Thread regarding Western Digital Corp. layoffs

The older people at WD are the knowledge core for disk storage. Eliminating them first is just the most cost effective measure before total capitulation that HDD storage has had its day. Really the issue is you have a dying company (with the exception of SSD) and sales are s---y because pc's have had their day and now are to gamers and special interests folk. WD could target various storage niches but it looks like that won't happen and will be left to smaller perhaps startup companies.

I'm a laid off older guy. I think the reason companies might pick younger engineers is for pay reasons not for skill (or age) reasons. So us older people will likely have to choke up and take much less pay to survive the years until retirement. If this was a growing economy we could transition to an alternate without a meaningful pay hit. Check out Applied Medical and how they are occupying a multitude of buildings in Santa Margarita and Irvine and supposedly paying poorly. Lean and mean.

Workers at HP are suing for age discrimination. They got the CEO saying sge want to have lots of young workers and only a few older workers. If anyone has evidence of WD management saying that, post it here. We need to share evidence of age discrimination at WD. We all know it's happening. WD's just trying to hide it.

Hiring right now seems purposed to fill an immediate need rather than build a team. Experience is valued and some employers know that can come with age. You are a fire fighter rather than a fire builder.

Many of the job descriptions require skills that an experienced engineer already has. At hand is the issue of companies wanting to hire only under-30 younger workers.

It is also incumbent upon us, the older workers, to keep abreast of the developing technologies and the latest technological / engineering processes. We cannot depend on our current employers to invest in our re-training: We must re-train ourselves. Keep your knowledge base up to date.

One way to have legal age discrimination is to require work processes, software, etc. in new job offerings that we never were introduced to. We thought we were doing a good job but new companies were introducing new ways of doing things. Recruiters don't even understand different forms of engineering and matching up resumes correctly. Its a mess. Keep good contact with fellow employees as they are your best bet to find something new.