Thread regarding American Electric Power Co. Inc. layoffs

Nobody is going to take AEP to court for a class action lawsuit. There is no injury to anyone. You may not like but like when your credit card company changes terms for the card, you have the right to cancel it. If you don't like the job requirements, leave. The part that su-ks is the fact that they would not let all 17k employees take the buy out. Forced layoff is one thing but not to treat everyone the same was the start of people just being pi---d off with the company. Throw in RTO and now you start to have the majority of the employees who just don't give a dam about what happens to the company. I'm here for a check, and that's it. Here's my plan

1. Set my bios on my PC to auto start at 7:55 am every morning.
2. Take a 30 minute lunch at my desk and play Games on my personal phone.
3. Set a scheduled task @ 4:25 pm to issue a popup to earn me to save my work.
4. @ 4:30 pm a second scheduled task to perform a forced power off.
5. Leave my desk by 4:31 pm.

The company wants me in the office for 40 hours a week, they'll get 40 hours.
That is going to be my MO for the next 4-5 years or until I find something else. Not sure if I can find anything based on my age but if I do, I'll leave. The best part, my boss feels the same way.

Bill needs to be made intimately familiar with the negative impact he has deliberately imposed on his employees and their families. There are any number of personal injury attorneys that would jump at the opportunity to persecute a class action lawsuit against a tyrant CEO, who treated his employees like lab rats in his mad capitalist business experiment. Bill must feel our pain personally, financially and professionally. Customers will eat it up, watching Bill squirm like a lobster being dropped into a cauldron of boiling water. The perfect revenge for their torment, anguish and misery before they show up for their lobster dinner.

Job grade 5 (engineering associate) pay band starts at $62,000.
When was that a competitive salary for an engineer? 2004?
At least when we had hybrid you could justify it because you were getting something else in return.

Fu-k Bill Fehrman and fu-k AEP for this. Its clear that the leadership at the top doesn't give two sh--s about the employees anymore.

AEP's engineering talent has already been gutted by mismanagement and the severances the past couple years. No one wants to work in office 5 days a week. How is AEP going to attract any talent when they have nothing to offer competitive employees anymore?

My local team had a job offer out to a new prospect. When the prospect heard the position was changing from hybrid to full time in office, they ghosted AEP. No one wants to work full time in office after seeing the flexibility of hybrid work, so AEP better get used to a lack of new applicants.

I'm sticking around for my ICP, and then I'm gone. Its time to start applying to other companies now. I should have left years ago during the Sloat era. I used to be proud to work for AEP, but leadership at the top is hellbent on destroying this company and its corporate culture.

I had a friend tell me that she was specifically told not to use the "Ask Bill" function because the EVP are not wanting us to because it causes them problems. So, you know it is bad when the CEO implements the "Ask Bill" because he wants to hear from workers. But then the workers are being told from upper management that they are not to use the "Ask Bill" function.

Working solely to enrich shareholders was defined as slavery in the previous century.

How many AEP employees are suffering from occupational exhaustion?
How many AEP employees are experiencing erratic sleep patterns?
How many AEP employees have experienced one or more panic attacks?
How many AEP employees have experienced a diminished quality of life since Bill arrived?
How many AEP employees only career goal is to retire or quit?
How many AEP employees are experiencing difficulties staying focused at work?
How has Bill's leadership negatively impacted safety?
What has Bill done to improve employees' experience after receiving storm restoration awards and other accolades?

What will be Bill's next great idea?
Renaming 1RP to The Fortress of Doom?

I don't think he'll do away with ICP, I think our new ICP targets will be near impossible to hit so they won't have to pay anything out... that way they can still boast ICP as part of our compensation package.....

It is time to impoverish the rich, not the working poor and any politician that opposes us loses any chance of re-election. It is time for the party of one people and one nation to defeat the two parties of tyranny.

More fired in technology over the last week. They’re trimming a few at a time now. Good thing this is the last ICP. Bloated management salaries already take the bulk of the bonus pool.

Any news on the ICP besides the one guy with the .88 number. To be honest, the .88 seems to be a good number based on how we did over 3 qrts. If it turns out to be lower, Q4 would have to have missed the projection. Based on rumors, this might be the last ICP. Bill doesn't like them but if you take it away, a really decent pay raise is in order. Otherwise, loss of knowledge will continue to seep out the door.
Again, short term profits replacing long term needs. Needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many.

How much more "input for the rate cases" do we need?
Our customers are already routinely complaining that their electric bill is higher than their mortgage payment. Do we believe that they just have infinite money and we can raise the rates forever?

The betrayal employees have experienced has destroyed the loyalty and commitment of the men and women, who save this company every time mother nature wreaks havoc and destruction on the infrastructure that enriches you. Our first responders are like steel they are strong but if you abuse the temper of their mettle that gives them the resilience to endure and overcome adversity, the steel becomes brittle and fails. Young employees have borne witness to this leadership betrayal and are seeing the impact it has on the men and women they look up to as their mentors and are deciding no one deserves to be treated so callously.

The C-suite shall reap the bitter harvest it has sown and you will never again enjoy the loyalty and resolute determination to succeed that has made you filthy rich and our first responders old, tired and indifferent. You have neither earned nor deserve the success you have enjoyed at the expense and to the detriment of your workforce and their families, who sacrifice so much for the success only you enjoy the benefits of. Your treachery shall be the instrument of your colossal failure of leadership. You own it.

Boots on ground can get the work done if the guys in the suits will just get the F out of the way.

Someone made a very good point re transmission being the money maker. PIS and capital spend are the inputs for the rate cases. That’s where the money comes from. AEP’s model for executing T projects has become so obstructed by internal “stakeholders” (they aren’t stakeholders they are supposed to be contributors) that a simple project takes four years to complete. Ridiculous. So there is the biggest demand since WW2 to upgrade and expand the grid and AEP has become so inefficient at executing capital work there is absolutely no way they can take advantage of that market. Where else can the money be made? The developers have figured it out. But AEP can’t.

There's no way to believe that they are surprised by the backlash. It was the only possible outcome. Of course everyone would react negatively to their lives being made worse. What other response could there be?
The only reason they are doing this RTO thing anyways is because they are trend-chasers, not leaders. They saw everyone else doing it and that was it.

One or two of ya have gotten carried away on this board but I’m glad it exists. Over the years, I’ve learned in advance about incoming layoffs that directly impacted my team, policy changes, health insurance changes, and the big one…RTO. This board is a decent resource for me without a HR, marketing or leadership filter.

I’ve heard there are some bootlickers at the top of the org who are upset about this board and surprised people are so disturbed about coming back to the office. Well, I’m just as disturbed that people use the office as a replacement for their bland social lives or to wield power over people they manage. What a shame. I’m losing faith in people.

But, I am really looking forward to resigning after ICP. Bill is either too stubborn to realize the world is changing and people crave a more balanced life where work is just a piece of the pie and not the whole thing. Or, he really believes every person needs to spend 40 hours in a building to do good work. How can a guy who thinks work should be the exact way it was 30 years ago, minus the cigarette smoke, lead AEP into an energy and regulatory landscape changing faster than any of us would have imagined possible just a decade ago? I’m gonna enjoy my summer with my family then figure the rest out later folks.

Yo Bill your wife is a ugly motherf----rand just remember you cant do any better

If someone could put together a scam phishing email with a subject line of “How to pummel your employees into submission or make them quit”, there’s a decent chance we could get Bill to click on that two or three times alone.

Did he really get phished or is it a lame attempt to seem relatable to us since he knows employees are not big fans of his...

Anyone peep the front page of AEP Now?
Bill got phished. We only need to get him 4 more times and he's out of here.
Could cyber security really come in clutch and get this guy terminated?
They'd be greeted as liberators.

Put anything in a pressure cooker, keep turning up the heat, eventually the pressure is going to exceed the limits of the containment vessel and when that happens there is a catastrophic integrity failure. Society is a lot like a pressure cooker with the same vulnerabilities and the same consequences. Ignoring wisdom is the path to destruction.

Stories of people on X in East Coast states having $500-600 a month bills and wondering if that's normal. At least that has not hit Ohio yet, if Bill wants to raise rates to that level, our customers are going to be looking elsewhere for a supplier. What I see as the main issue is Wall St wants utilities like AEP to act like a tech company and bring in double figure returns and the growth rate being the same rate. Days of a 4-5% return being great are gone because of inflation.

Not sure what's going to ki-l off the company first, the Execs and the Board or Wall St greed. Good thing I'm leaving in April.

"I hope everyone capable of finding another job does so."

I have a degree, professional certs, and over a decade of diverse experience in my field. Overall, I'd say I have a pretty solid resume. I've been applying for the last 6 months and I can't even get an interview unless I want to settle for a contract or hybrid job. It's a tough job market right now for IT.

It’s about FERC and the local commissions. That’s who decides whether these sales go through. The problem is that the OpCos were designed as a part of a larger AEP system. The OpCos have access to ServiceCo, which does basically all back office work. The utility money pool allows the OpCos to borrow at lower rates than they would otherwise.

Removing these advantages forces the OpCos to raise rates for customers, and commissions have been pushing back on that hard since inflation picked up in 2022. No one is going to okay a sale of the OpCos.

Now maybe AEP tries more minority sales like they did with the trans cos, but that won’t break up the company.

AEP can be split up. Previous failures were based on the old model and the leadership that was in place at that time. The people in charge now have the will and the motivation to make it happen.

We work to better our lives and serve our communities. We DO NOT live to work to enrich corporate officers and shareholders. We are far closer to the days leading up to the American Revolution than we are to 248 years after our victory over the immense wealth authoritarian tyranny of the British Monarchy. The only difference today is our antagonists no longer speak with a British accent.

Just fyi, before anyone gets too excited about that buy into OH and I&M, one of the funds KKR has been under investigation by the DOJ and has been charged. I imagine that will have an impact on that investment getting approved.

I hope everyone capable of finding another job does so.

AEP can’t be split up and sold off. Look at the absolute dumpster fire the approvals for Kentucky were. The Opcos are too interconnected to the ServiceCo that it would be a nightmare to do. I saw in the org chart that the team that does these deals at AEP got split up since Steve Haynes is retiring, so who knows if we even have the ability to do that at this point.

The transmission minority sale was to help pay for the new capital plan. Transmission is where all the growth is (Ohio, I&M, and Texas) with all the load coming on from data centers. It’s going to be the key focus of AEP going forward. I wouldn’t worry about that org.

Interesting. In generation, there’s been lots of talk about transmission’s future since Bill laid waste to the our structure and leadership, which was completely bizarre. We still haven’t recovered from that. Our teams have been on eggshells ever since. The transmission sale raised our antennas several notches.

Where is this stuff about transmission cuts coming from?
Transmission is already understaffed which is why the majority of our work is outsourced.
Bill said he wanted to end such heavy reliance on contractors and he wants to bring them in-house, and they've been hiring engineers like crazy. Where are the cuts?

Will be interesting to see what happens with transmission. Tons of T engineer positions posted but from what I've heard we have a hard enough time keeping T engineers let alone getting candidates to fill positions....

Bill was in New Albany today. Don't know if anyone was let go. The restructuring for transmission has still not been announced.

Can’t believe it took this long for someone to mention Transmission. Bill has been very direct in his own way that more cuts are coming. RTO was just one way to drive people out, along with org flattening. You can drive people out the easy way, or the hard way. The easy way is making things so difficult that people just decide to leave. The hard way is layoffs. There is a Reuters article in late ‘24 that was fairly bold about where AEP is heading under Bill. It directly states cutting layers of management will reduce costs.

“We have alot of wood yet to chop around the company,” AEP CEO Bill Furman said on a company earnings call. Furman declined to say which parts of the company could be put up for sale.

Would be stunned if more assets are not sold off in the near future. Transmission staff cuts coming after new unit leader is hired.

I'm running for the exit but no one will hire me.
All the people threatening to leave are facing the grim reality. There aren't thousands of jobs out there just waiting to absorb all of us, especially not remote ones.

Everyone needs to face the facts. Four CEOs in four years. Icahn buys in. Bad news for sure. He brings in a BH disciple. AEP is going to be split up and sold to the highest bidder. It’s not a new model. Stuff similar to this has been happening for decades.

Transmission already got FUAD (fu---d up and destroyed)
What else could they do?