad employer from employment tribunal case rulings or court judgements.
Rometty has some kind of God-given immunity. She does not have a compassionate bone in her evil body. I hope she pays for her sins as well as her partner in crime Diane Gershon & whoever created the Dinobabies term. I hope they all rot in the hell they created for everyone they laid off and the families they ruined.
Redundancy costs are zero in these United States. Conventionally two weeks pay, but I don't believe that is a legal requirement and some shady companies use your earned holiday pay to fund that.
But, workers over 40 are a "protected class" in terms of discrimination (thanks to our geriatric lawmakers) and IBM will pay dearly is there's any evidence at all there was age discrimination here. Which we all know there was.
It certainly sounds possible that Langley's termination cause had a significant age component, although we haven't yet seen IBM's response to the lawsuit.
Perhaps the next reorganization-with-redundancies at IBM should be directed at their HR department; if the claims reported here are even remotely sustainable, they have failed miserably in one of their most important functions, ensuring that personnel actions comply with applicable law and can be seen to do so.
Compared to younger employees, IBM found that Boomers were the least likely to understand IBM’s business strategy,
Just like IBM's customers then.
...and the least likely to understand IBM’s brand.
Or, the least likely to say they understand what that sentence means.
BM found that Boomers were the least likely to understand IBM’s business strategy,
We have a business strategy?
Of course how else do you think the business is planned?
The business is planned? - I thought the plan was to fire everyone competent, alienate customers and drive the company into the ground?
He found out the grand strategy!
Fire the competent and replace them with ignorant incompetents is a great way to drive sales - down. The claim older workers can not learn new technologies is false. The real problem is I am similar age as he is we have seen many fads and fetishes come and go. And we have scars from being burned by a few of them. So we may be more wary of the list PHB fad and the experience to realize that it may be a repackaged failure from 15 years ago. And it will fail again for the same reasons it failed earlier.
The bigger problem Itty Bitsy Morons has is the top PHBs have not been willing to adapt to market changes in a timely manner. Plus their execution often has been atrocious. Now trying to be hip; 'have the age balance', etc. can fix that short of the board of directors cleaning house; not going to happen.
If you're customers perceive you as safe and boring, surely you should see that as a positive and employ people who are also perceived as safe and boring. If I'm looking for someone to provide a reliable service with the minimum of fuss, I'll go for safe and boring every time.
But isn't it better to send in someone the age of the IT Directors son to explain why they need to switch their budget from refreshing their mainframe sysplex to Machine Learning and how that will make them more money than just processing customer transactions?
As seen on the wall of company earlier this year
Customers see us as too safe and boring. What they want is partners who are exciting and innovative and not afraid to try and fail.
And also guarantee service levels and no disruption to the business. And reduce costs.
Who - apart from our government /public sector - will engage a supplier who is "not afraid to try and fail..."
Anyone providing business critical services who isnt "afraid to fail" is either criminally irresponsible or terminally stupid.
Maybe thats the attraction of employing millennials.
"When I'm on a plane I will take a safe and boring pilot over a dynamic agile guy with edgy haircut any day of the week."
There is a saying in aviation circles: "There are old pilots and bold pilots, there are no old,bold pilots."
Looks like IBM missed that.
@AMBxx - Having worked directly with vendors in my career I have found those sales persons who were the most effective were knowledgeable, honest, 'boring', and 'safe'. The most knowledgeable also typically had grey hairs or bald spots and had bounced around for a number of years; that is they had some mileage aka age on them. Experience is an excellent trainer but to get experience takes time thus experienced = older.
The problem for many companies is they fail to understand sales is as much about relationships as it is technical competence. Both are needed but a good relationship with the customer will get sales. Technical competence might get you in the door but a good relationship will keep the door open. Looking back at all the good sales persons I knew they were had solid technical/business competence and they worked at keeping the personal relationships good. Thus the door was always open for them when they called.
A_yank_lurker
Slightly disagree. it's not technical competence that seems to be what companies want, either. Not in selling. More often than not they seem to appoint people with a motivation in selling, rather than in the product. Sincerity is faked. Tomorrow they could be working for the opposition and dissing your product, Or working in a totally different area. Thing is some purchasers still fall for the glib tongue and false ( if vague) assurances. In effect some sales staff are just slimey. They're in sales because that's all they're good at.
Now the joke.
A man walks into a shop. The shelves are lined with packets of salt. That's all. Just salt.
"Wow"", he says. "You must sell a lot of salt here".
"Nah" says the shopkeeper. "No one wants the salt. I can't sell any of it. But they guy who sells me salt. Boy can he sell salt!".
* The problem for many companies is they fail to understand sales is as much about relationships as it is technical competence. Both are needed but a good relationship with the customer will get sales. Technical competence might get you in the door but a good relationship will keep the door open. *
Completely the wrong way round, in my opinion. The bullshitting salesman may get you in there in the first place, but unless you can subsequently back it up with technical competence the relationship isn't going to last.
when I started my career we turned off all the on-line systems overnight as we didn't have the capacity to run them alongside batch work. Internal re-charging for on-line was set at a level that would have funded the doubling of mainframe capacity we required. Then hardware costs reduced and we bought bigger systems to allow systems to run 24/7. We also had to tightly manage environment provision for each application. Each would get a production dev and test environment. Then we go nice big virtual environments on premises and environment cost was not an issue so we provisioned whatever projects wanted.
Cloud services take the paradigm back to the 80's, minimize environments, turn them off when they are not in use. restrict access to applications to set hours if you can to minimize the per minute costs of each cpu core.
I've also been through generational shifts in database technology, Indexed sequential files, Hierarchic databases, relational not to mention monolithic programming, object programming client server, tier architecture and now web based and micro servces. I have lost count of the number of young development teams I have managed over the years and they all have a number of things in common. They don't write performant code in general and don't appreciate how important sufficient data access routines are to high volume systems, don't appreciate the importance of well structured and commented code for future support and ironically only want to develop and not support the products they write. Whilst I love working with younger teams thee is always that barrier I have to break through with them before they start to listen to the voice of experience, normally after I've had to mentor them back from the brink of disaster after a particular 'minor change' has fubar'd the production system. Age doesn't make you a fuddy duddy, as someone who has managed projects in many different industries and organisations across a huge range of technologies what I and many others my age bring, in experience and enough knowledge of the knew technologies to be able to leverage that experience into useful support to this generation of tech wizards.
There seems to be much debate about what a millennial is.
I blame the name - millenium - its not like a decade ,where you have to pick a new name fairly quickly.
..hence no one has, so the term is a catch all encompassing anyone 18 in y2k to the selfie generation who are teenagers right now.
There aren't really agreed names for the generations post boomer and X.
Boomers are 1945 - 64
Gen X are 1964-79
Gen Y, millenials, are 1980-1994 (by same measure)
Gen Z are 1995-2010.
So Gen Z maybe? It's kinda dumb since anyone close to a transition point gets classified weirdly.
I'm 37, and apparently a millennial. Never heard the term until I was in my 30s, and only used pejoratively to describe people 18-25. Apparently using "damn young people with their hair and their music and funny slang" makes it obvious you're getting on a bit :)
As always, the generational stuff is used as another tool to divide and rule. Encourage people to get upset with those of who have a different generation/gender/race/religion, then fan the flames. The boomers as a generation did a massive looting of the country, but I suspect that much of that ended up only benefiting a small number, with most just keeping up with inflation.
Kids are lazy because it's in their nature. You can train them to do something properly, but it's only when something goes wrong does the lesson hit home.
They also aren't stupid or easy to lie too. They see what's happening, what the social contract is, not what we would like to believe it to be.
"Boomers are 1945 - 64
"Gen X are 1964-79
"It's kinda dumb since anyone close to a transition point gets classified weirdly."
Case in point, myself. I was born in '61, and I always thought I was between Boomer and Gen X, leaning more towards Gen X, not Boomer as you state.
"As a ticket-holding member of the Boomer Departure Lounge set, I say; thank the FSM I will be retiring soon.
"The young are welcome to screw things up."
Though as you got older, your body and mind will be slowly falling apart, you'll have to rely on the young more and more to look after you. You don't want them to be screwing THAT up.
I, too, am one of those old guys everyone seems to want to get rid of.
When I started working, I learned a lot by listening to the more experienced guys and asking questions. When we worked together, I got to see how things were done, and why they were done that way.
What an excellent idea it is, to get rid of those older, more expensive, employees, and hire more edgy, innovative young folks. It'll save money on salaries and insurance; plus, they'll work longer hours and come in on the weekends!
...but they'll be left to their own devices, and they're not afraid to fail.
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