By 
It sounds ridiculous but tech giant IBM has been accused of laying off over 100,000 employees because they were old.
The company has been sued under several civil cases and a class-action lawsuit that accuses the company of age discrimination in an effort to look as cool as Google so as to attract a younger pool of talent.
In one of the civil cases filed by former VP of Human Resources, Allan Wild, IDM is said to have faced a challenge in recruiting talent, especially from the millennial pool. To counter this, the company thought it was wise to get rid of its older employees over the course of several years to appear “cool and trendy” and not “an old fuddy-duddy organization”, according to court documents.
Start off your week with tech news recap and trending conversations in your inbox
IBM is believed to have started this practice as early as 2014.
In response to the claims, the company had a very dodgy reply, “We have reinvented IBM in the past five years to target higher-value opportunities for our clients. The company hires 50,000 employees each year.”
IBM has not exactly been having an easy time in the market as they have been struggling to innovate which would make total sense why they are trying to appear as cool as Google to attract younger employees. The company had a total of 318,000 employees globally, at the end of 2018, the lowest its had since 2012.
Its lack of talent hasn’t been the only problem that has hit IBM in recent years. The giant’s revenues have been shrinking drastically in for the past seven years. It might be absurd, but I don’t blame IBM for taking measures to ensure it survives the next century.
Comments