Data the Oracle OWBPA (Older Workers Benefit Protection Act) disclosure reveals a steep increase in the layoff rate beginning at age 60 in the DB group. Here are the percentage of people laid off by age group.
Age Band Pct Laid Off
20-24 4%
25-29 10%
30-34 6%
35-39 11%
40-44 8%
45-49 9%
50-54 10%
55-59 10%
60-64 21%
65-69 26%
70-74 34%
@ch It still makes money, but after this RIF I don't know how they can still support it. Not my problem. But there are (were?) a lot of gray hairs in the former SUNW.
The above assumption "Since I doubt there are more people in the older categories to start with..." is incorrect.
The database organization long had a barbell age distribution -- a lot of people in their mid-50s and older, and a lot of under-30.
This in part due to "these people had very specific knowledge but they also had broad knowledge because things changed tremendously over their careers and they've had to learn new processes technologies while utilizing common tools and methodology they've built up."
I think you meant slowaris.
@ax Solaris?
We still have 66% in the over 70s club what the he-l are they still maintaining?
Since the percentage exceed 100% this isn't a measure of what percentage of people laid off fell into what age group. This likely then means that it's the percentage of people in that age group who were laid off, which means this is next to meaningless without more data. Since I doubt there are more people in the older categories to start with, I would expect their layoff percentages to be higher. Let's face it, if they had one person still working at 80 and he (or she) was laid off, that would indicate 100% rate for that age band. If we assume the impacted % for each age range represents 100 people (or any other same value for each range) then we get a starting distribution for each age range:
Age Range Assume Even % of victims Impacted % 'Base Factor '%of whole
20-24 100 4.00% 2500 21.57%
25-29 100 10.00% 1000 8.63%
30-34 100 6.00% 1667 14.38%
35-39 100 11.00% 909 7.84%
40-44 100 8.00% 1250 10.78%
45-49 100 9.00% 1111 9.59%
50-54 100 10.00% 1000 8.63%
55-59 100 10.00% 1000 8.63%
60-64 100 21.00% 476 4.11%
65-69 100 26.00% 385 3.32%
70-74 100 34.00% 294 2.54%
149.00% 11591.7921947334 100.00%
I noticed the same pattern in the SW Developer lists. What amazed me is that there was a 77 year old in that group.
@a5 Yes these people had very specific knowledge but they also had broad knowledge because things changed tremendously over their careers and they've had to learn new processes technologies while utilizing common tools and methodology they've built up.
Also this layoff pattern looks really ugly in graph form. Is it legal to preferentially layoff older employees?
I wonder how many of these people had very specific knowledge that will make something hard to fix, troubleshoot, develop without these people?