Will my direct manager have a say in who gets laid off or not? Say for example if I have a good relationship with her? Or are decisions made more at the top and handed down ?
9 replies (most recent on top)
I'm sorry, I was the one who hired them all. I assembled the Tech Control Dream Team.
Technology risk and controls is equally bad with people in their 60s running the show.
good... my manger, my 2-up, and their peers have all been here 20+ years. Good riddance.
At Wells Fargo seniority is a negative. They get rid of long-term employees by rewriting job descriptions and then making people re-interview for their positions That way they can get rid of older, more highly paid people and replace them with younger hires without worrying about discrimination lawsuits.
The newly fired CMO and her minions have been heard to laugh about the process and tell people not to bother interviewing for new positions because they are only interested in new blood.
I worked for another large company a number of years ago that had a large layoff. A consulting firm was used and they basically lined up all employees by title within a given group and ranked them by seniority. They then said how many of each title they wanted for the new structure...those with less seniority were all cut. They said this was the fair way to do it. However when you have senior managers and mid level managers all with MANY years of experience you had employees with 15-15-20 plus being let go. Sounds to some to be a fair way but a lot of knowledge was lost and people shuffled based on title to different groups where they potentially had little to know experience as some teams were all but gutted in the process. for the actual layoff we all had a scheduled meeting at the same time. one group told they were being let go and the other being told the other group was getting let go. It was a horrible day.
Human Resources controlled it all. I was told they outsourced it last year to separate the company from any potential discrimination litigation. They have to make sure the reduction in force is not a disproportionate dismissal of older employees, disabled employees or any group that is protected by federal employment discrimination laws.
How I imagine it going is that some division head is told how much cost has to be cut from their division. The division head says approx how many employees he/she thinks can be cut from each department. And then HR takes it from there.
I don’t have any insight, though, into how it will go this time under the new regime.
If you are an individual contributor, ypically your mgr will not have any input and will find out shortly before you do. Lots of times your 2-up mgr will not have much if any input either. Good luck!
Then how do they know who to let go if direct managers are not involved?
In the smaller lay-off round, last year: managers did not have a say as to who was let go. I heard of managers who refused to be the person to tell their employee they were let go, since their opinion was not taken in to consideration by HR. I can’t speak for how it is going to go this time around though. I think this is a whole new ballgame under Charlie Scharf.