It does not take 'insane competency' to get hired at high levels. That kind of competency is very hard to measure anyhow.
Risk management is an excellent area to look at this because it's nary impossible to know if the correct decision was made. You do a big layoff, and 'there were no lawsuits'. Was that a win? Or not?
I worked at a large corporation that had to pay a huge amount of money to an IP troll. After that, our CEO made everything to through our lawyers and we just became very risk averse. It was not a calculation, it was an emotion.
Also, it's incredibly difficult to 'calculate' any of these things.
I don't care how smart your MBA's are, there's just only so much specificity that you can have when trying to calculate 'the likelihood of getting sued'. It's basically guesswork.
A far, far more intelligent thing to do would be to structure the layoff in such a way that the company could not get sued, by making sure they're not apparently breaking any laws.
Operationally rigorous companies like MS, Amazon etc. probably have some decent hiring practices, even at higher levels, but the vast majority of companies do not.
It's the corporate version of being a kid and thinking your parents know everything and then growing up and realizing that if you're winging it, you're parents must have been winging it and if it's true for you, it's true for basically everyone.
The executive that made the relevant decision probably is no longer capable/inclined to do the detailed modeling necessary. It would be extremely foolish to trust his future to the discretion of a spreadsheet jockey two years out of bschool. I bet there was no such modeling exercise. Whatever weighing of discrimination damages that happened likely took place entirely on the backs of napkins.
Wait...
What?
Mandatory jail terms for discrimination?
I think these companies should be held to account, no question there. But putting people in prison if they discriminate against older people, or blacks, or women, or what have you, that's kind of a lot don't you think?
I mean, how many people would we be putting in prison if we started jailing people for discrimination? There is a LOT of discrimination out there.
We should be hitting these companies where they feel it most, in their pocketbooks. Take whatever you feel the damages might have been, and add a zero on the end. Or two zeroes, or three, until these companies get the message.
A relative advantage for one is necessarily a relative disadvantage for another.
> is actually bad for other group, for example, poorer untrained workers.
Those poorer untrained workers will also eventually become old. What then?
> A relative advantage for one is necessarily a relative disadvantage for another.
Could you explain that in terms of not allowing companies to discriminate based on race? Who is that a disadvantage to in any sense that could be framed as just or ethical?
A "VP of tech company" is likely to be wealthy and have a number of assets. They could liquidate or just pay out of pocket to maintain their assests while they are inside and still come back to wealthy life.
If you were already poor going into prison, living paycheck to paycheck, they have literally lost everything. Their life is destroyed.
If anything, prison sentences and fines should scale up based on one's position of power and income.
Depending on how much importance you assign to each of those the appropriate policy will vary.
If you care about deterrence but not retribution you really might not need as long an incarceration. Your average inside trader might be just as eager to avoid a month in jail as your average burglar is to avoid a year.
I'm not saying that's necessarily the case. But it's something to consider.
If anything, we already put too many people in prison.