CDZ Age Discrimination

[gipper]

Is age discrimination rampant in the workplace? I tend to think it is and I believe employers regularly get away with discriminating against older people.

Interesting article about how major league baseball values older people to manage professional baseball teams.

A Lesson From Major League Baseball About Age Discrimination in the Workplace
Age discrimination may infect much of the American workplace, but not the major league baseball diamond, where demands for immediate success are intense.

And that’s the thing. Professional sports is the ultimate meritocracy. As they say, you win or you go home. And older managers win respect not for their gray hair or their ability to reminisce about the good old days, but for leadership under great pressure, and the calmness that comes from experience.

That’s how they’d want it. And that’s how it should be. Too bad so many US companies don’t get it. Like the Nats and Mets, they might be much more successful if they did.

A Lesson From Major League Baseball About Age Discrimination in the Workplace

 

[Arianrhod]

A lot of it is salary discrimination. Why pay an experienced older employee top dollar when you can hire some kid right out of school for half the price? That there's no one available to teach the kid how to do the job because you've fired all the senior staff is not something the average CEO knows or cares about...because s/he'll jump with a multi-million dollar parachute after running the company into the ground.

 

[oldsoul]

Is age discrimination rampant in the workplace? I tend to think it is and I believe employers regularly get away with discriminating against older people.

Interesting article about how major league baseball values older people to manage professional baseball teams.

A Lesson From Major League Baseball About Age Discrimination in the Workplace
Age discrimination may infect much of the American workplace, but not the major league baseball diamond, where demands for immediate success are intense.

And that’s the thing. Professional sports is the ultimate meritocracy. As they say, you win or you go home. And older managers win respect not for their gray hair or their ability to reminisce about the good old days, but for leadership under great pressure, and the calmness that comes from experience.

That’s how they’d want it. And that’s how it should be. Too bad so many US companies don’t get it. Like the Nats and Mets, they might be much more successful if they did.

A Lesson From Major League Baseball About Age Discrimination in the Workplace

I have not seen this myself. I do not doubt that it happens, but my experience tells me that it is not all that big of a deal. That's just my experience though, I admit it is somewhat limited.

 

[320 Years of History]

Too bad so many US companies don’t get it.

I am not in any sense going to argue in favor of generalized age discrimination. As a senior principal in a global consulting firm, I can attest to part of what contributes to some aspects of what may seem like age discrimination.

Companies like mine sell the intellectual capital gained and developed by its professionals over the course of a career. People come by that information in part through formal education and in part from direct experience. Generally speaking, the formal education provides the tools and skills one needs to accurately and quickly analyze experiential information one gathers in the course of a career. In general, older professionals have both dimensions well in hand.

The thing is that firms like mine largely have to broad classes of roles for which it needs workers:

• Career track roles -- These positions are ones that pay the most. They are also the ones for which a person's available years before retirement matters, especially on the revenue producing (client facing) side of the business. It matters because many firms have mandatory retirement rules, quite often placing retirement at or around 62-65 years old. The mandatory retirement rules generally apply to partners (owners of the firm). Generally speaking, if a partner must retire and wants to continue practicing in his/her field, the choice is to shift to a non-equity partner position. (Director is generally what the position is called.) The main distinction is that non-equity partners (directors) lack their own authority to contractually bind the firm whereas equity partners can do so.
• Non-career track roles -- These positions can certainly pay well, but none of them pay the $750K+/year that senior partners and principals typically earn in large firms. Some of them pay quite well, however, just not "that" well. There isn't generally anything that one might call age discrimination in considering applicants for these positions. Generally, senior expense side (non-client facing), such as IT director, contract administrator, system administrator, receptionist, etc. are non-career track roles.

Note: career track may be a confusing term for some folks here. It has nothing to do with how long one performs a role. It has everything to do with whether the job is considered mission critical to the firm's primary business objective, selling professional services and intellectual capital to clients who seek specific or generalized input on how to successfully manage or transform their business and business operations.

 

[jwoodie]

Age discrimination is alive and well. Easily evaded by using the right words.

 

[Blackrook]

At some point, you're up or out. That's the way of it.

I'm out, and making my own way in the world. Business is picking up for me, and I'm happy that I don't have to drive to work, wear a damn suit, and kiss people's ass who aren't as smart as me.

 

[Moonglow]

My younger associates always accuse me of telling them what to do...

 

[320 Years of History]

My younger associates always accuse me of telling them what to do...

Do you tell them what to do?

In a manner of speaking, I certainly tell my subordinates what to do, regardless of whether they are older or younger than I. That's part of my job; it's called leading. At this point in my career, however, I never tell my direct reports how to do whatever it is I've told them we are going to make happen. They wouldn't be my immediate subordinates if they didn't already know how to do "whatever."

As people progress in their careers, the need for someone to tell them what to do is replaced by their knowing what they need to do and taking the initiative to do it. As another member noted, our workplace culture in the U.S. is evolving more and more to the "up or out" model. In some cases "out" doesn't literally mean out of the company, but rather "out of the way" of someone who's more able, which may entail one being shifted into a "dead end" role.

 

[Moonglow]

My younger associates always accuse me of telling them what to do...

Do you tell them what to do?

In a manner of speaking, I certainly tell my subordinates what to do, regardless of whether they are older or younger than I. That's part of my job; it's called leading. At this point in my career, however, I never tell my direct reports how to do whatever it is I've told them we are going to make happen. They wouldn't be my immediate subordinates if they didn't already know how to do "whatever."

As people progress in their careers, the need for someone to tell them what to do is replaced by their knowing what they need to do and taking the initiative to do it. As another member noted, our workplace culture in the U.S. is evolving more and more to the "up or out" model. In some cases "out" doesn't literally mean out of the company, but rather "out of the way" of someone who's more able, which may entail one being shifted into a "dead end" role.

Yes I tell them what to do..But they still ignore me, and then implement the idea...

 

[320 Years of History]

My younger associates always accuse me of telling them what to do...

Do you tell them what to do?

In a manner of speaking, I certainly tell my subordinates what to do, regardless of whether they are older or younger than I. That's part of my job; it's called leading. At this point in my career, however, I never tell my direct reports how to do whatever it is I've told them we are going to make happen. They wouldn't be my immediate subordinates if they didn't already know how to do "whatever."

As people progress in their careers, the need for someone to tell them what to do is replaced by their knowing what they need to do and taking the initiative to do it. As another member noted, our workplace culture in the U.S. is evolving more and more to the "up or out" model. In some cases "out" doesn't literally mean out of the company, but rather "out of the way" of someone who's more able, which may entail one being shifted into a "dead end" role.

Yes I tell them what to do..But they still ignore me, and then implement the idea...

Red sequence of remarks:
Okay....