IBM Fired Me Because I’m Not a Millennial, Says Axed Cloud Sales Star

I'm almost 45, work for an IT company and fear for my job as well. To disguise myself as an Millennial I vape, eat avocado toast and pretend to know everything. So far its worked :)
I hear you. I switched jobs recently - I'm in my mid 40's and am one of the younger ones at the place I went to :)
Another job I applied to but didn't make the cut, I did get interviewed by some people in their 20's, maybe 30's. Damn, it sucked. Nothing about age came up during the interview but it felt awkward. I don't think I was necessarily age discriminated for that job - but could imagine when they were discussing candidates after the interview. That old dude. He has grey in his beard.

I used to be a hiring manager - I've interviewed thousands of candidates. If I think your green hair and face tattoo are stupid, it will never show up in my interview notes. I'll just score you lower in a few other places and not like one of your answers. It's a very subjective process. (In all honesty, I usually didn't have to find reasons to disqualify a lot of people we interviewed. Some of the answers we received - omg. Wish I had recordings of a few of them.)
 
I'm 38, and I've already been placed in one of those 'we appreciate your loyalty so we'll keep paying you to do basically nothing until we find you a new position or give up and lay you off' positions.
 
A reliable paycheck and more affordable health insurance are high in the list.

Most people who are in business for themselves need to have a spouse working a steady 9-5 just to make sure they can get good insurance, and have a paycheck just in case business is slow.

Besides, no matter what you do you always have a boss. It may not be a higher ranking employee, but you still have customers.

That, and the stress of variable income would be way greater to me than the frustration of the 9-5 office environment.

Of course, there are a lot of variables/factors to consider, and not every business is going to have the same outcome when it comes to steady money coming in, the proper insurance, support from all sides. Really, all the scenarios people expect when they work for someone else. I understand the safety net that working for someone else provides, believe me. Absolutely agree on the clients/customers front, there's always the need to make sure they are happy as they are my source of sustainability.

I had no real notion that I'd succeed the way that I did, but with no kids (and no plans for kids) and zero debt, I wanted to put in 110% effort to try and see if I could do this. Turns out I can, and it worked out masterfully. I'd do it again in a heartbeat. I've never learned more than I have by breaking away from the mold with a few people. There's a lot of anxiety (rampant, even) when you realize that it's you who has to figure everything out, where there was a team doing all of that previously. Again, not for everyone, and each case is different.
 
Successful at what? It really depends on your metric. Sure we look good in GDP per capita, stock market growth, and military power, but we are 18th in the world in happiness, (Costa Rica of all places is ahead of us at #13) , and in income inequality indeces, depending on which one you use we fall pretty far down the list.

We are also failing at social mobility. Your income as an adult is much more likely to be influenced by the income of your parents than in most other industrialized nations, which is particularly sad, as we once prided ourselves on the "only in America" mentality of self made success.

We also have the third highest poverty rate among OECD nations, and our healthcare system, while it does very well for those top few percent who can afford it (which is why it attracts dignitaries from around the world) is absolutely failing for the population as a whole. We fall in #37 according to a much publicized UN study.

I guess my point is, by what measure are you calling the U.S. "the most successful"? Because to me it would seem that the most important metrics are how well our people are doing, and by those measures we are failing abysmally as a nation. I say this as a natural born U.S. citizen, living here now, but having grown up abroad (In Sweden) and traveled a lot.

Incomes may be a little lower in Sweden, but life is much much easier there, especially if you want to have a family.

When it comes to the well being of our people, we, the U.S. are the flaming dumpster fire of the traditional industrialized world.

Success definitely isn't measured by well being lol.



Winning isn't easy.
 
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Sales is a weird area typically you need a mix of someone with experience and the collateral group of younger energetic go-getters that make a balanced team. However when it comes to an engineer in micro chips, millennial's and other young inexperienced engineers are grossly incompetent when it comes to productivity. IBM has for a practice signified over many years that they tend to lay off or terminate a higher paid experienced employee and favor younger less costly ones. they typically rehire the experienced employees as contractors since the Younger employees are incapable of completing a myriad of tasks related to micro chip design and testing.
 
I lived in one of them for 16 years. It was great, and I have often thought about moving back.

It's difficult to uproot your family and fly across the world though, especially when you have developed a skillset that is very much in demand locally.




Nope. Both parties are to blame here, though that said, Republicans particularly in the house, seem to excel at anti-fact decision making. It would be nice to have technocrats who decide based on scientific consensus on the field they are making decisions (economists for economic matters, educational experts on the subject of education, etc. etc.) for a change. We have too much rage and heated rhetoric when what we really need is cold and detached fact based decision-making.


blah blah blah

Freedom baby. Technocrats making decisions based on scientific consensus leads to genocide.
 
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Belize? Must be nice there :D

Canada is it?

So, if my sources are remotely correct, about 33,000 Canadian citizens immigrate to the US each year as a recent (2001-2006, yes it's older data). And that compares to a recent (2016-2017) totals of 2,500ish Americans being accepted into Canada and those numbers include Visa grants.

33,000 ..... 2.500

I have to admit, the crybaby comment sparked my interest until I realized that you were probably talking about the one's fleeing Oppression under Trump and is illegal seizure of the White House (y) (tongue definitely in cheek).


"fleeing Oppression"
 
There's the smoking gun. This guy was probably making big money, they could pay a Millennial $40k/year and give them a $1500/year bonus and then gloat to shareholders about how much more profitable they were this year. Fast-forward to news article about Millennials killing some industry because they're not buying things for some reason.

It also depeneds on who you are, and how entrenched. CEO Ginny Rometty presedied over years of decline, and gave herself huge salary and bonuses completely out of sync with the decline. And the Board of Directors, that kept her well padded, kept themselves well padded as well. What a coincidence.

Business should be about everyone in a company doing well. Now it's about creating a desperate workforce that will work for anything, and can be fired easily, or their jobs are sent overseas. The problem with the latter approach, is that when you destroy the middle class, you destabilize the ability of people to consume, as well as being hurtful on other levels.

Carly Fiorina fired HP's best tech people (some of the best in the industry) just to cut costs. (except for herself)
 
I think the bigger driving factor is insurance costs. People over 40 start becoming a big liability for long term health issues that will eventually drive up the premiums on the company. Higher premiums mean they have to put more of the cost on the employee. The more they put on the employee, the less attractive they become to new talent.

That's why there's such a huge "wellness" push in med to large companies. They're trying desperately to keep their insurance as low as possible.

If you had a universal healthcare system...like every other industrialized nation in the world...then you would eliminate that being a factori
 
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blah blah blah

Freedom baby. Technocrats making decisions based on scientific consensus leads to genocide.

these-smug-pilots-have-lost-touch-with-regular-will-mcphai.jpg


Experts are the only people who should ever run anything.
 
Success definitely isn't measured by well being lol.



Winning isn't easy.


Then how donydonydou define it?

I define success as meeting goals. The goals of most voters would be to improvw their wellbeing.

To me, it's the only thing that matters.

After all, what good is financial, political or military success if it doesn't make you happy and your life better?
 
So much this. Every big corporation has the same idea of "My shareholders love that I'm letting other companies pay high wages so the bulk of my consumer base can pay the high price of my products," when in reality it as you say. The bulk of the consumers are fast becoming people that only earn 40-50k/year. At some point, this cycle has to break something as people will only be able to afford the bare essentials especially if things like housing continue to rise.

My Dad used to say: "People have to be payed what things cost. If you do not pay people what things cost, they cannot buy things."

Here are 2 Options:
Pay people more.
Make things cost less.

Anything else lowers the Standard of living or kills hope of a better future. My logic is simple.
Here is the opposite:

Pay people Less.
Charge more for things.
 
military success


How about not being dead? I think military success is pretty easily measured.




I think the guy you were replying to was referencing our economic power, which unfortunately demands quite a bit of sacrifice from us poor american workers :(
 
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So what you really meant to say was:

"flooding the market with cheap foreign labor" ~ "shifts wealth from older people to foreigners..."



I was in construction for 20+ years & illegal immigration decimated US wages.

I moved to tech for 10 years & saw H1* visa's from India & China & outsourcing decimate US wages.



So you think we should spread wealth to the rest of the world & FUCK AMERICA - FUCK YEAH !

obama spread the wealth

I'm assuming that last part was sarcasm? If not, you got the opposite out of what I was trying to say. Decades of illegal and legal immigration have decimated American wages was the gist of the article(I don't think you read it) which includes older people. On top of a flood of immigrants, your older crowd also has to compete with the younger generation just entering the job market.
 
We would also have much higher taxes, or else much higher debt.

Not so if you consider all the costs of our system, held together by powerful lobbies.. The GAO estimated three years ago that a Universal Health Care system would save the US 3 Billion dollars in the first year, And it would take health careburdens of businesses.

Right now we pay the highest healthcare per capita costs in the world,
We rank behind at least 27 other countries in terms of all health parameters.
And people can lose their houses and everything else if they get catastrophically sick...not so in other advanced countries,
Our prescription drug prices are absurd, and kept artificially high.
And we lead the other countries in the numbersof deaths from medical errors, In the US after Heart Disease and Cancer, Medical errors are the third highest cause in faltalities...higher than other industrialized countries.

Yeah, it's a great system.
 
I'm assuming that last part was sarcasm? If not, you got the opposite out of what I was trying to say. Decades of illegal and legal immigration have decimated American wages was the gist of the article(I don't think you read it) which includes older people. On top of a flood of immigrants, your older crowd also has to compete with the younger generation just entering the job market.

Immmigrants are taking the jobs most Americans don't want. They arenot the reason American wages are lower.
 
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Experts are the only people who should ever run anything.
Yes and no. If someone is an expert, but has no ethics, and their whole agenda is to tow the line and get paid, no matter who gets hurt, then they shouldn't be in charge of anything. Alternately, say someone is an expert in a flawed field and has downright wrong conceptions, despite being very experienced, they can do just as much damage.

I'll take a layman with their heart in the right place any day over an expert that's in denial and / or trying to fuck everyone. Not that I've had a choice like that.
 
I'm almost 45, work for an IT company and fear for my job as well. To disguise myself as an Millennial I vape, eat avocado toast and pretend to know everything. So far its worked :)

In my work we're like varying ages of like 30 - 50 or so but the mental age remained at 25. ;)
 
In my work we're like varying ages of like 30 - 50 or so but the mental age remained at 25. ;)
Lol so true.

Day doesn't go by without a "your mom" or "that's what she said".

Needless to say, HR ignores us.
 
And H1B is taking jobs that we do want plus keeping the salaries at an artificially low rate. All for the benefit of the American worker, no doubt.

H1B is a special case, and is not usually part of the discussion, which usually centers on illegal immigrants. I don't believe we should be issuing so many of them for workers, as that does destabilize wages. But many of the big companies like the arrangement, which is consistent with other policies inimical to people who work.
 
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Immmigrants are taking the jobs most Americans don't want. They arenot the reason American wages are lower.
Maybe some of those jobs were desirable a couple decades ago? I wouldn't want the construction jobs of today either if they used to pay $45/hr but now pay $11. While I may somewhat agree with you, I also don't think your statement should stop there as the end all/be all rebuttal. Maybe it was because of an overabundance of immigration throughout the decades that today many of the jobs became undesirable? There is some pride in being a 'ditch digger'(your average american with only a high school diploma) and still raising your family on a single income. There is not much pride in being the same 'ditch digger' and living in mom's basement. I would like to see some arguments on whether Americans would truly take those jobs or not, why they will or will not such as either pay scale or the work is beneath them. I think you know my opinion in that the wages moved lower and lower over time so many Americans began to see less value in taking the work.
 
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So what is the reason omniscient one?

I don't think I'm the one making absolute statements about the negative impacts of immigration, which is at a 42 year low despite sensationalist headlines. That was someone else.

You don't have to be omniscient to understand the multiple causes of low wages, something that many large companies love. Even Ross Perot, no liberal, realized how NAFTA was being used as a means to lower wages, even as CEOs are giving themselves larger and larger bonuses.

And you don't have to be omniscient to know that when people resort to ad hominem arguments and insults that they usually can't muster facts.
 
Maybe some of those jobs were desirable a couple decades ago? I wouldn't want the construction jobs of today either if they used to pay $45/hr but now pay $11. While I may somewhat agree with you, I also don't think your statement should end there as the answer. Maybe it was because of an overabundance of immigration throughout the decades that today many of the jobs became undesirable?

Most Americans do not want to work harvesting fruit and vegetables, nor in service jobs in restaurants, etc. Blaming immigrants for low wages overlooks a lot of things.
 
Most Americans do not want to work harvesting fruit and vegetables, nor in service jobs in restaurants, etc. Blaming immigrants for low wages overlooks a lot of things.
You are saying the same thing without really adding to the argument and making absolute statements you are accusing others of. As far as your service jobs in restaurants, you are wrong as the article I referenced earlier points out those positions are seeing increased wages in Iowa. If immigrants were taking those jobs, the ones you say your average American does not want, then the wages would stay low according to your argument of only immigrants take low-paying menial work.
 
H1B is a special case, and is not usually part of the discussion, which usually centers on illegal immigrants. I don't believe we should be issuing so many of them for workers, as that does destabilize wages. But many of the big companies like the arrangement, which is consistent with other policies inimical to people who work.

You can't talk about IT, jobs and wages without including H1B. Your "special case" is rampant worker abuse being perpetrated on the educated American worker by its own government and businesses. Last count 365,682. Americans should be given preference to work in their own country and earn an honest wage. H1B undermines both, giving preference to foreign workers whom use H1B. They can work at an undercutting lower wage for a few years here, then go back to their native country to live like kings with servants.

Welcome to the Global Economy.
 
I don't understand your conflation of competence and genocide. It's utter nonsense if you ask me. Godwins law and all that, i guess.

It was not a conflation of competence and genocide. I was pointing out how "experts" managed to eliminate millions of Jews based on the Idea that they were "experts" and experts know best. I'll take a Free society with butt loads of incompetence over a highly competent murderous regime.

Godwins law is not a valid dismissal of my point, (because I am not calling him a Nazi). I am referring specifically to what the Nazi regime was. I would have done it on the second post if I read his point earlier.
 
We would also have much higher taxes, or else much higher debt.

That's because we piss away so much money on the military.

If we scaled down our military to the role of just defending our borders, like every other nation, we could have free tuition, free healthcare and a comprehensive government retirement system, just like they do.

There is no reason we should spend more than the next 10 nations in the world combined on our military, especially when most of those next ten are our allies...
 
Unions are a double edged curse.

Many employers are willing to put your life at risk so they can make an extra tree-fiddy.

Many unions give protections to useless employees but we all get equal pay...

And then - there's the overhead of dues & BA's & politics, etc.

We won't solve it here, so I'll STFU after saying that I think - unions do more good than harm.

I dont support unions for unskilled workers. I don't mean lousy workers, I mean jobs that don't require specialized skills that take considerable training and aptitude to acquire.

Delivery people. Office assistants. These are not jobs that should take a well qualified person years of training to perform at an acceptable level.
 
You are saying the same thing without really adding to the argument and making absolute statements you are accusing others of. As far as your service jobs in restaurants, you are wrong as the article I referenced earlier points out those positions are seeing increased wages in Iowa. If immigrants were taking those jobs, the ones you say your average American does not want, then the wages would stay low according to your argument of only immigrants take low-paying menial work.

Funny, It seems you are making absolute statements. in addition to your predeliction for making insults.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/artcarden/2015/08/28/how-do-illegal-immigrants-affect-american-workers-the-answer-might-surprise-
you/#71791ab4771a

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/22/us/immigr
ants-arent-taking-americans-jobs-new-study-
finds.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/loca...da9f2a-d3bc-11e4-a62f-ee745911a4ff_story.html

https://www.forbes.com/sites/washingtonbytes/2018/02/01/while-trump-blames-immigrants/
 
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