What if you were told, "we are going to lay you off, should have been done already, but we have too much work at the moment. So, we need you here to do the work then we will lay you off."
This has actually happened in Tech under BT's watch.
The question is, would you put in 100% and do your best, or would you say "scr3w it, I'm marking my time since they don't want me"?
I think I'd be in the latter group. Having been told that is extremely harsh and super bad for morale. (although I don't think they care about morale)
What about the co-workers? How do you even face each other knowing the axe is hanging above heads?
6 replies (most recent on top)
Waiting on the company to tell you to take action is never going to work out for you. Every one of us should be aggressively saving for the eventual layoff. You'll be in a much better position when it happens. Personally, I'm close enough to retirement that I'm already heavily saving, using vehicles I can pull $ out of penalty/tax just in case it comes sooner rather than later. The nice thing is, if you're one of the very few people that actually survived the great cull, the only downside is that you gave a boatload of money saved that you no longer need to live off of in an emergency. That's a great place to be in life.
In late 2023 my team was told about location strategy and that we would be laid off but have an emergency exception due to work being transitioned to a new system that started in Jan 2024. The new System was fully functional by March 2025, and our team was given notice in July 2025. So we had over a year of knowing we were going to be laid off.
@a6 There were over 100 St. Louis employees in Operations notified in late Jan 2026 that their jobs are moved to Minneapolis. Pushed off our displacement until those new hires were trained enough to survive. Last day is probably 03/31/26 even though there hasn’t been any confirmation. They’ll wait until we log on and then lay us off. That’s the norm for Wells.
You've essentially described the working situation of most Wells Fargo employees right now. Except rather than being explicitly told you're being laid off, which would at least end the uncertainty, everyone is kept dangling, hoping to luck into avoiding the guillotine or at least receiving some severance as compensation. If I knew for certain it was coming I could at least be at peace and start making plans rather than being kept in suspended animation for the last 3 years.
This scenario is the reality for most employees. Only difference is that some haven't heard it directly yet.
"We're going to lay you off eventually, but not yet because we need more work out of you. So please stick around and help us out, and if we somehow can't find a way to fire you, we MIGHT pay you severance as a reward for your loyalty at the end. Probably not though." :s
Just ask the hundred or so Third Party Operations people in Saint Louis. They were notified that they're all getting cut in Q4 2026. WF was like, "BYEEEEE! Saint Louie"
@OP
What if you actually used this board as it's intended purpose of factual layoff intel rather than posting your rambling musings?