fired, laid off, righ-sized,..how was it

Society Business and Career
1

The US jobless rate is at an alltime high for our generation. I know several guppies here who have been affected in the past, including myself 2 years ago. I have also seen many co-workers be laid off over the last few years.

What are your thoughts on the subject. How did it affect you, what happened, how could it have been handled in a better manner.

The expereince I went thru, in hindsight was pretty lame. I was asked to meet with my boss and his boss and they kinda just told me that company was having cutbacks, and that I was among those who were impacted. Told me about the severance and teh usual official stuff.

But essentially when i had walked out of that meeting, my corporate card, calling card, entry badge, network access. everything was blocked. I was not escorted out, but that was because my boss was a decent man and refused to do it and actually let me have my PC for a week to get my personal files. With my current company, people impacted by layoffs have access to their phones, email, laptops etc for a certain period and it seems so civil.

When i was told i was laid off it was like a bomb..i was not expecting it, but I was personally surprised at how i reacted. just stared calling contacts the same evening. some people were very bitter, and some are to this day. I have kinda forgotten about ti and am actually on very good terms with my former boss and we keep in touch on a regular basis.

share your experiences and views.

also..is it too easy for employers to just treat people as disposable resources?

2

Never been thru that, alhamdollilah, but have seen it far too many times in the Silicon Valley. Infact, with my companies I deal with, they have had several rounds of lay offs and I had to talk to the CFO to make sure that the company protected its assets in such circumstances. Escorting employees is certainly not unheard of, and in most cases, employees are given two hours of supervised time to clean up their work area and computers.

I agree there are various different ways to tackle this issue, and most managers deal with it in their own way, but I have seen cases where laid off workers stole lap-tops, messed with networks, stole source codes (esp. for software companies). On the other extreme, in some cases, laid off employees were not even given the opportunity to clean up their personal stuff from their computers.

I think, there is a reasonable process which should be in place, which reduces the risk for the company and provides some comfort to the employees.

I know of a case, where a manager secretly told a number of employees that they'd be laid off in 3 weeks time and also introduced them to his contacts in other companies. So by the time, the actual axe came in, those employees had not only recovered from shock, but many had already lined up new jobs. So, I thought that was kinda nice way of doing it (although this recipe probably won't work every where).

In another case, an HP employee knew that if merger is approved he'd be laid off, so he was already mentally prepared and as soon as the judge gave his ruling, the guy pretty much packed up. Sure enough during the week he got the pink slip.

In another case, the guy saw almost his entire group laid off before him, and in true start-up culture, he had become completely fed up with 80 hr routine. So by the time he got his own pink slip, according to him, it was more of a relief. He is now looking for another job.

3

This is why i have prepared my ‘revenge’ on my company if they treat me like that. Storing info that I have access to now so I can screw them if they ever screw me.

And nothing obvious. I’ll use the info on one of my trips to a foreign land, using a internet cafe, a few months after when they will have forgotten about me.

Or if I don’t go travelling anywhere a anonymous ‘tip’ to their competitors!

http://www3.pak.org/gupshup/smilies/hehe.gif

[This message has been edited by RealDeal (edited May 03, 2002).]

4

Fraudz thats real sad :-/ I am really suprised that this actually happened to you! you being qualified n experienced and all. I mean how can some companies treat their employees like that, especially the escorting part and leaving the place in few hours, this all seems so cruel to me. I knew that working in USA would be different but so different I am horrified. I have never been through this experince and have not seen any employees close to me being laid off. I think those working in europe would agree with me that we have very strick rules that protect the rights of employees. If a person has been told to go he has the right to work 5 weeks with full pay and the person automatically recieves compensation from the company (5-6 montly payments) for being laid off. In many cases the employee can goto court and make the decision taken back if the person can prove that he had been insulted, treated badly or not given his rights, so in many many cases the companies do not fire without very good reasons

5

hey I was thinking what would I do if my company actually a bank decides to send me on a very long holiday

http://www3.pak.org/gupshup/smilies/hehe.gif

fire me. The very first thing I would call all our partner companies and their workers I know of…am actually keeping good contacts with and try to get myself a new job with em…! when I start my job I will tell them(actually know) all secrets and tricks my old company uses and shoot back …hehe they will regret the day they fired me.

6

SADI

This was about 2 years ago when it happened. The issue was more that the company I worked for had focused heavily on dotcoms for consulting revenue, when that collapsed, teh company was forced to cutback, it was the first cutbacks in their history. The downside was that for a bit after that I ws very paranoid, my seniors used to say that you are once bitten twice shy. But once you have been impaced suddenly by this its a bit hard to not notice behind closed door discussions at your company etc.

One idea which has been passed around is really more control on the amount of notice ppl receive. or severance.

The basic point being that, if the laid off worker gets 3 months of compensation, his or her negative impact from a cash flow situation is delayed, at the same time the positive impact to the company is delayed as well, but in economic terms, the company may be less impacted by a deferred benefit, than how much a laif off employee with be with an immediate loss.

Second item is that corporate leadership stock options and perks as well as executive compensation needs to be tied to thsi as well. Too many companies have laid off thousands of workers and the exec comp just keeps getting higher and higher.

as far as how the person is treated, in some cases it is needed and its good sense from a corp security perspective. When I work at Citicorp if you gave your 2 weeks notice, you basically will be paid for those 2 weeks, but escorted out immediately and the reason was that a few keystrokes and you couls make huge problems. limit on resources like corp card and all is very well understood. But still some companies treat their laid off workers much better than others.

7

Alhamdulillah, i didnt experience job cut neither lay off since mostly people with consulting companies were affected.

I have a couple of friends working with the consulting companies and who survived this jolt, majorly because they were well in touch with their managers and they kept an eye on the internal company policy about lay offs...meaning they always knew what kind of people the company is looking forward to realease soon, so they tried not to be one of those.

The other thing is that one should alwyas think ahead and should keep an eye on companies future plans...and better equip himself before time, if needed. This kind of tactic also helped many of my friends to stick on to their jobs. But, ofcourse one cant do anything when the company is shutting down its operations (this is mostly why people went unemployed).

8

A company does not have to be shutting its ops to have massive layoffs, as anyone who has worked with motorola can surely testify.

being tight with your managers and knowing what skill sets the company is lookign for is very important, but still not a guarantee that you will be insulated.

I have execuetd cost reduction projects for major companies where, how many ppl to cut was really decided by the advisros and the senior mgmt. if in a grup there were 10 ppl and all 10 were very qualifid, but teh group had to cut its workforce by 4, no matter how good the 4 were, they would have to go.

9

What do you think Fraudz it can happen again and if it does what will you better in future or how will you try to prevent it. I know in the coperate world the companies don't really care about their workers but try to survive and make the most profit but firing your best qualifed is really not the best solution.

10

I have survived 5 or so waves of layoffs at my current company. Partially it has been because of my skillset and partially because of my fairly strong terms with the seniors who have served as my advocates.

However, it had not saved some other people. Sometimes due to circumstances beyond their controls, i.e. maybe a certain group was not as profitable as planend and they need to do something. maybe a particular line was working on a new strategy and had to move in a diff direction.

What I have learnt from my prior experience is to be aware of what is going on in your company and to be in tight with your seniors. However, in many cases the decisions regarding service lines and level of cuts are done at higher up levels and sometimes consultants are brought in to be much more objective in making these cuts. I have worked on cost reduction projects for some companies in the past and aside from the skillset and strategy, nothing else counted.

11

umm me still a kiddo but it effect my family alot..

In sept 98 my abu and 9 others pakistanis came to USA as a computer system analyst
to work for a Y2K projects..firstly they all get jobs, they call the rest of their family within 2 months cuz that times in 99 the market was too good, not many ppls were jobless as far i know ppls in my coummunity. but i dun knwo what happened in 2000, american economy went a way down and ppls start Laying off from their jobs including my abu and their 6 others pakistani, there were still many jobs in market but i think not for those who were holding visa, v suffered 5 months when abu didnt have job as he was paying my brothers tution fees, you can imagine how much UNIV charge from an International Students, too much

http://www3.pak.org/gupshup/smilies/frown.gif

.
So abu and their other friends tried their best but couldnt succed, then 5 months later abu got a job in Circuit city Virginia, after that he was continuously in Job even though he finished his project in 3 different companys but by the grace of Allah he was very lucky, he gets project after project, but my other uncles its been like 2 yrs they are still on a bench, many ppls send their family back to pakistan as they cant efford the cost of living here with family.. and after sept 11, things have changed alot, many ppls i knwo they are facing discrimnation because of paki muslim.. now even in interviews they ask whr you from and if they says pakistan, they dun call back..

lets just pray for everyones best…

http://www3.pak.org/gupshup/smilies/ok.gif

May Allah bless every muslim

[This message has been edited by proudpakistani007 (edited May 05, 2002).]

12

That’s pretty much where I 'll end up.

I have worked for this company for the past 3 years and have seen many layoffs but the last one was one of a kind. The department I worked for had 6 engineers & we reported directly to a senior manager. In the last wave of layoffs they laid off everyone in my department, including the boss that we reported to. Fortunately, I was the sole survivor & was moved to another department. My new department hold its previous responsibility as well as of the department that was laid off. So, these days I am putting in extra hours to get things done that my colleges left behind.

Worst part of the deal is that I am still working on sustaining old projects, and as they go out of life, so will my productivity. And if the company hasn’t revived its financials by that time, I will be the first one to go for sure.

So, if anyone out there wants an embedded systems software engineer, please contact me!

http://www3.pak.org/gupshup/smilies/redface.gif

13

So now we know why the US productivity has risen by its highest levels in the last 17 years!

http://www3.pak.org/gupshup/smilies/smile.gif

**

If you know abnout the .NET implementations there are jobs out in NYC/CA

14

Happened to my brother. They simply called him and told him not to come in the next day. He was thrilled about it, because it was only a temporary position and he didnt like upper-management decisions. He ended up telling other people he knew were on the hit-list and sure enough they were fired within days. sigh

I was told by my employer that my job could end any day from even before I was hired. I ended up leaving before anything happened. I thought that was pretty cool for my employer to be upfront and honest about things. smile

Learn to love yourself, then learn to love one-another

This is not my Paradise

15

Has not happened to me as yet however I have seen a few. Only last month I had to do one myself. Worst part was that he was a Pakistani that I had known for the last 9 years and knew what a hard worker the man was. Although the decision was taken on a VP level, I had to be the one to inform this fellow. This thing was discussed in three previous managerial meetings but no decision was made. The man had already recieved 2 warnings from me in the past for not being a team player. And then in one meeting I was outvoted and was told to fire the man right away and send him home on the next flight. I strongly opposed the decision, but since I had been accused of creating a Paki-mafia in the past my pwn position was not very good. I fired the man, however I managed to give him a months notice during which he was able to keep his car and live in the company paid house and get his things in order. All his official accesses were however blocked. Later I managed to find him a relatively lower paying job in a consulting company that works for us. He has not joined as yet, as he is looking at other opputunities but I am happy that he atleast has something. Who knows what is in store for me tomorrow?