Thread regarding IBM layoffs

It's not job performance and it's not revenue

I was notified of my RA in May 2018. I'm 66 years old and IBM does not hide the fact that it is replacing people of 50 with younger unskilled talent. The customer base is livid. IBM is replacing it's hard staff with business partners that do not have all of the skills required to do pre-sales, post-sales and services engagements.

I have had outstanding performance reviews and was integral in the closing of 10s of millions of dollars worth of new business. So it's not performance and it's not revenue. It's age discrimination. I am a retired, handicapped Army veteran. Makes no difference to IBM.

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| 1236 views | | 4 replies (last July 12, 2018) | Reply
Post ID: @OP+TYCJqHQ

4 replies (most recent on top)

I'm not the original poster but I'll give my perspective on the question.

I'm 60 and still working at IBM and have been for 33 years. I could retire -- and work mainly because I want to -- but I've avoided (mostly by luck) a lot of pitfalls that can easily derail retirement. Here are some things than can easily prevent an IBMer from retiring before late 60s or early 70s: divorce, paying kids' undergraduate and graduate education, bad investments, layoffs and gaps between employment, buying a family home in 2007-2008, family health expenses, parental care expenses, being overly conservative with 401k, not having a defined pension from IBM, and on and on.

Now, add those pitfalls to the new reality of aging in 2018: pre-medicare health care costs minimum $15,000 / year for a 60 year old couple, almost no one has a liveable defined benefit pension, a $1m 401k nest egg really only generates (safely) about $40k / year (all taxable) income, social security is likely to be means tested soon and shouldn't be taken before age 68, medicare gap insurance is increasingly expensive, and so on.

So, as a general rule, I would say anyone under 70 -- even if s/he has enjoyed a long career with a single employer -- could still be very much at risk of needing to working late into life. It's not something any of us want to think about, but it's increasingly becoming the status quo.

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Post ID: @9kld+TYCJqHQ

Honest question: at 66 are you working because you need to, or just because you want to?

Outside the executive ranks it is quite rare to see anybody in IBM who is over 60, and most people I know do not expect to be able to remain with the company much past 55, let alone 60 or more.

Yes there is lots of age discrimination at IBM and nobody so far has been able to do anything about it, probably because a large part of society thinks that this is actually okay, having the old people move aside to make room for the young

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Post ID: @4gmf+TYCJqHQ

Honest question: at 66 are you working because you need to, or just because you want to?

Outside the executive ranks it is quite rare to see anybody in IBM who is over 60, and most people I know do not expect to be able to remain with the company much past 55, let alone 60 or more.

Yes there is lots of age discrimination at IBM and nobody so far has been able to do anything about it, probably because a large part of society thinks that this is actually okay, having the old people move aside to make room for the Young

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Post ID: @1lnz+TYCJqHQ

They're b@stards.

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Post ID: @1jjr+TYCJqHQ

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