Age Discrimination

[heironymouspasparagus]

As much as I hate to start a new topic and miss the chance to create some thread drift, there was just nothing that I could find to make even a tenuous connection, so here it is - I started a new topic!

Boeing.  Advertising for an engineer in OKC area at Tinker - Early Career - a young engineer that they can get cheap...  Preferably brand new right out of school, I bet.

And we hear so much whining, gnashing of teeth, and wailing about how difficult it is to find STEM people...  I know 2 older engineers (besides me) - who have been looking for a while - who could walk in the door Monday and hit the ground running on electrical loads analysis - have done it for years!  Are very good technical writers who could provide all required documentation.  Have done presentations of analytical results for years.  And one has had Top Secret clearance which would be easy to re-instate if needed.   They will probably both apply for that, but both will not get it.

Neither of them are kids (49 and 57).  And would cost 90k instead of 55k.

This is similar to one of the local oil/gas related companies in NE OK a few years ago where an HR officer told a large group of employees that the average age was 45 in the company, "and we have to get that down..."   Let the layoffs begin!!  About 275 in the following 9 months - 3 of which were under 45.

Lest one be lead into thinking that these are blatant age discrimination events, remember two things - it is employment at will here.  But more importantly, companies have learned how to immunize themselves against ageism charges - they keep a token old guy or two to point to as examples when someone says they missed out due to age discrimination.  The deck really IS stacked.  You will lose.

Early Career Design and Analysis Engineer

https://jobs.boeing.com/job/-/-/185/4920224?ss=paid

[saintnicster]

Yeah, that HR person is an idiot.

I am curious what the age spread was like at that company.  What was the ratio like? Average tenure? What about continuing education, maintaining their value to the company.

[cannon_fodder]

Neither of them are kids (49 and 57).  And would cost 90k instead of 55k.

To play devil's advocate -

you have an opening that requires the skills of an entry level engineer.  An entry level engineer in your community makes $55k per year, while a top level engineer makes $90k.  You have two applicants, one is a top level engineer and one is a fresh-out-of-school entry level engineer.  What do you do?

[heironymouspasparagus]

Yeah, that HR person is an idiot.

I am curious what the age spread was like at that company.  What was the ratio like? Average tenure? What about continuing education, maintaining their value to the company.

The average was 45.  The median was higher, I am guessing here, but somewhere in the early 50's, which means heavily skewed to old.

Side note; this company has a history going back to the 70's of issuing "cattle calls" - where they hire say 100 people.  Then over the next 18 months, decimate that population to get to the 10 or 15 they want to keep.  And even those will be purged at the drop of a hat - change in oil price - so new people coming in was always considered a short term thing mostly.  And since they moved to a small town 13 miles northeast of Tulsa to get cheaper wages for factory, they have had trouble at times keeping technical people anyway.   

This gives a natural bias to keeping older, longer tenure people - higher up/managers - while effectively limiting the newbies coming in.  Pausing for a moment before a layoff would help.  Too many different individual agendas to let that happen.

[heironymouspasparagus]

To play devil's advocate -

you have an opening that requires the skills of an entry level engineer.  An entry level engineer in your community makes $55k per year, while a top level engineer makes $90k.  You have two applicants, one is a top level engineer and one is a fresh-out-of-school entry level engineer.  What do you do?

Yep.  That IS the question, isn't it?   Looking at the Boeing link, there are insights - they want the newbie to come in and get the older guy to train his replacement.  The "code words" are contained in that job responsibilities section (line 6).

Except the skills they are talking about are NOT entry level by any stretch of the imagination.  Later they specifically say 1+ years experience - that is barely enough time to start to "learn where the bathrooms are" in that particular topic.  You would know how to move around through the jargon, and would be at the point where a contribution could be made over the next year and beyond, with plenty of hand-holding by old guy. 

It IS a very good thing to hire new people - I have personally hired 3 interns in previous lives, followed on by one full time employment.  Tried to get the other two, but they got the light in their eyes for national security work.  And made recommendations, that were accepted, on 2 others in current life - one of whom sits next to me right now for the last 3 weeks.  (Other one was last years intern.) 

This happens due to a pretty good amount of forward thinking about supporting and working with local universities.  (TU, OSU, and OU are the schools I have direct experience with, in particular Dr. S. Singh at TU.)

I realize Boeing has to try to 'staff up' as quickly as possible when they get military contracts like this, and there are spot shortages of people from time to time.  Just a tiny bit of foresight would help the situation, though, and make life much easier.  But then upper management wouldn't squeeze every last penny out of the bonus plan for keeping head count below a bare minimum.  Or every last $100,000 out of the plan....

[guido911]

An FYI.

https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/adea.cfm

[heironymouspasparagus]

An FYI.

https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/adea.cfm

Just more of that pesky government "overreach" the right wing talks about so much.  And just saw the first Verizon advertisement today about how we have enough pro football players, but are 4 million tech people short.  Well, like I said before, I know some who could do some of those 4 million jobs.  It's all lies, BS, and unicorn farts they are pushing!



Wouldn't that be a nice world to live in...;
"This is where your ice cream comes from...."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbYWhdLO43Q