I was let go Aug 2022 after 33 yrs of living on generous uncle Henry. I worked as hard as everyone else to get the job done. I also had a life outside of Ford and made sure I took my vacation and any comp time earned. I often wondered why we got profit sharing when we were not doing so great but I later understood the greed from above often resulted in some crumbs being distributed to the peasants.
I know management wants us to feel that we robbed the company of profits but I can say I made very few mistakes that cost the company money. Sure there were sc--w ups that maybe resulted in more testing or a delay or so of meeting a milestone but I never shut down the plant or delayed a job 1.
When I was let go I was working at home with an office chair, several monitors, keyboards and mouse. My immediate supervisor was not involved in my exit meeting. Nobody asked me what projects I was working on and with who my team members were. At 9 am I was an employee and at 9:30 I was not. I was given a location to send my computer and phone to. Nobody asked for anything else.
As for my original building they gutted it of all useful items.
I can't feel guilty about the wages I made or the benefits I received while doing my job. I worked in calibration and emissions and had fleets of test cars. I spent more time in my vehicles than at my desk. I used a lot of fuel doing my job. Management often threatened to reduce vehicle count and usage but usually the bone head moves to add complexity to the product made that unrealistic.
We would finish a calibration on one product and try to transfer that knowledge to the next product only to find some new flavor of the day architecture change. Ford did this all the time possibly to just keep busy work to justify the large management structure. Everybody had a finger in the pie.
We always tried to reinvent the wheel when we should have just been trying to copy Toyota and build reliable vehicles at a fair profit. We screwed every Focus/Fiesta customer and wrecked the small car market for Ford. We quit making the Fusion because who knows why. And we are going full EV without fully understanding the customer base or electrical grid.
Looking back I was wrong to ever feel guilty about trading my time for money. Take all you can because in the end you are just a number on some spreadsheet.