IT is urbanizing, McDonald’s gets it, but Woonsocket doesn’t (yet)

My favorite UK TV producer once had to sell his house in Wimbledon and move to an apartment in Central London just to get his two adult sons to finally leave home. Now something similar seems to be happening in American IT. Some people are calling it age discrimination. I’m not sure I’d go that far, but the strategy is clear: IT is urbanizing — moving to city centers where the labor force is perceived as being younger and more agile.

The poster child for this tactic is McDonald’s, based for 47 years in Oak Brook, Illinois, but just this summer moved to a new Intergalactic HQ downtown in […]

By |August 8th, 2018|2018, cloud computing, Industry, Product Development, strategy, Uncategorized|59 Comments
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Is IBM guilty of age discrimination? — Part two

agediscriminationThis is the promised second part of my attempt to decide if IBM’s recent large U.S. layoff involves age discrimination in violation of federal laws. More than a week into this process I still can’t say for sure whether Big Blue is guilty or not, primarily due to the company’s secrecy. But that very secrecy should give us all pause because IBM certainly appears to be flouting or in outright violation of several federal reporting requirements.

I will now explain this in numbing detail.

Regular readers will remember that last week I suggested laid-off IBMers go to their managers or HR and ask for statistical information they are allowed to gather under two federal laws […]

By |April 6th, 2016|2016, Companies, Government, law, People, Politics|71 Comments
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Is IBM guilty of age discrimination? — Part one

agediscriminationIs IBM guilty of age discrimination in its recent huge layoff of U.S. workers? Frankly I don’t know. But I know how to find out, and this is part one of that process. Part two will follow on Friday.

Here’s what I need you to do. If you are a U.S. IBMer age 40 or older who is part of the current Resource Action you have the right under Section 201, Subsection H of the Older Worker Benefit Protection Act of 1990 (OWBPA) to request information from IBM on which employees were involved in the RA and their ages and which employees were not selected and their ages.

Quick like a bunny, ask your manager to […]

By |March 28th, 2016|2016, Companies, Government, Industry, law, People|41 Comments
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Logan's Run

flowchart

The heyday of Artificial Intelligence (AI) was in the 1970s and 1980s.  Here was the logical evolution of office and industrial automation that would put an expert into every computer and by doing so both replace and augment employees, changing forever the world of work.  Only it turned out not to function that way because we underestimated the effort involved.  It was easy to imagine putting intelligence into a computer but very difficult to do so in practice.  There wasn’t enough processing power available for one thing, nor were there even enough experts, since it seemed to require having one on-hand to keep the machine in […]

By |September 15th, 2009|Uncategorized|149 Comments
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