It is not so much about capitalism as it is about respectful use of language to
describe groups of people.
https://features.propublica.org/ibm/ibm-age-discrimination-american-workers/
<https://features.propublica.org/ibm/ibm-age-discrimination-american-workers/>
shows that the problem is not exactly new but that the outrage then was limited to
terms like ‘grey hairs and old heads’. The following part is interesting:
"By the time IBM’s current CEO, Virginia “Ginni” Rometty, took over in 2012,
the company had shifted its personnel focus to millennials.
Rometty launched a major overhaul that aimed to make IBM a major player in the
emerging technologies of cloud services, big data analytics, mobile, security
and social media, or what came to be known inside as CAMS.
At the same time, she sought to sharply increase hiring of people born after
1980.
“CAMS are driven by Millennial Traits,” declared a slide presentation for an
invitation-only IBM event in New York in December 2014. Not only were
millennials in sync with the new technologies, but they were also attuned to
the collaborative, consensus-driven modes of work these technologies demanded,
company researchers said they’d discovered. Millennials “are not likely to make
decisions in isolation,” the presentation said, but instead “depend on analytic
technologies to help them.”
By contrast, people 50 or over are “more dubious” of analytics, “place less
stock in the advantages data offers,” and are less “motivated to consult their
colleagues or get their buy in … It’s Baby Boomers who are the outliers.”
The message was clear. To succeed at the new technologies, the company must, in
the words of the presentation, “become one with the Millennial mindset.”
Similar language found its way into a variety of IBM presentations in
subsequent years.”
A company’s workforce needs to be sustained by its earnings - this was even
true in socialism and that is what ended it in eastern europe - you cannot sell
your grain and eat it - and IBM needed to focus on its earnings. Where earlier
cash flow and earnings were based on scientific research (much of it publicly
financed at universities) and government/defence contracts (publicly financed)
and an exemplary execution of those contracts with military precision (which
led to the tendency of dictating customers what they needed in a command and
control like structure) lead them to neglect the market and think they could
fill in the parts they missed (mini computers and personal computers (the
original PC, developed mainly by IBM'ers but outside of IBM, was an outlier,
the MCA/OS2 time did show it did not learn a lot, as did OCO) without their
earnings suffering. But this was not to be, and focus needed to shift to cost.
This was the time that IBM noticed it did not need a lot of managers that flew
around the world and ordered five newspapers to read for their top tier hotel
rooms. But closing down scientific centers, not having trickle down their
knowledge by opening source and interesting students for it, dried up the
sources of that competitive edge. The CAMS, as indicated above, might very well
be concepts that other companies can execute better than IBM, how many
companies it buys or dinosaurs it offloads. I have more trust in the new chip
design than in all of big data in the cloud on social media to bring successes
to IBM. The level making these decisions seems to think that consensual
decision making will help to keep it profitable seems really outlandish - I
never knew a company more hierarchical than IBM and in The Netherlands the US
management was described as ‘gravity’ - you can do nothing about it. Pricing
mainframe technology in a realistic way (hint: price elasticity of demand, look
at how the Rockhoppers are identical to the large Z's but cost a lot less - and
are still too expensive when compared to the competition), focusing on strong
points, making sure these strong points are supported by influx in the labour
markets (not really defined by age groups, geography or other grouping, but by
talent if possible), and offering the people that made operating the company
possible something more than insults, would be a good strategy. In the end,
these remarks reflect on the top level managers and their own actions over the
years.
best regards,
René.
On 14 Feb 2022, at 14:10, Bill Johnson
<00000047540adefe-dmarc-requ...@listserv.ua.edu> wrote:
Profits are maximized by getting rid of the older, higher cost (wages & health
care) employees and hiring younger lower cost ones. Pretty standard capitalism.
Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone
On Monday, February 14, 2022, 8:05 AM, Seymour J Metz <sme...@gmu.edu> wrote:
No, capitalism is designed to maximize profits. Out of control speculation has
shifted the emphasis to cash flow, which would have appalled Adam Smith.
What happens in a rational market is that employees don't give raises unless
there is a labor shortage, and that employers try to keep productive workers.
This is especially true when they've spent a lot of money on training.
--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3
________________________________________
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] on behalf of
Bill Johnson [00000047540adefe-dmarc-requ...@listserv.ua.edu]
Sent: Monday, February 14, 2022 7:59 AM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: Holy Moly ...
I didn’t say YOU pushed them out the door. The cycle of replacing higher priced
workers with lower cost ones always happens. Exactly what capitalism is
designed to do.
Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone
On Monday, February 14, 2022, 7:55 AM, Seymour J Metz <sme...@gmu.edu> wrote:
When I was young, I worked with older employees; I did not push them out the
door. Further, there are legal limits on age discrimination. What we are seeing
is the triumph of cash flow over profits, and it is not what capitalism does in
a rational environment, any more than the gulag is what socialism does.
In fact, there have been times and places where capitalism discriminated
against younger workers and, as above, that was not intrinsic to capitalism.
--
Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz
http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3
________________________________________
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU] on behalf of
Bill Johnson [00000047540adefe-dmarc-requ...@listserv.ua.edu]
Sent: Monday, February 14, 2022 7:43 AM
To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU
Subject: Re: Holy Moly ...
When we were young, we helped usher out older workers & we didn’t really think or
care about it. Now that it’s our turn in the ageist barrel, we are shocked &
dismayed. As Steve said, not really surprising. This is exactly what capitalism does.
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