Author Topic: Layoffs at work - share your stories  (Read 12367 times)

Uturn

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Re: Layoffs at work - share your stories
« Reply #50 on: October 09, 2016, 01:05:21 PM »
Not something to be proud of, your lack of professionalism as an engineer is embarrassing. Go be a financial advisor.
While if the management had decided to outsource his job to somebody that didn't know how to do it and had driven the company into the ground they would have got a bonus for the cost saving

It does not matter if management decides to outsource.  When you took the job, you agreed to do the best you can for the salary that you agreed to.  It's called work ethic.  If the company changes into something that you don't like, you leave. 

Mike2

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Re: Layoffs at work - share your stories
« Reply #51 on: October 15, 2016, 05:05:16 PM »
I work in IT for a large company with satellite offices throughout the country.  A few years back they came up with the brilliant idea to layoff all IT and outsource.  They scheduled a meeting on Thursday for Friday morning where all the people at the Corporate office who were laid off were sent to a large conference room and all of us at the satellite offices joined via the phone.  They came on and laid us off oh so matter of factly and then the call was over.  I was lucky in that my local HR thought the setup was dumb and personally told me ahead of time because it was the right thing to do.

The new arrangement last 4 months before management realized outsourcing local help was a failure.  I had been working in a different department during this time and the decision was made to bring us back.  I transferred back to IT with a 40% raise and less of the bs work I had before.  It was a win win for me.

Papa Mustache

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Re: Layoffs at work - share your stories
« Reply #52 on: October 17, 2016, 11:15:31 AM »
I worked at a small engineering company as an engineer.

I spent time making copies of my projects, my software tools, etc. They had no idea how I did what I did. I had long ago automated much of my tasks. The trick was looking busy. My work output was great. Since the employer was not a very generous (though very well off) or a trustworthy bunch, I failed to see any reason to share with them my efficiency tricks (software, automation).

I accepted another job and put in my notice. They asked me to stay and what would it take? Nope - they didn't want me to  stay hard enough b/c they would not approach the new job's salary. Later they called asking me to train my replacement. That person didn't stay more than 6 months b/c the replacement could not figure out how I got done what I got done. The next replacement did not last either I heard.


Not something to be proud of, your lack of professionalism as an engineer is embarrassing. Go be a financial advisor.

Hey - the old employer wanted to be a bunch of cheap bastards that tried to consume my entire life (unpaid overtime, travel) so I left for greener pastures. They didn't want to reward me for efficiency or advancing the company's procedures screw 'em. I took my "toolbox" home with me. They didn't pay for that. I brought that with me. I let them wonder how I got done what I got done. I left on my own terms and that was important to me.

I tried the "professionalism" approach for several years. I was a good little monkey and all it did was make it easier for them to take advantage of me.

I never asked for anything but a competitive income and a reasonable work/life balance. What I got was lies, damned lies and empty promises - oh, and mediocre raises. They under paid most folks there and consequently over a few short years the majority of their expertise left. Any time I met one of the "survivors" i.e. still working there for reasons of their own (aka likely debt) - they'd be asking whether I knew of any alternative jobs, salaries at my employer, etc. Networking for a lifeboat.

My current employer is much better on so many levels. That said, its still just a job. My team looks out for each other and the larger organization just sees us as a division. We work hard, get paid and go home. We try to do what we do better than anyone else. That said the top level people are still seeing ~10% raises on fat salaries when the rest of us might see ~2% market average salaries for an engineer.

At least I'm not getting a 2% raise on an $18K income like the entry level people (janitors, etc).

It is a much healthier way to live. I don't live to work, I work to live.

Edit: fixed the wording.
« Last Edit: October 17, 2016, 11:19:39 AM by Joe Lucky »

mm1970

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Re: Layoffs at work - share your stories
« Reply #53 on: October 17, 2016, 02:27:24 PM »
Not something to be proud of, your lack of professionalism as an engineer is embarrassing. Go be a financial advisor.
While if the management had decided to outsource his job to somebody that didn't know how to do it and had driven the company into the ground they would have got a bonus for the cost saving

It does not matter if management decides to outsource.  When you took the job, you agreed to do the best you can for the salary that you agreed to.  It's called work ethic.  If the company changes into something that you don't like, you leave.
I don't understand, isn't that what he did?  He worked.  He was really good at automating. 

(You see, I'm an engineer. I wish I were better at automating.  When I was a fab engineer/ manager, I was the expert on that "system" so I got an amazing amount done.  We've had layoffs.  I'm in a different position.  Now I use SEVERAL different systems to do my work.  They don't "talk" to each other.  And so far, I haven't been able to figure out how to get them to talk to each other.  My skills do not lie in programming, DBA, etc.)

They paid him to get a job done.  He got it done.  Then he decided to leave.  Now, while it would have been good "train" someone else - you can "train" them to do your job but if they don't have the TOOLS to do the job, then they won't be able to do it.  Obviously I'm talking about computer automation.    Those were HIS skills not the new people's skills.

The other thing that I think about occasionally is being salaried and "doing what it takes".  Having survived 3 layoffs here (yes I'll add my stories later), the amount of WORK left has close to tripled, for the people who are left.  And unlike companies that slice off VPs, we sliced off the bottom.  There's nobody BELOW me, so little things that have to get done, people like me have to do.  (Ordering chemicals, shipping things via Fed Ex, figuring out why things were not delivered).  I realize that these have to get done, but it seems odd to spend several hours a week doing it, as an engineer with 24 years of experience.  Because we got rid of junior engineers, technicians, and the shipping clerk.

So when you are salary, there's this idea that you don't work specific  hours, you just "get the job done".  What does that mean?  Does that mean if you finish in 30 hours, you go home?  Sometimes.  Or does that mean that if the company just piles it on so that you cannot finish ever, even in 60 hours, that you do 60 hours? 

I think about it because it's obviously a sliding scale with shades of gray.  I used to be "do what it takes all the time!!" But then a few things happened.  We started having layoffs, and I went 4 years with no raise and a couple of those with a horrible boss.  No amount of "doing what it takes" got any kind of reward whatsoever (even when my immediate boss tried).

So I guess someone who is incredibly efficient, what is their reward?  My reward used to be that I finished my job in 40 hours, and some people took 50. 

mm1970

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Re: Layoffs at work - share your stories
« Reply #54 on: October 17, 2016, 02:41:24 PM »
Okay, story #1, late 90's:
Our manufacturing company simply couldn't make the next "step" in technology. We had 1000 local employees and 10,000 in Asia.  I worked there for 2.5 years.  Layoffs started 6 months in.  3 rounds.  Everyone got severance - one week's pay for each week that you worked there.

The last round was in late 1999.  That was bankruptcy reorg.  At that point there were 650 local employees.  They kept 21 of them.  Right before Christmas they called everyone into the parking lot and said "we are shutting down for 3 weeks, come back in January.  We are getting more funding."  In January we got the call...no funding.  I turned in my pager on Jan 10 and started my new job on Jan 11, because I'd already been interviewing and turned down a job.  That hadn't been filled.  Oh, and no severance, of course not.

The next 3 rounds at current company.  First one, painful.  I'd had my second kid, came back to work at 75% time.  At the time I had 6 people working for me, and we did the 24/7 work.  I spent the better part of a year interviewing, hiring, and training 4 new people.  When my kid turned 1, I realized that I had to go full time to get the amount of overlap that I needed with my employees.  Went back to full time.  10 days later they laid off 3 out of my 6 people.  At the end of the day we had an all employee meeting.  Here's the problem, I had two people on that night shift.  They both came to the meeting.  One of them was getting laid off!  They didn't tell him!  The whole meeting was about how to survive we all need to give 120%.

So as we are leaving the meeting, the Pres says "so now that you are full time, you can start giving 120%!"  Fuck you.  What I said was "well you were already getting 100% when I was at 75%, so by definition you are getting 120%!"  My husband says that was the wrong thing to say.  It was better than fuck you.  Especially since they still hadn't laid off the last guy.  You can't say something like that to me right after laying off all my people!!  Anyway, that embarked a bad couple of years (Pres and I had known and worked together for 13 years at that point.)

Round two the rumors were flying so hard they had to actually move the layoff up a week.  Someone had left a sheet of paper with the "list" in the lunch room.  Dummy.  That one they laid off my senior engineer and then the next few weeks proceeded to say things like "I didn't know she was working on those 3 projects!"  Um, maybe you should ask HER BOSS.

Round 3 we shut down our manufacturing facility, so that was a tough one.  Five senior engineers with varying skills "got" to stay and were placed elsewhere.  The rest plus all fab employees were let go. 

It's been tough ever since.  Four years no raises.  And we are "lucky" we got to keep our jobs.  I can't speak for everyone who left, but at least a few of them got 30% raises.

MrMoogle

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Re: Layoffs at work - share your stories
« Reply #55 on: October 17, 2016, 03:32:29 PM »
I started my first job after college in 2007, in a DoD engineering firm, at the peak of military spending.  When I was hired, I think we were up to 650 people at our location, plus we had contractors helping us because we had so much work.  We kept hiring until we were at 750 or so, we had to rent other space for people.  Then the market crashed, then the military budget got cut, then we started to hurt. 

If my counting is correct, I made it through 11 layoffs, when I left in 2013, we were down to around 100 employees.  There were a couple that I didn't find out about until days after, so I may have miscounted somewhere.  As a government contractor, we had rules to follow or there was some penalty, we could only lay off X% of people and had to wait 3 months between layoffs.  So 3 months after the previous layoff, people would start checking the conference room schedules.  They always did layoffs on the same day of the week (Friday I think), and would book most of the conference rooms for it.  The layoffs blur together now, so I may have a few things out of chronological order.

Except for my last 4 months there, I was always crazy busy, but I was working on IR&D, which employed fewer people.  A few of the times we had layoffs, I worked 60+ hours that week.  As far as I know, we sold hardly anything from IR&D, but everything management had us work on worked well.  They just never realized no one would pay the prices they wanted. 

When the layoffs started, lots of people were working "direct on indirect." Which was basically paid to sit there.  I think they let ~100 people go the first time, and everyone let go had been on direct on indirect.  So since no one wanted to be let go, everyone remaining on direct on indirect found some manager to get them on a normal code. 

A couple months of this, and every project was over budget.  Another RIF and managers were told not to do this anymore.  Up to this point it had mostly been worker bees, almost no management had been cut. 

After a couple RIFs, some people realized that the safest place wasn't on a project, but on general Indirect.  So they got promoted.  Lots of new nifty named positions opened up, and they spent their day in meetings.  So as the RIFs progressed, we became top heavy.  And more of my time was in meetings instead of doing work, so that these people could be "productive." 

Eventually, management started getting cut, and it was safer as a worker bee than management.  For every supervisor, there was now about 2 worker bees, and then there are all these new Indirect positions.  It seemed like for every worker bee there was a non-worker bee.  Our local president got cut, groups got consolidated.  And with every RIF, we knew we weren't in good waters, so we were all looking for new jobs, even after the last worker bee got RIFed, many more were leaving on their own.  It kept getting more and more top heavy. 

Over time, the rented space got cleaned out.  The cramped space we had got more and more roomy.  I was in a cube farm that originally had ~40 engineers.  When I left there were 2 or 3 of us.  They rented out space to another company.  Then after I left they moved to a smaller space.

I think it was before the first RIF, or maybe it was between the first and the second, but management asked if anyone was willing to go to part time to help our the team.  EVERY one of the people who volunteered for it were RIFed in the next one. 

It was a very gloomy place after a while.  Boxes would show up and mean another one was happening.  Then when they tried to consolidate space, they'd put the same boxes around, so we could move.  Everyone thought another RIF was coming, no one told us it was any different.  Two Fridays went by, before someone asked about the boxes.  Evidently the realized everyone feared the boxes, so they stopped putting them out before the RIF, so the next one was a surprise. 

A sad story about one specific RIF.  One of my coworkers was on some kind of medication for some mental infliction.  None of us knew it.  She picked the day to come off her meds a few days before she got RIFed.  She went home and grabbed a knife and tried to kill her husband and kids.  Her husband protected them, but got cut up, and she left.  He called the police and our company, and we had police around the campus all day thinking she might come and attack someone.  Once they caught her, she was put in a mental institution.  To do an assessment, they had to completely get her off her drugs, which took a few weeks I believe.  The story goes, during her evaluation, she got so agitated, she bit off her own finger.  I didn't really know her very well, but on her meds you would never had guessed it.  To go from one place to the other is scary.

More RIFs have happened since I left.  I even heard recently, they were offering buyouts for long time employees.  I don't talk to anyone working there anymore, so everything I hear now is second or third hand.

MrMoogle

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Re: Layoffs at work - share your stories
« Reply #56 on: October 17, 2016, 03:37:12 PM »
Oh, and the one phrase that was thrown around constantly:  "It's better than sitting in the unemployment line."  So infuriating.  No joke, if my boss told me that today, I'd turn in my notice.  You don't get to treat your employees like shit just because you didn't lay them off.

LeRainDrop

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Re: Layoffs at work - share your stories
« Reply #57 on: October 17, 2016, 04:48:30 PM »
Oh, and the one phrase that was thrown around constantly:  "It's better than sitting in the unemployment line."  So infuriating.  No joke, if my boss told me that today, I'd turn in my notice.  You don't get to treat your employees like shit just because you didn't lay them off.

MrMoogle, what a story!  Thanks for sharing about all that.  Terrible for your co-worker who had to be institutionalized.  Regarding the refrain above, yup, in my law firm we heard time and again from certain partners, pretty much from 2008 through I'd guess 2013, "You should just be happy that you still have a job."  This was after they'd cut the workforce down low enough that many of us were routinely billing 200-275 hours per month (plus all the non-billable hours) and one angry partner was taking all her personal drama out on us "underlings."  Like, yes, I am very happy to have a job, but that doesn't mean you have to go out of your way to make the working conditions miserable!

So as we are leaving the meeting, the Pres says "so now that you are full time, you can start giving 120%!"  Fuck you.  What I said was "well you were already getting 100% when I was at 75%, so by definition you are getting 120%!"  My husband says that was the wrong thing to say.  It was better than fuck you.  Especially since they still hadn't laid off the last guy.  You can't say something like that to me right after laying off all my people!!  Anyway, that embarked a bad couple of years (Pres and I had known and worked together for 13 years at that point.)

mm1970, ugh, your company handled that all quite poorly!  What you said to the president certainly came with some risk, but I sure don't blame you for feeling that way -- objectively, you were probably right.
« Last Edit: October 17, 2016, 05:07:32 PM by LeRainDrop »

Northwestie

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Re: Layoffs at work - share your stories
« Reply #58 on: October 17, 2016, 04:57:19 PM »
My previous employer did layoffs, and I was not chosen.  Instead I was classified as critical.  I was pissed.  I wanted the 1 year salary severance that I would have received. Instead, I left a few months later with no severance.

The worst way of handling layoffs that I've seen:  Your boss and someone from security showed up at your desk with a cardboard box.  You put your personal items in the box and followed them to HR.  This went on for 3 days.  3 days of not knowing if your box is coming.  Again, I was not lucky enough to get cut.  I really need to stop being such a good employee.  :)

Wow!  Who treats people like this?  What is the point?  I'm sure it really increased morale for the folks left standing.

scottish

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Re: Layoffs at work - share your stories
« Reply #59 on: October 26, 2016, 06:57:42 PM »
We moved to Ottawa in the spring of 2000 so that I could take a job with Nortel.    We'd been living in western Canada and I was tired of the technology companies that didn't seem to know what they were doing, were constantly losing money and regularly letting people go.    Nortel, I thought, was the king of Canadian technology companies and with 2 young kids I would no longer have to worry about looking for a new job every few years.    My new job was as a design manager, with a team of around 10 designers (the numbers varied over the years from 5 to 20), working on Nortel's 3g wireless networking product.

The first 8 months were pretty good.   We had benefits and perks similar to Google with free meals, TGIFs with open bars and all sorts of good stuff.    My group (an engineering team of about 500 people split between Ottawa, Montreal and Paris, France) had been hiring furiously up to early December 2000.   I recall a meeting with our director in December, where he advised us that there was a hiring freeze on, and that we should not try and work around the freeze to hire people.    Consequences of doing this, he warned, would be dire.

Layoffs at Nortel started in January 2001 and continued for so many rounds that I've lost count.    We went through senior executives like a hot knife through butter.   John Roth left, to be replaced by the CFO, Frank Dunn.   M. Dunn was a train wreck in slow motion.   His employment was terminated by the board of directors for embezzlement.   We hired two executives from Cisco to run the company.    Within a few months they had a falling out with the Board of Directors and were replaced by a retired USN Admiral whose name I just can't remember.   He knew little about running a high tech company, and was eventually replaced by Mike Zafirovski from Motorola.    I'm sure Mike had some useful skills, but his most important one seemed to be collecting executive bonuses up to and past the company's bankruptcy filing.

Throughout all this the company seemed to do a reasonable job of treating terminated employees with respect and providing them with funds, benefits and support to find new employment.    (Caveat:   I'm not sure how this went in other sites, but in Ottawa this was the case.)     I had some small measure of relief in that I knew I would have a severance package to tide us over until I found new work.    At least until January 2009.   Right before the last round of severance packages was due to pay out, the company filed for bankruptcy.    At this point HR announced that all severance packages were suspended and would have to be handled by the bankruptcy trustees.

That was a stressful time for me.   DW was not working so we were depending on my income.   Our stash was much smaller,  perhaps 500K CAD, and having to draw down at this time wasn't very appealing, especially since the markets were tanking due to the US financial crisis.    I didn't see any further point in sticking around and went to work for another company in August of 2009.   

When I joined Nortel at the beginning of this story, we had something like 120,000 employees worldwide with over 30,000 in Ottawa alone.    When I left in 2009, we had about 15,000 in total.    In my office building, my floor was designed to hold around 400 staff.   There were 4 others left when I moved on.

This episode caused us to take investing much more seriously.   Never again did I want to be stressed about financial concerns if my company was having problems.


GuitarStv

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Re: Layoffs at work - share your stories
« Reply #60 on: October 27, 2016, 10:10:37 AM »
Last Wednesday I was called to the HR department and told that due to 'restructuring', my position at the company was not needed anymore.  I went to my desk to pack up my things and noticed that four other software engineers in my group (who each had 10-20 years of experience) were also being laid off.  We had just hired and started training up eight new graduates over the past year in my group.

I wasn't angry at the company, they gave me a decent severance package and we're certainly not in a bad position financially . . . but I had to chuckle at the terrified look on our group leader's face as he saw all the experienced software developers packing up at leaving the office for good.  Apparently he wasn't consulted regarding the terminations.  :P

 

Wow, a phone plan for fifteen bucks!