Thread regarding Ford layoffs

What a joke of a post! Here is a example. Me and another engineer were both on the chopping block. He worked tons of free overtime, I went home 15 minutes early everyday, when we traveled he would eat at the cheapest restaurants and stay at the cheap hotels, I would stay at the nicest hotel in town and eat at expensive restaurants on company dime, he would take all sorts of career building I never did. Guess who was let go and who was kept? Yeah they let him go and kept me. Why? Because I was on good terms with the HR person.

At a huge impersonal company like Ford your efforts are never noticed or acknowledged. Your just a number that can be fired at a whim. Take as much as you can from the company because they won't show loyalty to you so don't show loyalty to them.

There is no truth in the post that started this page because neither the poster nor any of us here know the selection criteria. Some people assume that being on the layoff list is because of something the person did wrong or didn't do that they should have. I challenge this because common sense tells me that the performance reviews all Ford employees have would uncover these issues long before any layoff. The truth about performance is there on career Navigator. I was let go Monday and thinking HARD, I find nothing that I did wrong or should have done. My reviews were good. As far as EVs are concerned, they are actually LESS COMPLEX as a system then the ICE vehicles yet the same technologies we use in ICE are there (batteries, electric motors (starter), charge controllers (alternator)) so saying that people specializing in ICE (I was in ADAS which is agnostic to the power system) cannot be productive as EV specialists is BUNK.
I am sure there was another reason for these cuts that is far different than the public "excuse" given to wall street. Best of luck to those of you who remain. I was cut and I be gone!

After a long time in the industry I don't think it has anything to do with skill level. If the company does not lead its people well and have mentor employees to do better for current objectives, leadership at all levels has failed. Ford has highly skilled, medium skilled, and low skill people but they can still be managed with good leadership. I cannot believe the talent Ford hires and pays top $$ to and then squanders the resource with mediocre expectations. If Ford really new what it wanted to do, and had leaders people trusted it could be unstoppable . Proof is in the pudding though with stops and starts and fits of hiring and firing and a muddled product line up.

@crq

I can see the OP sitting alone in their rundown apartment because they have no friends, no social interactions, not even their parents and family want to have anything to do with them.

1. 7 B for simple structural design on a F 250 roof!

I was let go in 2008 and I could of design that roof to avoid the problem.

You know its funny!

I developed the CAE load case for rollover in 2013 for my OEM and it is working well (80 + % correlation)
High explicit CAE mode that FORD management doesn't understand.

Speaking of skills and knowhow I had Master’s degree in engineering from U of M when I was cut by a manger at Ford with associate degree in ART.

If anyone questions this I will post her name!

Are you serious or just trying to ruffle some feathers? I know of TAs and highly respected, extremely skilled people who were let go. No one is in a position to judge “Karma” for another person. Sometimes an event that appears traumatic clears the path for something much better and I’m confident that will be the situation for many who were let go this week.

P.S… if you believe in karma where is your compassion for people who are suffering?

I can relate to the poster indicating his life is just upside down as result of this. Feeling depressed, frustrated, the whole range of emotions. Also regarding upskilling, I am all for it and admit I might have down more. However, when you're working full time it can be difficult to find time without even mentioning how does an engineer or for that matter anyine know exactly what to focus on? Do you upskill with content for your current position or for other areas? I can say for certain I'm not against continuing education....I am for it, just can be difficult both in terms of time and content. Thank you.

Karma? Seriously? Bad things happen to good people every day. When Ford gets rid of 3,000 people in a day, it's not personal. Skill sets don't matter.

@OP There's a lot people going through a rough time right now, some may have been your friends. Your message could have shown compassion.

You have demonstrated that you are as heartless, sociopathic, thoughtless and disrespectful as the leadership at Ford. You're either a troll or an @$$h0le, but more than likely you are both.

OP, you need to learn how to write. Before you conclude that everyone who was let go because the didn't upskill, maybe work on your own communication skills, you illiterate fool.

please be kind to each other, for those of us that were ' SIRP'D ' our lives have forever been changed - why we were chosen ranges from not being well liked to the the ridiculous excuse of not possessing the right skill set - i am angry, disoriented, i have barely slept since monday , i feel anxiety and desperation, i think of ending my life, i/ we will never have the answer to why me
bill ford and jim farley and all the so called people leaders will forever bear the impact to the lives they have changed - some will be good, some will be bad, very bad
i am grateful to my friends that keep watch as i work through this, thank you

Why do you think it is about upskilling? EVs are not complicated vehicles. Many engineers have the skillset, and wanted to transfer, but were needed in another position. They were offered Senior Engineer and Tech Specialist positions. Transfers were denied. The hot positions were reserved for young engineers. As you get older, you either become a SME or you are pushed out. And when the function you are SME in is reorged away, you get pushed out. Upskilling is more meaningful for looking outside Ford.

Why do you complain that some b..t k..ss or buddy buddy is still having a job. That can be his strength. Each has their own survival tactics.

Then what will you say about obsolete technologies’ development engineers. If you don’t adapt you go extinct. That is the law of nature. There is always collateral damage involved while you adapt change.

I agree that some of what OP said is true. Maybe it could have been written differently to have captured a wider audience.

I think that the post only sees half of the picture. It focuses only on those who didn't 'upskill' or those who 'did the bare minimum'.

There are also a lot of people on here who lost their jobs who were very high performers in critical areas of the company that were not at all obsolete. Many of these people will be replaced by contract workers or younger workforce - all of which will cost less than the experienced SMEs they'll replace. The leadership making these decisions must feel that the brain drain is worth the savings to their bottom line. I don't know how old OP is, but some of us were around when corporations began off-shoring to low-cost countries in the early / mid 1980s. It didn't matter how 'upskilled' you were or how much work you did. The bottom line drove all those decisions...

For the people who did the bare minimum, I do hope that this leads to a positive change.

But I wouldn't be so quick to call out those who didn't 'upskill'. I know many SIRP'd engineers who worked on various ICE engine components / systems. As this country heads towards EV powertrains, many ICE powertrain engineers will become obsolete. There won't any engineers needed to develop pistons, etc. But at this early stage in the transition to EV powertrains, many of these ICE employees were simply caught off guard by this mass layoff. Especially the ones who have been working in their ICE fields for 20+ years. Heck, half of the angry posts I've read here these last three days seem to think that mass EV adoption is a pipedream. I hope that this SIRP will at least get people thinking about their skillset and how future-proof they are. I think that was one of the points OP was making.

PS
I've read that the executive leadership believes that it would take too long for these people to employees to be 'retrained' to work on electrification. I know a bunch of SIRP employees with master's degrees and PhDs. I genuinely believe that these people have the capacity to learn another EV-friendly skill set. The real issue, in my opinion, is that the executive leadership was so far behind the competition in the transition to EV that they would rather implement mass layoffs and rehired instead of retraining their existing (experienced, loyal, etc.) workforce. Big miss by executive leadership - that has severely impacted the lives of 3,000 people and their loved ones...

Yeah this doesn't match up with the fact that Navy TAs and high performers were let go

The why me is more about but kissing butts and buddy-buddy with your immediate supervisor than and reasons the OP is suggesting.

Not really, but would you like to insert a quarter to continue? We all see the d-mbazzes around these boards, incapable of figuring things out.

Let me give you a simple IQ test...
We don't write the same.

That was tough.

@ptd =@OP

I think the prior poster is the perfect example of "over the head" and missing any nugget offered.

It's no wonder some people were laid off. You may disagree with the OP, but there is some valid information there that isn't Troll. Amateurs may not be able to discern.

@OP troll elsewhere

There's some truth in this post, yet I see all the down ratings.

As a decades long automotive number, I worked for the big three, and experienced many layoffs. It wasn't until I found something that was non-big three, that I essentially became immune from layoff. Sure that's a bold statement, but for me to get laid off means all three failed catastrophically. Not immune in the least, but layered protection.

One door closes, and usually a better door opens. Sometimes people in their heartbreak of comfort, don't know what better things that may come next.