Thread regarding Pratt and Whitney layoffs

Removing the Bloat

The company got expensive, the Wrap Rate (person doing the work's salary combined with the overhead charges) made winning new work difficult. Each engine developer / manufacturer (RR/GE/PW) has smart folks and management. It comes down to who can create the end product for a reasonable cost. The old structure, pre-COVID was sustainable to a degree. Sell about 1/3 of the market's Commercial Engines compared to 2/3 for GE. F135 was sole source, government took pity on us and did not break apart the buy by lots. Breath another 40 years of life into the TF33 engine.... The bottom falling out of the commercial market exposed the bloat. The cost driver going forward is to reduce the Wrap Rate by eliminating overhead charging folks. Someone has to be left with discipline experience to complete future work (a direct charge). Design and manufacturing are not fast food jobs, a warm body can hand you a bag of burgers but it's different for design / analysis and mfg. Education and direct experience counts. There are departments that are solely overhead and there are layers of low/mid/and high managers covering the same areas of decision making. These are the prime area to reduce costs.

The 8,000 head layoff was big but did not address the underlying bloat of lots of managers / directors/ VPs. At 15,000 heads the cuts address the core structure. Do worker bees really need a senior manager (L5) reporting to an associate director (L6) who reports to another L6 who then reports to …..

It's taking time to trim the bloat given compliance criteria. So $13 million / day is the value spent making the decision.

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| 3181 views | | 9 replies (last October 16, 2020) | Reply
Post ID: @OP+1765H4LF

9 replies (most recent on top)

There seems to be a lot of fat left to cut as I"m still getting worthless meeting requests from time wasting paper pushers.

It appears some groups were left untouched by the layoffs.

I know many good people that were let go, but there are still a lot of bad ones that were not.

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Post ID: @mwat+1765H4LF

@OP+1765H4LF you said:

F135 was sole source, government took pity on us and did not break apart the buy by lots.

F135 is certainly sold by lots and aftermarket contracts have both a Performance Based Logistics component and a lot contract. F135 is not IDIQ by any stretch of the imagination.

ME's main strategic blunder was to actually put too many eggs into the F135 basket while chasing down AETP and ITEP and small engine (MQ-25, Gatorworks, etc) dreams. We lost out on potentially big F100 FMS (and now with the F-15EX) opportunities simply due to cost. We almost even missed the TF33/CERP boat. TF-33 aftermarket LPM was down to skeleton crew and nobody in business acquisition sent unsolicited proposals for it? Trump admin flipped their posture towards China in 2018 and we couldn't convert that to viable single-source -229EEP sales & aftermarket in Taiwan when everyone else in the industry knew they were keen on soliciting a depot? That's just poor preparation through complacency. So yes there is a place for overhead activities but apparently we're not managing them to market at all.

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Post ID: @mnbd+1765H4LF

@1dod+1765H4LF @1dkr+1765H4LF

There's some confusion in here between what are supposed to be supervisory roles and non-supervisory roles.

SInce 2017 or so, after the last classification realignment for salary below executive level there are basically 2 title sets: one for engineering classification and non-engineering classification:

P1 engineer: Assoc. Engineer
P1 non-engineer: Associate

P2 engineer: Engineer
P2 non-engineer: Sr. Associate

P3 engineer: Sr. Engineer
P3 non-engineer: Specialist

Ok now L4s are where supervisory roles are an additional split-out (think energy level splitting :), where supervisors get the "M" and the "individual contributors" remain at "P":

P4/M4 engineer: Staff Engineer
P4/M4 non-engineer: Manager

P5/M5 engineer: Principle Engineer
P5/M5 non-engineer: Sr. Manager

But once you get to L6, everybody becomes an Associate Director at that level regardless of whether it is a supervisory role or not. While supervisors get the additional compensation, because of the coalescing to AD titles at L6, you cannot determine based solely on the fact that someone is an AD without direct reports are getting compensated as if they are supposed to have them. You see this happen for skillset retention purposes like in DT where you don't want to lose their specific skillset (e.g. 20 years SAP) to a similar but higher paying position outside of Pratt.

Similarly you cannot determine based on a title of "Sr. Manager" whether they are a P5 or an M5.

And we haven't even touched on "shadow demotions" yet (where someone at a higher level transfers to a lower level position but retain similar compensation).

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Post ID: @mosk+1765H4LF

wow i hope those L5 L6's read what people think.

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Post ID: @lyui+1765H4LF

Writing is poor here. Good luck

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Post ID: @2bcb+1765H4LF

A lot of Associate Directors just a title. They do real heavy duty job. Not managers

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Post ID: @1xav+1765H4LF

M5s or above without direct reports should be the first ones cut

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Post ID: @1dkr+1765H4LF

I hope they are that strategic about it. The phenomenon of L5 managers and L6's reporting to L6s is somewhat new over the last few years. I was worried that they would only let the workerbees go. Those of us left would each have to report to 6 managers. It would be interesting to see the managers who have forgotten what it's like to do the work that actually delivers parts, relearn those skills.

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Post ID: @1cpp+1765H4LF

Aren’t there people with the title of associate director that don’t have anybody reporting to them? When I look through the org chart I have a lot of questions

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Post ID: @1dod+1765H4LF

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