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DINOBABY: Older workers in the workforce, formerly known as Boomers. Urban Dictionary
I learned of this word while reading an article about an age discrimination lawsuit against IBM. IBM denies the allegations, but the emails illustrate a very different scenario. IBM executives refer to a strategy of “accelerating change by inviting the ‘dinobabies’ to leave and become an extinct species. One email states that 25,000 “older, non-millennial workers needed to be let go’. Another demeaning email describes it’s over 50 women-employees as a “dated maternal workforce”. It went on to say that “They really don’t understand social or engagement. Not digital natives. A real threat for us,”
IBM’s defense is that between 2010 and 2020 it retired several lines of business and reinvented itself for an entirely new era of technology and the skills it requires. That, however, is not an excuse for the demeaning language used by executives to describe the over 55 crowd of IBM employees. The CEO of IBM when these emails were written was Virginia “Ginni” Rometty, who left IBM in 2020 at the age of 63. The new CEO is Arvind Krishna, a 60-year-old. The CFO, James J. Kavanaugh, is 59 – a baby!!! Another description for their age is Boomer. No one is calling them dinobabies.
Here is the hypocrisy: A “dated, non-millennial” work force are hard workers willing to be trained in new ideas and products. The millennial workforce comes into the job with more awareness of technology and lower wages. Yet, millennials in the work force are known for being needy, whiny, entitled, with a need for nurturing.
My conjecture is that as IBM whittled itself down, the younger managers (Gen X) had a bit of success and much like the 48 year old Bret Stephens (Op-Ed columnist for the New York Times) who thinks he has the gravitas to tell a 79 year old President Biden that he is too old to run for a second term, they felt that the Boomers weren’t technologically savvy and needed to go. What they didn’t factor into the equation is that technology can be taught, experience cannot.
There’s a lesson here, Boomers cannot rest on their laurels if they want to be relevant. Often, we eschew the new and forget that we ARE THE EXPLOSIVE GENERATION! We need to keep up with technology and add it to our repertoire of resources. None of this is rocket science… after all, our grandchildren do it!
A graduate of University of Miami Law School, Frances spent ten years as a litigator/lobbyist. Today, she is an accomplished businesswoman who, when her parents could no longer take care of themselves, learned the ins and outs of senior care (or the lack thereof). She founded Parent Your Parents to assist Elders and their loved ones to take on the myriad of pitfalls and options of “senior care” and to remind them that it’s their life and they need to live it their way.
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