"If approved without changes, each of the 358 plaintiffs in the California case stand to earn $50,279 in gross individual recovery. Net of attorney's fees, costs and expenses, however, that total shrinks to a "minimum of $15,000," court filings indicate."
Like usual lawyers walk away with Ferraris and the victims get a pittance. It's particular egregious in this case. $15k is almost surely less than even a year's wages. How pathetic. The very least they could do is calculate 7 years worth of interest on the 18M...but then the scumbag lawyers get more.
I know basically nothing about the law but isn't the most important thing here the groundwork they laid? Since this case can be used as precedence for others who feel they were discriminated against.
It seems like such a minor fine that it's likely doing the opposite: showing businesses that it's completely okay to do so, and the worst that can happen is a slight fine.
Curious what sort of level you are, if your company does that?
I have wondered whether the ageism thing is partially related to younger people being a lottery ticket in terms of talent+commitment level. The company might get lucky and hire someone who is way overpowered but currently under leveled because they have not yet had time to reach their terminal seniority level. This ends up being a great bargain for the company. Whereas with established people it’s a bit more you get what you pay for.
I think a bigger “legitimate” factor is craft culture.
Because of the industry’s recent rapid growth wave, the approach experienced older developers take to the craft is often very different than what’s trendy among younger developers and teams where they dominate, and there’s easily a clash where both think the others’ approach is totally bonkers and a red flag.
Somebody seeking a job may know or believe they can adapt, but the hiring team just sees an outsider and assumes the outsider doesn’t know how to do things “right”.
This applies to skilled young developers trying to break into “old school” teams in defense/enterprise/industrial/etc as much as to older developers trying to keep up with youth-dominated FAANG and imitators, but it’s tolerated in the former but can get labelled as ageism in the latter.
Where are you based and what industry? I have a feeling that this "all of the tech industry is ageist" thing is highly dependent on location and industry.
I work in the UK in the silicon industry and there are a ton of old people.
A take on why there’s so much over 40 discrimination, and why I expect it to decline somewhat in the next decade:
Imagine the crotchety (young) programmer you know. The guy who’s kind of a mild know-it-all, who gets disinvited from business meetings for being too abrupt, they guy you have to front with a good PM to talk to anyone external. Maybe a little autistic, perhaps undiagnosed; regardless, they seem to have trouble connecting and “getting” people.
Early CS - before it was well known that it would be a fast track to the upper middle class - was full of these people. Computers draws that personality type in. Limited interaction with others, working code wins, you can get lost in a math problem.
But we needed more programmers! And now, it’s well known that being a programmer is lucrative. So the younger generation is less full of people who really love computers and want to escape human interaction; they learned computers cause they’re smart, and want to make money. But they’re probably good with people too! Most people are.
Where does that leave the older generation? Over a certain age, you’re more likely to be the type that’s a bit hard to work with, swimming in a sea of graduates who have people skills now. And as you might expect, companies will pick the people with hard and soft skills given the choice. They don’t want to entertain the prickly guy who wants a math problem and a pizza slid under the door, if they have alternatives.
As the pool of devs widens, expect the age discrimination gap to narrow. Not go away, but narrow. People never really liked the no-social-skills aspect of CS nerdiness. They just tolerated it, for a time.
I have not found the over 40 engineers I've worked with to be like that.
I've always felt that the ageism in tech has more to do with the fact that older workers generally have families, more savings, and more experience at different jobs so they can't be manipulated into being overworked the same way young and single people can.
> I have not found the over 40 engineers I've worked with to be like that.
Keep the survivorship bias in mind. It would make sense within that per theory that the engineers in their 40s who have both hard skills are soft skills are the ones to be the most likely to stay employed. Which is why those ones you end up meeting would be more like that.
And that would also align with the fact that many former engineers ended up leaving the field (whether voluntary or not) by that time in their life.
Sure they do! New grads absolutely have people skills. They make silly workplace norms mistakes too, but they generally aren’t clueless about how to get along with people like you see in a lot of programmers from earlier generations.
People skills arent exactly JUST get along with people. That would make Steve Jobs absolute failure in people skill in that niche criteria. He was genius at people skill in area like motivation and business negotiations. Vast majority grads have terrible people skill (40yrs in HR attest to that). Things like ghosting and quiet quitting and ultra job hopping are a thing with gen z and gen millenium. It is extremely rare in gen x and earlier.
It would be great if the companies who complained about ghosting and quite quoting quit ghosting and constructive dismissal, but the world isn't all perfect sadly.
Perhaps grads from before 2012 years ago before everything took to the net and compsci was pushed harder. People are growing up on the internet legitimately believing that Twitter and Reddit are how you communicate with people.
This has happened before though. The dotcom boom ( approx 1995 - 2000 ) saw a lot of non-nerds getting into tech cause of the big bucks.
The thing is many of them quit tech in the years afterwards, they didn't enjoy playing with computers all day and went off to other jobs that paid well.
Many of the over-40s you are talking about are survivors of that group or went into computers during the slump right after.
Even today the same thing is still happening. Plenty of 30 year olds boring with tech and want to become lumberjacks or farmers.
I think this is a good theory that may have very little to do with whether or not HP systematically engaged in age discrimination independent of factors related to personality.
If that were true wouldn’t you see more women in programming like law and medicine. No programming still is mostly the domain of INTJ/INTP personalities. People skills are largely irrelevant, especially in the age of remote work and AI.
Many severance packages preclude filing such lawsuits as part of accepting the package. Also at another large tech company I have seen statistics including age published by the company when they make layoffs that would tend to refute any possible age discrimination. Easy for a company to fire a few more juniors to get the age stats clean, then quickly rehire. So the law is in place, but in practice it is limited in effect.
Why do companies more or less openly discriminate against older people?? It's nice to be able to have a more experienced professional give advice and help you out.
I've heard multiple times when interviewing for jobs, that their company has a "young" culture and it always made me uneasy.
There are many young people in IT - fast growth of the industry being one of the reasons. People prefer to work with people which are like themselves e. g. young prefer to work with young. When I was young I myself had a bias against older IT precessional which was foolish as I can see now. What puzzles me executives are rarely young but they allow ageism to thrive.
If you have the temperament for it, consider switching to sysadmin. There's a lot less age discrimination there, and decades of experience is a distinct plus point. I'm 56 and my employability is fine.
It's a high level support role with a view to systemic reliability and enabling others. You're a roadie, and now you help others be Eric Clapton. Once you understand what ops is for, skills can be acquired.
I'm not sure how to show a transition on your CV - but emphasising the "ops" side of "devops" to claim experience will probably help.
40 comments
[ 21.4 ms ] story [ 1346 ms ] threadThat's not the worst of it.
It took seven years of effort to be awarded a $15k payout.
Cutting the lawyers out altogether, even the full $50k is still less than a single year's salary for the median household. It doesn't fix anything.
As an over 40 the job search is grim
Online applying seems to be shooting the rez into the void
I have wondered whether the ageism thing is partially related to younger people being a lottery ticket in terms of talent+commitment level. The company might get lucky and hire someone who is way overpowered but currently under leveled because they have not yet had time to reach their terminal seniority level. This ends up being a great bargain for the company. Whereas with established people it’s a bit more you get what you pay for.
Because of the industry’s recent rapid growth wave, the approach experienced older developers take to the craft is often very different than what’s trendy among younger developers and teams where they dominate, and there’s easily a clash where both think the others’ approach is totally bonkers and a red flag.
Somebody seeking a job may know or believe they can adapt, but the hiring team just sees an outsider and assumes the outsider doesn’t know how to do things “right”.
This applies to skilled young developers trying to break into “old school” teams in defense/enterprise/industrial/etc as much as to older developers trying to keep up with youth-dominated FAANG and imitators, but it’s tolerated in the former but can get labelled as ageism in the latter.
I work in the UK in the silicon industry and there are a ton of old people.
Imagine the crotchety (young) programmer you know. The guy who’s kind of a mild know-it-all, who gets disinvited from business meetings for being too abrupt, they guy you have to front with a good PM to talk to anyone external. Maybe a little autistic, perhaps undiagnosed; regardless, they seem to have trouble connecting and “getting” people.
Early CS - before it was well known that it would be a fast track to the upper middle class - was full of these people. Computers draws that personality type in. Limited interaction with others, working code wins, you can get lost in a math problem.
But we needed more programmers! And now, it’s well known that being a programmer is lucrative. So the younger generation is less full of people who really love computers and want to escape human interaction; they learned computers cause they’re smart, and want to make money. But they’re probably good with people too! Most people are.
Where does that leave the older generation? Over a certain age, you’re more likely to be the type that’s a bit hard to work with, swimming in a sea of graduates who have people skills now. And as you might expect, companies will pick the people with hard and soft skills given the choice. They don’t want to entertain the prickly guy who wants a math problem and a pizza slid under the door, if they have alternatives.
As the pool of devs widens, expect the age discrimination gap to narrow. Not go away, but narrow. People never really liked the no-social-skills aspect of CS nerdiness. They just tolerated it, for a time.
I have not found the over 40 engineers I've worked with to be like that.
I've always felt that the ageism in tech has more to do with the fact that older workers generally have families, more savings, and more experience at different jobs so they can't be manipulated into being overworked the same way young and single people can.
Keep the survivorship bias in mind. It would make sense within that per theory that the engineers in their 40s who have both hard skills are soft skills are the ones to be the most likely to stay employed. Which is why those ones you end up meeting would be more like that.
And that would also align with the fact that many former engineers ended up leaving the field (whether voluntary or not) by that time in their life.
Programming is significantly decreasing compensation, the market is full. Faang represents a small number of devs.
The reason they want young workers is because they're naive and will do bad things out of arrogance to the harms.
The thing is many of them quit tech in the years afterwards, they didn't enjoy playing with computers all day and went off to other jobs that paid well.
Many of the over-40s you are talking about are survivors of that group or went into computers during the slump right after.
Even today the same thing is still happening. Plenty of 30 year olds boring with tech and want to become lumberjacks or farmers.
Which might just entrench the situation.
On the hiring end, age discrimination is rampant.
I'm not sure how to show a transition on your CV - but emphasising the "ops" side of "devops" to claim experience will probably help.