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How IBM quietly pushed out 20,000 older workers

Vox | March 8, 2026



Age discrimination can be very hard to prove.

Read ProPublica’s full feature story here:
https://features.propublica.org/ibm/ibm-age-discrimination-american-workers/

In a ProPublica feature that collected the stories of over 1,400 former IBM employees, it was estimated that a staggering 20,000 American employees ages 40 and over have been eliminated by the company. How does one of the country’s largest tech giants quietly push out this many older workers? Don’t we have laws to protect people at the end of their careers?

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Written by Vox

Comments

This post currently has 39 comments.

  1. @Antagraber

    March 8, 2026 at 3:27 am

    0:40 "People are a treasured resource. They are treated like one." Not anymore in IBM. The result? IBM no longer leads. Only survives.
    (I've been working for IBM Corp. for 20 years since 1998, so I saw the decline of this company. I was extremely proud of being part of it. I devoted my mind and soul to its success.)

  5. @couloir1

    March 8, 2026 at 3:27 am

    Part of the 'older' workforce is that they are expensive and not as motivated. They also are set in their own ways and are slow to change in a fast moving world. If a company wants to innovate and compete, they need younger work force. (I'm in my 50s) I know I'm gonna upset a lot of people with this comment but it's just one man's opinion so take it with a grain of salt.

  7. @1944barcelona

    March 8, 2026 at 3:27 am

    Dammed if you do. Dammed if you don't. The Company had very tough time beginning in or about the late eighties and into the nineties. I have a good understanding of why that happened. I was positioned near to where these reduction decisions were reluctantly being made. Had the business not slimmed down it might well have gone out of business. Then other employees, public critics and stockholders who relied on IBM stock/dividends for their well being (including many employees) would have been after the Company for different reasons. And consider the end game consequences of not taking actions to slim down the work force. While one must sympathize with people whose lives were obstructed i can tell you first hand that IBM always did its best to protect its people. "Full Employment" was always taken very seriously. Some have asserted that IBM was too permissive. Attrition used to run 1% and a sliver of that was involuntary. But there came a critical juncture. The practice was to offer people in those jobs that were to be eliminated opportunities elsewhere in the business. Were an alternative was not available or an alternative was not suitable from the employees view point the $separation was paid. Getting rid of senior employees was never an objective nor an accepted practice. For senior people (+55) they were entitled to retirement or early retirement benefits which undoubtedly was part of an employees protection. Signing release documents is hardly a unique practice and again one that had to be taken to avoid unjustified accusations. Any employee feeling they had a legitimate complaint could exercise the 'Open Door' grievance process up to the CEO. This process was implemented by Tom Watson Sr. early in the Company's history. I investigated or oversaw about 400 of these cases. All were very seriously investigated. Believe me you did not want to be a manager who was found to be responsible for ill treatment of an employee. I have no ill will towards persons whose lives were impacted and felt/feel unfairly treated. But, outsiders who do not present a balanced context do not have my appreciation.

  10. @wld-ph

    March 8, 2026 at 3:27 am

    My uncle in operations, got a massive redundancy payout. So "pushed" or incentivised. As a contractor these days, peeps are dropped without even paying short notice. They will find some fault… (Not IBM) I once had I did not provide notice of going in holiday. Actually it was a honeymoon, and everyone, including the manager´s signed our card. Humourously, I was the 30th person being laid off, which triggers legal stuff. I got another job.

  11. @harrybarker4370

    March 8, 2026 at 3:27 am

    IBM was so set in it's ways. Til Lou Gershner came in as CEO.

    People, often the old guard, needed to be let go if the company was going to survive imho.

    Not pretty but it is what it is

  15. @mrpawpaw7023

    March 8, 2026 at 3:27 am

    I started with IBM as an engineer right out of college in the early 1980s. It was an amazing place to work with amazing benefits although at the cost of lower wages. My first salary was 24K/year. Over the years, starting around 1990 there was a systematic take-away of benefits and clear and obvious age discrimination going on, but wages were only going up at the inflation rate. At the time Gerstner was brought in, IBM began mass layoffs targeting older workers. All of their actions against employees are well documented. At this point, everything that could be imagined from the looting of pensions to the selling of the artwork off the walls was the norm. In the late 1990s, despite being a high performer, it was clear that there would be no long-term future there for older workers unless you had been selected for executive management. I did not wait for the next of an unending series of periodic layoffs where the "bottom 10% + special individuals" of the workforce, primarily older workers, were thrown out, (per the Jack Welch model) and instead resigned to join the real high-tech world. I had a successful career in several Big high-tech companies (you know their names) moving up the ranks, eventually becoming a senior manager. Even though I am now retired, I am still called into work for my last employer to help with particularly tough problems. There is no age discrimination problem there. IBM's age discrimination policy resulted in many like me leaving (either voluntarily or not) and making their competitors stronger. It was their loss. I do not think that it is unrelated to IBM now being just a shell of its former self.

  19. @tompeterson6417

    March 8, 2026 at 3:27 am

    I don't get it why would the company care how old someone is?
    isn't it possible that older employees or just not as effective at keeping up with new technology.
    That would mean that old people being fired more often is correlation not causation.

  24. @haoxus9413

    March 8, 2026 at 3:27 am

    There are many older employee who are pillars of the campany

    And there are definitely a lot of people slacking, young or old.

    The campany pays pretty low, and less demanding workload. So more productive or ambitious people tends to jump to other high paying tech companies.

    The ones left behind had higher percentage of slackers.

    I worked there, all my coworkers are nice people. But to be fair to the company, which was also nice to me, I think it's justified that they pip lower performing employees. Unfortunately job performance sometimes just happened to be correlated with how often you stayed in the same warm cozy company.

    Also to be fair, the campany laid off a few very productive employee that I know, and ended up hurting the team. But hey, those people are valuable anywhere, they got better paying jobs somewhere else in the end.

    In the end of the day, the company has to make money to pay everyone

  25. @GARBO96

    March 8, 2026 at 3:27 am

    I have never worked for a official job where they didn't make me sign a waiver saying I won't take it to court it's weird how this is normal in America

  27. @MrBrupan

    March 8, 2026 at 3:27 am

    They fired all the US staff and sent their jobs offshore at a fraction of the cost (Brazil, India, Costa Rica, and even Canada for customer facing positions). Professional services are provided almost entirely by exploited Indian workers on questionable temporary work visas.

  34. @brianperry4815

    March 8, 2026 at 3:27 am

    When they say. Aren't you loyal to the company, I say I am as loyal to you as you are to me….. Not at all. Was also told.. We can fire you anytime and my reply is so I can tell you to go blank yourself and work for your competition… your point
    MY dad thought me that.

  36. @Wooley689

    March 8, 2026 at 3:27 am

    The young ones coming in think it isn't a problem, they don't understand that they will one day be that older person and get pushed out as well.

  38. @burtonkrichard8898

    March 8, 2026 at 3:27 am

    That’s why our generation works 5-10 careers in their lifetime. Instead of 2-3. Other jobs can offer different things causing an ever shifting lifestyle. But with that companies have stopped giving benefits knowing that most likely they will lose that employee at some point.

Comments are closed.

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