You mention IBM, one aspect that always bugged me was upto the mid 80's they had a thing about people with beards and was some sort of unwitten policey (never worked for them) that nobody could have a beard and any intervewing with them entailed making sure you had a good shave. I worked with a chap at RAND who went onto work for IBM porting AIX onto the mainframe (least that was the initial project he was joing for) and was somewhat begrudged that he would have to shave his beard of just to get the job irespective of his ability.
That has all changed and yet back then was accepted standards from what I could tell. More a insight into culture change but I have not heard of any agisim culture inside IBM before or now, just a beard thing, which has passed.
With that anybody have any insight as to any agisim aspects inside IBM past or present?
At some point, IBM decided catering to wall street was more important than doing real work. Take a look at Cringely's articles on IBM. I've known people that worked as contractors at IBM Almaden and as the transition was occurring, they went out of their way to not end up on the radar -- the impression I got was that management being aware of your project was a risk for being cut. This was even worse for the rank and file full timers.
IBM used to invest in it's employees. My advisor was of a generation where if you saved IBM X dollars in terms of research patents, etc, you were well supported as time went on. Additionally, they had a culture of investing in their employees. I don't know when the change happened... I want to say sometime in the mid/late 90s things shifted and have since.
Sounds about right, yes IBM did also change when they focused more in offering services. Became slower in there replies too issues but still got there. One project I came across was issue with SAMBA and logging around the year 2001 and quickly knocked up a wrapper for the SAMBA code to trap and log what was needed to be logged. Took IBM a week to confirm my 30 minute solution would work and was the right approach and then they only ended up at that conclusion after talking to Jeremy Allison.
I worked for a company once that had a suggestion box. If you made a non-anonymous suggestion that wound up saving the company money you got 10% of the savings over 2 years. While I was there no one got rich off of it but a few people got some nice bonuses. I don't understand why more people don't do this.
I worked as an intern at IBM last summer. It seemed like my entire team was a stagnant pool from the 70's. The languages were C and HLASM, 'high level assembler.' None of my managers knew anything about newer languages like Golang or Haskell. We built hash tables by converting strings to integers and then using modulus. They laughed at the idea of a Linux machine being useful as a server.
That said, most of the new hires were under 25, and most of the older people had been employees since the age of 25. But definitely the older people got all the respect.
IBM's full time offer to me was a solid 1/2 of Google's offer after stock and bonuses (over 2 years), with no room for negotiation.
Haskell was designed by a committee, so it's going to be difficult to find ages for all of them, but Simon Peyton Jones, the best known of the creators, is 56.
My parents worked a long time at IBM - Dad from about '70-'00, give or take a couple years, and Mom from '77-'86, then again in the late '90s for a few years. I don't think it was an ageism culture per se in terms of older people being less valued, but from both of them, the career advancement was in either sales or management. I don't think the vision for either was to stay technical and advance on the basis of technical ability.
There was a cultural shift internally when Gerstner was brought in - before then, there was a culture of "join us, and IBM will take care of you". Saving the company in the '80s required giving that mentality up, and it destroyed much of what, in my parents' eyes, made IBM a special place to work.
Re ageism, it depends on where you are and what you are working on. I know and have known many who have 30, 35 and 40 years in and stayed in engineering.
For development, it's all about having your niche. If your niche is stable, age isn't an issue. If your niche is going away, there's little reason to keep a 50 yr old C cubicle guy to switch to consulting, 50% travel and code the latest flavor. There's just no cruising on your laurels anywhere anymore and the market turns over much more quickly.
My observation of recent layoffs is that it's ageism in that most of the people in these jobs are well into their 50's and some into their 60's. Young is 40, and if you weren't in a critical niche, you were just as likely to go as any.
That has all changed and yet back then was accepted standards from what I could tell. More a insight into culture change but I have not heard of any agisim culture inside IBM before or now, just a beard thing, which has passed.
With that anybody have any insight as to any agisim aspects inside IBM past or present?