I am the last person to join my team and I also appear to be the only one who is not constantly petrified of losing my job. Everyone I work with is fearful and acts like a robot to make sure they don't say or do the wrong thing. Have people really been working for years like that? It seems depressing, to say the least. I'd rather quit than let myself turn into them.
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Last commenter is a cr------d. Or purposely trying to stir the pot.
The last round in April we lost good, dedicated, hardworking people. Not the dead weight. In fact, lots of the dead weight survived. It was mostly LL4s extracting vengeance for past "wrongs". One LL4 in particular, that was promoted last fall and it immediately went to his head, used April to get rid of people that had the audacity to disagree with him in the past. The newly promoted LL3 promoted several of his lunch buddies. You know, the brown-nosers that would run around with him at lunch or after work when the remote LL4 (now LL3) would come into town. What could go wrong? You promote a hothead, "I will never forget" type, and as soon as the prospects of layoffs came up he already had his shortlist. Sickening.
There is no real formula to this. They are not looking at performance, or work ethic, or anything like that. It is LL4s and higher making the decisions based on who they liked or didn't like prior to their most recent promotion. When the LL3 gets to LL2, he'll drag these id--t LL4s up another level and the fun will start once again. Good. Ol'. Boy. Network.
It doesn’t matter how old you are as long as you are doing your job and continue to contribute to the company, then you should not be worried. Those that are not doing the work and has nothing to do at work are the ones that should be worrying. Best of luck for those who have been working from home during the past 2 years.
Everyone hired before Jan 1 2004 has at least 30 reasons to be worried. The retirement pension is something we have been working for. A guarantee or agreement that if you work hard and get the job done you will be rewarded in the end. Ford will experience a brain drain this year as once the core “go to”engineers retire and the ones with 30 plus years will follow. There were a bunch of FCGs hired from 1987 to 1992 and for the most part we have all been maxing out our 401k and taking full advantage of everything Ford has offered us. It’s unfortunate that Jim Farley does not see valve in the group of people that he is about to let go. Management thinks the job will just get a little tougher when we lose these engineers. The LL6 and LL5 will be jumping ship too once they see who is leaving. They better than anyone in the company know who the critical ones are. No reason staying around to supervise chaos. Things will get impossible. The one thing that could cushion the blow is if Ford could retain some of these folks in a retiree work force. The lump sum is another big reason this group of employees will be leaving as the financial hit will be like working for free for the next year or so.
Fear is all the salaried ranks know in the Detroit 3. I have young kids to teenager, auto has been my entire career. There's so much turmoil in auto, that I don't think I can continue down this path much longer. I'm younger in the ranks, but that won't last long. I'm tired of the poor morale, the lack of growth opportunities, the constant doom & gloom of Auto. I'm not fearful anymore of losing my job, I'm still willing & able to pivot as well as move. Honestly, I'm tired of this area, southeast Michigan is going to be in a world of pain when more good paying auto jobs get canned so that they can downsize for electric or move electric to Tennessee. People act naive to the possibilities of Michigan getting completely stripped of auto, leaving it with nothing.
I agree you sound like a young employee, which is good that you're reaching out to the community to ask these types of questions. People should not down these types of questions off the bat.
Many are petrified for a variety of reasons. Some is for the simple fact that Ford is all they know, despite being more than financially able. Yet for others it's having to rely on a single source of income, not having adequately prepared for retirement. Many are tied to SE MI for a host of reasons and don't want to relocate out no way no how. It boils down to fear of the unknown, despite job prospects being quite good.
You absolutely should quit, as I'm seeing so many others turn in their letters of resignation. There are many companies that don't constantly turn their workforces over for the simple reason of being enthralled with who they haven't yet hired. What you are seeing is nothing new. When Ford needs to do another "massive pivot" to chase the latest whatever, they'll use it as an excuse to absolutely again ravage the salaried ranks- rest assured.
You must be young lol. Likely still in the naive phase of a mid-20's, likely without kids. If you want to know why they are scared it would help to understand their situation. Talk to someone who would open up to you.