#layoffs

Just wondering. I come here once in a while to check on an old company I once worked at where I met a lot of nice people that I never keep in touch with but still care about. I was young and idealistic back then and thought I would make a career there. It turns out that I didn’t get picked for management for whatever reason and then I saw jobs get outsourced around me to India or Costa Rica, or somewhere else. I ended up leaving discouraged but at least now I make way more money than I ever could have at Emerson. I still have a place in my heart for the company but also some resentment for many of the same reasons I often see expressed here. So I guess for me it serves as a form of validation. In some ways I see it as emblematic of the death of one the last American manufacturing companies, consumed by the greed of an inner circle of hypocritical leaders who are really just out for themselves.

I know folks are very cynical of IBM’s actions and trust me been there done that (class of 2016) BUT the real question is was there a game plan to it vs just reducing costs across the board. In My 2016 experience it was just a cost reduction exercise, and no change of course. This RA seems to have a Slight strategy behind it (mostly eliminating Redhat vs IBM legacy overlap, which most likely should be expected after spending 34 billion.. The decimation of Power in Austin was not a “move folks from high cost to low cost”, but rather a “we don’t want to be in this business anymore” action. The final question is did IBM fall back on their old ways when it comes to GBS/GTS and just remove costs, or did they strategically go after costs. There is evidence for both. IBM had RA’s in China and India (China ended in April, while India had them when the USA had theirs). (see EE times articles). The non-confirmed posting of TSS moving to Costa Rica would certainly be the “old” IBM strategy of shopping for lower cost. Thus again I ask does anyone see a strategy via the man behind the curtain?
I will add one interesting tidbit. If we run the known numbers we get, IBM took a 900 million dollar charge in 1st Q, which equates to a 23k Headcount reduction at 45k a head. (USA fully burdened cost of 180k per head). The CFO said he was looking for 2 billion in savings which says 1.1 billion must still be accounted for. He also said the 1.1 would be self funding from operations. If we use the 1/3 rule (110k America’s, 120k Europe/Asia, and 120k India) And factor in the 4 to 1 cost advantage (1st world vs third world) then the shift of heads to 3rd world pay for any impairment costs incurred. Thus 2 billion at 45k nets 45k heads impacted with 3rd world going up at the expense of 1st world. The exiting of commodity HW (Power and possibly storage) would result in another possibly 3-5k reduction. 1k plant for each HW product, with 1k sales/channel in America’s and Europe/Asia. This would be self funding via the fire sale of the HW manufacturing business and IP sales. This all nets to 50k impacted after the dust settles. Now IBM has a lean go to market machine focused around Cloud, LINUX, AI, Enterprise, and REDHAT, Does anyone see that the RA was structured to support this plan?
Finally folks are speculating about a 2nd round. I would speculate IBM isn’t after anymore streamlining of their go to market strategy, but rather shopping “perform” services (think commodity body shop services already in India). That would mostly come out of Cognitive, GBS, and GTS. Perhaps 60k heads total. I would expect IBM to cut a deal with one of the body shops already in India. Thus no impingement charges. Again just a speculation

Any

If you are working in content operations you must be prepared for layoffs . FX content , pricing, corporate actions, fixed income content, Company financials, commodities and World- Check .Senior leadership is planning to move 500 roles to low cost centers, in order to complete run rate savings . Roles will move to Bangalore, Gydinia and Costa Rica. First wave tone announced after TRI quarterly results . Stay tuned . If you have more insights please share.

In Mass, #unemploymentbenefits are currently capped at 26 weeks. BUT if the unemployment rate hits 5.1% in ANY of the state’s metro area, the cap automatically goes up to 30 weeks. #layoffs #covid19

Anyone?

#jobs #safety #Thoughts #Layoffs #Gold #ideas

Here is the coverage of #layoffs by MassLive:

https://www.masslive.com/news/2019/05/mercy-medical-center-cutting-jobs-in-springfield.html

Thousands will be mercilessly kicked to the curb.

Stryker is outsourcing A/R department to Costa Rica. The whole process should be completed by the end of 2019.

Sales are falling off a cliff. What to do? I know, take an employee engagement survey. More than 1900 employees responded, and what do we learn?

Employees in India are happy. We're hiring lots of them and they get big raises at review time.

Employees in the US are miserable. While we're hiring more sales VPs every other group is getting laid off as their jobs get sent to India and Costa Rica. Raises at review time are less than half those in India.

Employees in Costa Rica? trick question, they're contractors and not part of the survey.

Huge numbers of US employees are what the survey calls "actively disengaged", ie their daily activities actually subvert the best interests of the company. Why would any new customer sign up for that?

The layoffs are still happening. They are just smaller in number so they fly under the radar. They actually have a blanket RIF for the year and they are bucketing everyone into it. There are at least 12 people laid off after every quarter end and they are even starting to lay off the offshore resources in Pune and Costa Rica. That might not sound like a lot but when you look at what used to be teams of 100 and they are now around 30 that tells you everything. They have cut so far they are now cutting bone. Essential people needed to get the jobs done are being let go to the point the remaining can't keep up. People know the CCC+ bond rating is a company killer and are now trying to get out before the hammer hits them.

Short sighted decisions by Citrix leadership are leading to terrible technical support.

I have had several unresolved tech support cases open for months.

One of the cases was initially being worked by a support tech who was fired in October. This support tech was one of the most experienced people in the company, and was actively working with the engineering team as the problem was pretty complex.

I don’t know for sure, but I have some indication that this person (who is US based) was fired in order to hire lower cost staff in India or Costa Rica.

Now I have no idea who is even working these cases any more. Whenever I ask I get no response on my tickets. No one cares.

Moving off of Citrix products in these scenarios is too costly as the customers have already spent too much on the implementations. But I will never recommend Citrix products to a new customer.

http://qcostarica.com/intel-downsizing-in-costa-rica-cutting-200-jobs/

http://www.nearshoreamericas.com/intel-downsize-operations-costa-rica-firing-200-employees/

https://www.thelayoff.com/t/S31dwxN

/sarcasm

Operation Outsourcing is great we should double down on it, although instead of India and Costa Rica we ought to think outside the box and maybe go with a war-torn countries motif to keep things interesting

//sarcasm

Is this rumor true ?

Intel has announced record revenues and profits. But IT is laying off employees! Announcement has been made of 200 job cuts in Costa Rica. I am sure there will be impacts at other sites as well. Get serious and please post any news or rumors so that anxious IT employees can get an idea of what's happening - Admin

@TheLayoff: Reads: ‏ 11/16 #Verizon #Layoffs: We are receiving multiple user reports about large $VZ layoffs today

Laid off in May after almost 18 years. Oh and who is doing my work now... someone in Costa Rica they hired full time 1 week before laying me off...gotta love it...not

Layoffs in finance across the board. Up to 30% and much of the work is moving to Costa Rica

Found this in another thread, anybody knows more about this? I am assuming this is not relating to rumors flying around due to expected Intel's quarterly results announcement.

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/business/banking/article179747451.html

Now hiring — Wells Fargo seeks overseas call center workers as it slashes US jobs

Wells Fargo has been quietly bulking up its call-center operations in the Philippines, adding positions in the southeast Asian country where it has long kept offshore jobs.

The move by the third-largest U.S. bank by assets is occurring even as other companies have done the reverse in recent years – transferring call-center functions back to the U.S. It also comes as Wells Fargo continues to reel from a sales scandal that erupted in 2016.

Wells Fargo has had operations in the Philippines since at least 2011, including information technology and other roles, but had not received much attention in the U.S. for its more recent expansions in the island republic.

This spring, however, the bank said the operation had grown from less than 100 to more than 4,000 over six years. Wells also said it was building another location that could seat more than 7,000.

The issue came to light this month during a Senate hearing on the sales scandal, when Sen. Joe Donnelly questioned CEO Tim Sloan about cutting American call-center workers while beefing up operations in the Philippines.

“I’ve learned that Wells Fargo has eliminated several hundred jobs here in this country recently, and more in recent years,” Donnelly, an Indiana Democrat, told Sloan. “At the same time that you were letting these people go, you were adding on positions in the Philippines. How is that making it right by your people here that work for Wells Fargo?”

Sloan defended the practice. He said positioning employees worldwide helps the San Francisco-based company serve customers around the clock. The CEO also pointed out that, of Wells’ roughly 270,000 employees, more than 90 percent are in the U.S.

“The reason for that is it’s where most of our business is done,” said Sloan, noting Wells has 15,000 open U.S. positions. “We love doing business in this country.”

Wells declined to provide details on growth across its Filipino operations. But it said its call-center presence there is equivalent to the size of its U.S. call centers. In Charlotte, the bank has a call-center operation in the University area.

Decades-old practice

Offshoring call-center jobs is not new for American companies.

Decades ago, many firms flocked to set up such operations overseas, where labor costs tended to be cheaper. India, the Philippines and even Ireland became hot spots for those jobs.

But such moves have slowed since the Great Recession, when many industries ramped up efforts to hang on to their customers in a struggling economy, according to Paul Stockford, research director for the National Association of Call Centers. In the past, American callers have had frustrating experiences dealing with heavily accented foreigners in call centers.

Most U.S. airlines, for example, have brought their call-center operations back from overseas, Stockford said. In addition, rising wages in many foreign countries have made it costlier to offshore jobs.

“I think Wells Fargo is not the norm at this point,” Stockford said. “With Wells Fargo, it’s difficult to understand.”

Among big U.S. banks, Charlotte-based Bank of America has detailed its efforts to relocate call center and other roles to the U.S. that interact directly with American-based customers.

According to the bank, the relocating is complete. It brought to the U.S. about 5,000 jobs from places including the Philippines, Mexico and Costa Rica during CEO Brian Moynihan’s tenure. The bank continues to maintain other jobs like information technology outside the U.S., especially in India, to support global businesses and clients.

The Communications Workers of America union has criticized Wells Fargo since the Senate hearing, saying the bank’s recent call-center layoffs in the U.S. continue a trend from 2011 and 2012. At that time, Wells laid off hundreds of call-center workers in states like California, Florida and Pennsylvania, the union said.

Richard Honeycutt, vice president for the union’s Southeast region, told the Observer such layoffs are short-sighted and a major problem for communities.

“It hurts working people who lose good jobs, it hurts communities that need a solid tax base in order to provide important public services, and it hurts customers who are not getting the service they pay for,” Honeycutt said.

Wells Fargo said that, when staffing new positions globally, it follows a rigorous process to ensure it is acting in the best interests of its customers, employees and shareholders.

“As a company that currently operates in 42 countries and territories around the world, we take a thoughtful approach to adding team members to our global workforce as the company focuses on improving our service and operating efficiencies,” the bank said.

Also in the Philippines, Charlotte Observer parent McClatchy maintains call-center operations that handle customer calls for most of the company’s newspapers, including the Observer. A spokeswoman said the operations are constantly under review to provide a high standard of customer service.

Layoffs hit call centers

Across the U.S. this year, Wells Fargo announced a series of layoffs affecting call centers, including one just this week in Bethlehem, Pa. Wells will close that center, where about 460 people are employed.

In a separate announcement in September, the bank said 120 employees would be laid off through closing a reverse-mortgage operation affecting a Fort Mill, S.C., call center. The month before, Wells disclosed plans to close a Vancouver, Wash., call center in a move affecting 72 employees.

Wells Fargo said none of those jobs are being transferred outside the U.S.

The bank said the decision affecting Pennsylvania was made primarily because of a drop in call-center volume. The Fort Mill closure resulted from Wells exiting the servicing of reverse mortgages, while the Vancouver move was in response to fewer foreclosures, Wells said.

The layoffs come as Wells is in the midst of centralizing functions and cutting billions of dollars in costs in the wake of the sales scandal. The bank was fined $185 million to settle claims that employees opened millions of accounts without customer authorization.

In May, Wells’ chief financial officer mentioned the company was looking at moving some work offshore as part of centralization. The bank recently reported having 2,600 fewer employees at the end of the third quarter of this year compared with the second quarter. In Charlotte, Wells has about 24,000 workers, its largest employment hub.

During his exchange with Wells’ CEO, Donnelly pressed him on whether the company had laid off American call-center workers then added people in the same roles in the Philippines.

Sloan acknowledged that Wells had, but said that the bank’s track record is to rehire about 70 to 80 percent of the people affected by such layoffs.

“Why would you in the first place send these jobs to the Philippines if they were being done here?” Donnelly asked.

To best serve customers, Sloan said, “it makes sense to have folks around the world so we can continue to be working through a 24-hour day and not run a night shift, for example, somewhere.”

“Do you think Americans are not capable of working a night shift?” Donnelly asked. “I can show you a whole bunch of folks in my state who work night shifts.”

Still popular

Even though some U.S. firms have pulled back on overseas call centers, offshoring remains a popular option for many other American companies, according to experts.

“The reason that companies are offshoring is that they are continuing to seek ways of cutting labor costs,” said Rosemary Batt, a professor at Cornell University who has extensively studied call-center practices.

But offshoring can carry risks, especially if the work will be handled by a contractor, Batt said.

Concerns arise about what controls contractors have to ensure customer data is safe, she said. In addition, contractors can be prone to high employee turnover and insufficient worker training, all of which can hurt customer service, she said.

Wells Fargo said its call-center operations in the Philippines are not outsourced but instead manned by Wells employees.

New federal rules would target companies that offshore U.S. call-center jobs, under legislation before Congress. The bill would require, among other things, the Labor Department to disclose all employers that relocate a call center overseas.

Supposedly, the layoffs begin this week (of October 9). That's the buzz here in HQ, and morale is really low. A big portion of sales will be targeted. Sadly, they have nothing to really sell because the products are slow in development and unstable, so non-existent. Product development itself is struggling and will also be targeted. Meantime, Sungard AS can't attract top talent because it has no money and no stock options to offer as a private company. It's onwards anyway to filling roles in India and Costa Rica, which our customers don't like dealing with. So it's all a death spiral. This place is out of control. Good luck to all.

Anybody knows more about the supposed layoffs this week? It's already Wednesday, and I haven't heard anything.

I have been working for IBM in Costa Rica for a year. We make $3USD an hour - this is not enough even for the basics. I know that people in the U.S.A. do not like us as jobs are lost but I can tell you that we do not have it here nicely too - it's hard for us too. Hard to tell anything else but that is the situation here - not good.

Rampant rumors across the organization, especially within the sales team are saying that MAJOR layoffs are coming very soon, probably early October (if not sooner). The Sales, Solutions Engineering, and Architecture teams were crucified at a recent quarterly meeting foreshadowing the next purge of these "non-performers" who the CEO feels is the reason the company is not making any money.

Prediction for the next round is up to 25% of sales will be gone with the remaining sales team left burdened with the current load and stress of picking up the slack, setting up those remaining for failure. Up to half (yes 50%) of the on-shore Solutions Engineers and Architecture teams will be cut. The jobs will be sent to Costa Rica and India to individuals thousands of miles away from their customers who haven't the slightest clue on how to service a customer, have major language barriers, and most importantly are not trusted by US customers. Solutions Engineers and Architects have been bringing off-shore resources "up to speed" for months in preparation.

Executive Leadership continues to bury their head and turning a blind eye to the lack of any competitive services (over-priced co-location and network), rapidly dying traditional recovery services, a lack of any meaningful Cloud offering (re-selling AWS on an unstable environment and lousy support services from India and Costa Rica) and consulting services run by a team of rejects. They fail to realize customers can see right though the BS and feel services provide by cheap off-shore resources are killing the company. Off-shoring 70% of your company "to remain competitive" is not the way to grow your business, it's a means to inflate cash on hand to prop up a dying business model and company. The company has now started to release senior "high-performing" team members to the bewilderment of long-time SgAS customers. Now starting to cut the only talented people who remained loyal prove no one's job is safe in this company. Employees have a legitimate right to fear the delivery of their next paycheck. The company has killed off any desire to sell, deliver, or make any extra effort to keep the CEO's fantasy alive. Stay tuned...January 2018 is setting up be an absolute blood-bath of cuts.

Yes, outsourcing 200+ jobs to Costa Rica, 225 to 250 or more will be affected.

I've heard this as well. It's been going around, so I am pretty sure it's no longer a rumor. What is still unknown is who and where exactly will be laid off. If anybody has any more info on this, please post here.

Been working for HPE/DXC for a year. We make $3USD an hour.

Major layoffs before merge with MicroFocus are continuing and they are saying they laid you off because of your work is no longer needed, then why are the VP Management teams over in Costa Rica doing a major hiring spree for replacing your job in the USA. I already trained many Costa Rica personal in the job I was doing. They also stopped hiring internally because MicroFocus HPE Software says no, but O.K. to hire replacements in COSTA RICA. Then why do people have to turnover their job tasks to the people who are left and train the Costa Rica team on your SME features after you were notified you are laid off when you are told being laid off has nothing to do with performance, but the paper work you get "waiver" says you are let go because the others are more skilled than you are. :-(

Waste your time doesn't matter in which country you are.

In Costa Rica the management is really bad. Salaries are only good if you go and came back when they need you. Dont expect to have a good salary if you stay a long time.

No way.

the incentives are good for the new people, you will be happy at he begging if you never worked before. But you will see the bad things in 2 or 3 months. the old people get less incentives just because they have 5 to 10 years in the company.

Not sure if there will be #layoffs, no #hospital is safe nowadays but I really hope things will improve.

People will always need medical services, so, I am not that concerned at all.

Here is how WFRs are really decided:

1. Executive Management determines that the financial numbers are not being met or going to be met. So basically revenue is down or below expectations but profitability has to be maintained if not increased; only thing to do is cut costs.

2. They determine how many head cuts need to happen and a total number is decided.

3. A mixture of global and regional management determine how the allocation will be made by function and organization. This of course means that some teams get two quotas: 1 for the region and another for global.

4. The Your managers manager decides how his/her total allocation of cuts will flow within their span of control.

5. Your manager gets a quota of heads to cut. Sometimes it is a % of the total team but most often it will be a hard number with a due dates of names to be WFRed back to the business office tracking your team within 2 - 5 business days.

6. Your manager then selects who goes. There is no negotiation or push back allowed. If your manager cannot give up the names, then their name goes on the list and the next manager picks the quota - 1.

7. Selection criteria back on 2006 when we started this was pretty easy. Low ranked people with performance issues topped all lists. After a while it become a game of mitigating short term risks. Loud, angry customers and account teams tended to not have their people WFRed. But after several years even that did not work as the pool was shrunk to bare bones. Then it became a game of who will cause the least damage when WFRed. No function or team was off limits after a while; even off shore places like Costa Rica and India.

7 a. One note here... the assumption that salary was a consideration was NEVER a direct factor. Where you lived (USA, Canada, Germany, Spain, etc.) and the legal protection afforded you as a local citizen was first and foremost. Now it is true those onshore countries are better paid... but picking one person in the USA over another because they made 25% more over the other was not considered.

7 b. When names where selected, they were "scored" based on skills like customer facing, project management, technical skills, etc. Lowest scores "justified" the choices and created a legal paper trail.

1. Once a name was submitted it was all but impossible to get them pulled off or swapped with another. It did happen but was very rare.

2. When names where submitted, the WFR machine started and was all but impossible to stop. Cut off for IT access for example was set in stone. I had someone that was on the WFR list that happened to find another job in HP well in advance of being notified. When the day came and went, the next day they lost all IT access regardless of remaining an HP employee. Needless to say they figured out that they were to be WFRed and was less than happy.

3. Another gotcha was that if your organization hit the overall quota assigned, chances were almost certain that if another organization in the missed their quota, your team would have to "make up the miss". "Take one for the team", we were told. This happened a lot.

4. One other complication is when HP files with the SEC an intention of paying $XXX millions in severance in the coming fiscal year (Google 10k filing). That causes some interesting quota behavior too. That is when the WFR quota is not heads reduced BUT heads reduced that were paid severance. So what happens then is your manager will not give you a nudge that you need find another job or at least polish your resume and have a plan B. If you are on the WFR list and you leave HP or simply take another job within HP, your manager has to find another person on your team to replace you. So it ends up a double whammy to the team.

5. Finally... (as if this is not enough) ... let's say or argument sake that at the first of the year, the Street is promised US$1 billion in cost reductions. That is 10,000 people at $100k per year salary if those 10,000 are laid off on day 1 of the fiscal year. That never happens. So let's say they lay off 5,000 by the end of Q2. That means that 5,000 have been paid $250 m and the company only get 6 months or $250 m in cost reduction benefit for the year. Oops. Another $750 m to go in 6 months. So now quotas have to go up and monthly cuts happen then it gets to weekly cuts. It is an ugly curve.

This was the far best answer I read on topic of how WFRs are decided, originally posted here: @LKIh7lG-2xej

Down to a skeletal crew in this former division, now stand alone company - Sungard AS. Hundreds of jobs sent to India, now Costa Rica, for cost savings. Some people still awaiting their "packages" but moving to a "global" model. Heard about 138 laid off on Friday, October 14 and it did not even make a ripple through the company.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/6-things-id-do-i-got-laid-off-ibm-j-t-o-donnell?trk=mp-reader-card

For the ones that voluntarily decide to stay... NO ONE is safe at HPE. No matter how "business critical" you think you and/or your role are, you are always a potential target (especially if you are over 30 and live in the US). I've even known people in Mexico, Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, Vietnam and India being booted out, so working on a low cost or tax advantage Country doesn't seem to be a safe haven anymore. there's always someone cheaper out there... I guess the question you need to ask yourself is why are you tolerating this unacceptable behavior from an employer that don't give a damn #### about you as an employee? The more you wait, the more competition you'll get out there from desperate well qualified people also looking to land good jobs. Anyone that got laid off 2-3 years ago should consider themselves fortunate, as the market conditions (and competition out there) were not nearly as bad as they are today. The more you wait to start your search, the worse it'll get.