Out with the olds?

I'm not sure if I'd count in any statistics - I probably average only about 5 hours paid work each week - but the thing is that a lot more people over the age of 70 are still working than there used to be. 

Part of this is thanks to better health, part to economic need, part to just wanting to stay in the game.

With the little I make, I couldn't support myself. But it's still nice to have, plus I like having something to do beyond making a day's event out of going to the drugstore for a new toothbrush. Yes, volunteering does make up for some of the 'nice to have something to do' thang, but my work - freelance marketing writing about technology-based products and services - is interesting, I'm good at it, and it's gratifying to get paid (well enough) for doing something I majorly enjoy.

And I'm exceedingly grateful that I was able to get out of full-time corporate marketing work while the gittin' was good. I.e., when I was in my early 50's. When I left corporate - and for a long time after - I was still working at a more-or-less full-time clip. Only it was doing freelance work: flexible and more under my control. (Easier to fire a client than walk away from a good full-time job.) And it sure made it easier to wind things down as my desire to work all that hard began to wane. I was able to preserve some income and (more important) relationships and connections rather than go cold turkey. 

Nowadays, for all we hear about the labor shortage and the demand for workers at all ages, we also hear an awful lot about folks in the 50's and 60's getting pushed out of their work before they're ready, willing, or able to hang it up. And one of the sectors where this is most apparent is the tech industry, which is where I've spent my career.

What's just happened to a bunch of gray-hairs at IBM is a good example.

Remember Lotus?

If you were in the corporate world in the 1980's, you sure do.

Oh, there were spreadsheets before Lotus 1-2-3 (VisiCalc, MultiPlan). And here was even a very good one right after 1-2-3 (Javelin). But none of them took off the way Lotus did. 

By the mid-1980's, if your work had anything to do in any way, shape, or form with numbers, you were using Lotus 1-2-3.

And then, somewhere in the 1990's, once Microsoft Windows had become the de facto operating system and app suite for corporate, and graphical user interfaces displaced boring old green/black screen DOS-based apps, we weren't using Lotus anymore. We were using Excel. 

(Haven't thought about it in years, but over the course of my career, I had a lot of peripheral involvement in the spreadsheet wars. This included working for a company that had done a deal with Microsoft to acquire a kabillion licenses for their clunker of a spreadsheet - that would be MultiPlan - just before Lotus took off; and working for a company that tried to do some sort of deal with Javelin to integrate it with that product I was managing. I loved Javelin, which "understood" time series data. And I seem to remember interviewing for a job I didn't get at Trellix Software - whatever they did - with Dan Bricklin, who was the inventor of VisiCalc, the very first spreadsheet. Ah, it's all coming back to me. Can't remember why Trellix didn't hire me. Their loss. Oh, and one time I sat near Lotus founder Mitch Kapor on the Eastern Shuttle to NYC. He was a Sloan School drop out, but I don't think we overlapped there.)

So what's this got to do with IBM laying off a bunch of little old gray-haired/gray-beard workers?

In the mid-1990's, IBM acquired Lotus.

Fast forward a couple of decades and change, and:

Dozens of former Massachusetts employees, many of them Lotus veterans, are among more than 1,000 laid-off workers nationally who have charged IBM with forcing out older staffers over the past decade as part of a strategy to build a younger workforce. All of the employees were in their 40s, 50s, and 60s when they lost their jobs. IBM has been fighting the charges for over two years, saying they have no merit.

Taken together, the allegations — filed both in federal court and with hundreds of private arbitrators — amount to one of the largest age discrimination cases in US history. At a time of heightened attention to racial and gender issues, the ex-IBMers are spotlighting what they say is another pervasive, though often hidden, bias in corporate America. (Source: Boston Globe)

While this is not my "lived experience," there is not one scintilla - or is it an iota? - of doubt in my mind that there is rampant age bias out there in corporate land.  

The stories of the plaintiffs are sad. They were in their late 50's, their early 60's, when IBM lowered the boom on their long careers with the company, some dating back to the Lotus days. They liked their work. They were good at it. They felt blindsided and betrayed when they got pink slipped, often right after a glowing review. 

And now they're trying to get class action status for their complaint. This won't be all that eaasy. Thanks to a 2018 Supreme Court ruling, "employers have been able to effectively channel many age discrimination complaints to private arbitration hearings where the proceedings and outcomes are invisible to the public."

But attorneys are trying to make the invisible visible, and make public IBM internal communications about youth-ifying their workforce - while letting 20,000 employees go (most over the age of 40).

Some IBM documents already in the public realm called on managers to focus on “healthy attrition targets” in 2016 and “early professional hires” in 2020, while moving aggressively to “correct [the] seniority mix” among employees in some business areas. The federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act, passed in 1967, prohibits employers from treating workers age 40 and over differently from younger staffers in hiring, promotion, and discharge.

"Correct [the] seniority mix." Hmmm. Smells like Teen Spirit to me.

The aggrieved ex-IBMers are (mostly) trying to find work. But it's hard because they are - of course! - meeting with age discrimination. 

There are plenty of things that companies could do instead of just summarily jettisoning their older employees.

Create new roles that include tasks like mentoring and internal consulting. Make some jobs for old geezers part time. Old geezers get to keep their jobs, newbies (future old geezers) get to step into better positions. Oldies who need more income than a part time job yields can spend their days off working. (Sadly, that may mean driving for Uber or bagging groceries at Trader Joe's.)

If picking up the higher health care costs associated with an aging workforce are such a turnoff, maybe the government can lower the age for Medicare eligibility to 60 and let companies opt into paying into that for their olds. 

Older workers can manage their expectations - and the expectations of potential employers - by settling for lower pay, but greater flexibility. Pitch the potential employer on the benefits of mentoring, internal consulting, etc. 

I find myself offering plenty of career advice - and suggestions for coping with the every day job crap -  to the younger folks I work with at my client companies. Sometimes I'm not even aware I'm doing it until someone thanks me for being a sounding board, helping them think things through, resolve an issue with their manager, get that promotion, find that new job. And I often end up doing plenty of free consulting, too. Sure, they're paying me for writing, but it comes with plenty of free marketing and/or organizational advice. Okay, I don't charge for this stuff, but there are companies who would find it plenty valuable and useful. And would pay for it. 

Just because you don't know how to make a Tik-Tok doesn't mean you have nothing to offer!

Anyway, I hope the ex-IBM olds prevail. 

There's just got to be a better way to manage career arcs so that they extend from 20 something to 70 something. 

If there's a labor shortage out there - for positions beyond home health care aide and Walmart shelf-stocker - let's get on creating more reasonable and just professional career paths. 

For the record, I do think there's a time for the old folks to step aside. Take politics. Pat Leahy. Chuck Grassley. Diane Feinstein. Step aside, please. Make way for the younger brigade. Especially at the top. 

Out with the olds throughout the ranks of corporate America? NEVER!