Thread regarding American Electric Power Co. Inc. layoffs

The sad part, if those 250 aren't selected this round you can bet Therace's honor and integrity that they are marked themselves with a Target (pun intended) for the next round of forced cuts the next time they need to maximize shareholder value.

Curious if they approve all 1k or reject 250 of them. Knowing how this company is operating of late, they'll reject 250 for some reason or another. Why lose sleep over it, they already told 60% of the company they couldn't take part in it. Just par for the course.

Heard today from a Director that they only wanted 750 people to take the buyout and they had well over a thousand people submit for it. I guess time will tell.

Spot on. Therace may have been a successful CIO in some other industry other than retail but not Utilities. She is trying to fit a square peg in a round hole and it's just not working. Her retail experience just does not port over to a utility. I've never met the woman and have no desire to meet her. I would have a hard time keeping my mouth shut. I honestly don't think she'll stay past next May. She just doesn't strike me as a person who is loyal to a company. She really strikes me being self serving and self centered.

AEP was a good company to work for. But in honesty, the hiring of Therace was a disaster. I've never seen an executive make sweeping decisions without understanding the landscape. That retail mindset will not work in a utility. In fact, it's quite dangerous because electric utilities are quasi national security firms. But the decisions she's made in IT made our electric grid unsafe and unreliable. Morale is low which could cause higher insider threat activity. If the Board was smart, they would do to Therace what they did to the CEO. They are two peas in a contaminated pod. The employees need to press the AEP Board of Directors to do the right thing concerning Therace. When i worked at AEP, it was a good place to work and grow. As I look back, I'm so glad I left before the morale hit rock bottom. Instead of AEP creating opportunities to buy a utility, it's in a prime place to be bought itself. That's not good for Ohio or our electric grid.

That's the retail mind set, everything is controlled at the corporate level with no input from the stores. She was able to act as a dictator both at a personnel and budget level at JCP and Target. Everyone else came in from retail as well and had no clue. I saw a few heads looking down on those conference calls. Not sure if they were crying or laughing. Either way, you're right, we were done for the day she accepted the job. The road to healing will begin the day she leaves

The real question is, does she understand the difference between capital and O&M in a regulated utility yet?
I’ll never forget the blank stares of disbelief when she had no clue what the he-l she was talking about and was trying to manipulate how our expenditures would be classified. That was the day I knew we were sc--wed.

I find it eye opening that 4 people are voting down the last few comments and it must be the same 4 voting up the comment supporting Therace. Must be her cronies. I have never spoken to a non-manager that had anything nice to say about her management style. Only from managers trying to play along and her direct cronies.

Ok Therace, stop voting down on the comments that are negative to your decisions. We all know, you're the troll on the thread.

You can tell so much about a person by the way they treat others and who they surround themselves with.
Therace treats people with distain as do the majority of the people who report to her. She has no redeeming quality, none.

"TR is the best thing ever happened to the company!". You have to be a troll here, and has to be written by someone that got their job on nepotism. Are you kidding me? Let me guess you have a Minnesota zip code?

This is EXACTLY the problem. You people came in without have any understanding of what AEP was before you got here. And you are arrogant enough to think "you are all the solution". AEP legacy people were here when you got here, and they will be here when your gone.

Just how long do you think you'll last once a new CEO gets here and is able to read between the lines? You think your safe?

Let's assume that a new CEO gets here and cleans house and TR goes. You seriously don't think that the next CIO won't do what she did and repopulate all of the key spots with their own people bouncing out everyone that anything to do with the present mess?

The only thing that AEP HR needs to be doing is brush up on unemployment law in Minnesota. Anyone that seriously looks around and thinks that IT at AEP is fine, is either a crack head or in denial.

Do you honestly think that TCS could save you from a massive outage or a ransomware attack? Please. Get a grip. Anyone that doesn't have their head in their @55 can see what's going on.

Look who is all preaching on favoritism and loyalty. Y'all have your own informal groups playing favorites at all levels and do everything in your power to oust anyone who does not look like you. Now it is a problem is TR does it? All you do is talk in meetings and have others do the work for you and you take credit for it. It's about time y'all pack rats hogging on bonuses that you do not deserve. TR is the best thing ever happened to the company!

That cannot come soon enough. Anyone with w non-bias review of the previous 4 years would have to declare her tenure here a total disaster. I cannot think of one thing that's she done that made things better.

Time for many like TR in leadership and management to be terminated

Amen, SurvivalMode

With pretty much any meeting, go wash dishes, play with the dog, take a walk, take a cr-p, they are all equal to hearing them speak.

You are correct. They never want to hear any opinion, but they are always first to offer up their own. Most good managers value the input of the people doing the work. Here, not so much.

It's amazing how much gall it takes to walk into a new job, know nothing about it, know nothing about the people you work with or the jobs they do and just start making arbitrary decisions without even a hint of thought as to what the impact of those decisions are, or what they will affect. This TR and cronie crew are masters of it.

Suggestion for the next All Hands Meeting, go on mute, stop listening to Therace because everything she has to say is BS. Take the hour break to clear your head and to get some fresh air. Get a fresh cup of coffee, sit back, get something truly important done in 45 mins. If I really need to know, put it in an email, I'll read it later. The other thing, no employee survey, no participation in company meetings. You don't want to hear my opinions, I'm good not listening to yours. Therace will be gone in a year, I'll still be here, maybe then I'll start listening again. Hope we get a better CIO, God knows we could use one.

It was the worse kept secret in IT, everyone knew Operations was been outsourced, only question was, how many and how fast. Everyone knew, after meetings with Sanjay and his reports, the question always came up, who would be left after the cuts. Granted didn't see Sanjay getting cut but I think he took one for Team TR. You will know it's true if a few years from now, TR moves on and Sanjay shows up again. That will tell you how crooked she is. Only time will tell. TR just went over 4, if true she is on a 5 year contract, she is now on the clock. Next will be interesting to see how everything plays out. New CEO, maybe someone who will see there are too many cooks in the kitchen and not enough waiters.
Was going to Chiefs but we already have enough Indians here.

AEP was once the career to have, not anymore. The leadership of this company is a joke. They throw out "a voluntary severance package" because they need to rebuild money and hire more directors and a new VP of Communications? Make this make sense. This sends a very clear message to the employees that you can and will be replaced and they talk out of both sides of their mouths. The culture is absolutely toxic and negative right now and they want you to be safe. The thought I hear from most is that they really don't care about your safety it's more about their numbers they don't want negatively affected. TR is completely incompetent and had proven as much. One look at how IT is handled well prove that. Just wait it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better. It's a very sad time for those once passionate about their career at AEP

Sometimes people say the quiet part out loud. In a call yesterday with IT, a VP said “ out-source” and then quickly corrected it to the prettier word, “co-source.”

This is the way the leadership that was hired in the past three years thinks “Agile is not going away, we’ve just relegated the link to it to a small and invisible part of the PMO site.” “Also, make sure you do all the things are required but not required because Therace has access and will be watching. This is just the minimum which is actually the maximum..”

Everyone knows the place is a mess. The problem is upper management doesn't think there's an issue. They feel the people below them have not bought into the new strategy and that's why it's failing. First line managers know it's not working but are being told to fix it or else. Guys in the trenches know it's not working, have no power to fix it. Working best they can to keep the lights on and not get fired. All the while, TR is like Nero, watching as Rome (AEP) burns down. Guess we're just not strategic enough to see it. It will be fun to watch the hand wringing when she leaves. Anyone want to take a bet on the reason why when she does leave? I'm going to say, for a new leadership role in another company closer to home so she can spend more time with x

@ 1Unhy+1qB6FXi3 - I left on my own late last year. It was obvious this was going to happen as it happened already in IT. Everyone had given up and my manager was two years behind on just logging in to work. Just apply and leave. It’s that simple. Otherwise, there’s nothing more to talk about.

TR - sounds like the managers who have caused this mess, instead of laying off the front line employees , many like you could be removed as an attempt to fix.

@TR I agree that complaining just to complain is not constructive and will not make things better. In the end, it's a personal decision to go or stay, staying doesn't means you gave up your right to complain. You have the right to vent. You can do it here without fear of losing your job. Do it at work and you actually lose your job.

We're already seeing the turn over at TCS, seems they will keep a tech on for a year or two and then move them to another account. The turn over at TCS affects everything from the time you hit the service desk to the time it gets resolved, if it ever does. I've had coworkers just give up and close the ticket because of a lack of experience from the tech. Since they lack experience, they try everything from some script. When all else fails they either want to replace the PC or turn it over to another group. Usually within a day or so, you will be back with the original team and a new tech going over the same script. I can't wait for Copilot or some other AI to be introduced so I can solve my own issues and not deal with a TCS tech that has no clue where to start.

It can’t be too bad if y’all haven’t left yet. A bunch of companies in Columbus have been hiring. People are complaining just to complain. A lot of companies do layoffs and have bad culture. Read any of them on this very same site.

I do not understand how IT management would feel "vindicated" reading the posts to this site. More like "exposed". The only way they would feel "vindicated" is if management's objective was to annoy existing employees dealing with the loss of their colleagues as well as the laid off employees who are using this site to express displeasure at the situation. I am sure that was not management's goal. Several years ago IT was hiring literally hundreds of employees, The hiring was so extensive that they had managers hiring for a role (project manager, analyst, etc) vs using a manager to interview and hire for an actual existing position in their team. At the time I thought "what are all these people being hired for? Things will not go well (layoffs) if AEP goes thru bad times". The over hiring by Therace's team in prior years, IT mgt's desire to outsource IT Support, plus the bad economy resulted in the IT lay offs. Unfortunately, IT upper mangement does not respect the Support role and mistakenly believes that all IT Support can be successfully outsourced. It can be very difficult to debug/resolve issues and get solutions for the business without experience. Down the road, higher turnover within the outsourcing companies will add to the knowledge exodus.

10 years from now will it really matter. Most of the current mgmt team will be gone. TCS will be gone. There will be a new Board, a new CEO and 1/3 of the company will be new employees. If you can hold out for the next 10 years, it'll be like working for a new company.

People have a right to think and say what they want. But it’s odd that employees would come to this page to defend the company and to vote down on people who have negative things to me. Kind of suspicious if you ask me. I’m pretty neutral on the place even though I haven’t liked a lot of the changes and don’t think the changes are helping anything. Layoffs do happen places… just weird that random employees would come to this site to defend them… I didn’t even take the severance due to how little it was. Just weird, all I’m saying.

"part of a change for the good" - are you serious. They lied to the majority of the IT staff when the brought TCS on, they said it was co-sourcing, that was a joke. It was outsourcing from day one. It was never about making the place run better, it was about getting rid of staff and replace people with contractors half away around the world that have no clue what a utility is. Sanjay was let go, he didn't leave to take care of his parents, that was all a cover story to cover up his sc--w up. As not stepping up and dealing with change, you must not have been around for the merger, 2004, 2008-2010, or 2014-2016. Either you're mgmt or hr person or some DEI hire that has no clue, guess you could be a TCS contractor.

"Given their all to this company for years?" Did you think all previous layoffs were only for incompetent employees?

I think the management problem is way bigger than IT, it appears it’s across nearly every opco and department.

If I were management and read these posts I would feel vindicated. Way too much complaining and negativity and not enough resilience, self direction or motivation. No one seems to want to be part of a change for the good if and when it happens. Staff reductions are an unfortunate part of a business, especially when the economy is not so great for capital intensive businesses. At least there is a choice for some and a severance. Stand tall and figure out a way to make things work for the interest of you and your family and stop doom scrolling.

I think most people posting here should go to glassdr or in deed and post there letting people know the real state of IT at AEP. If you know the work environment is so toxic, I think people need to be warned. This is fine but people looking for a job would not see these postings.

I wonder if the one person giving a negative review is Therace?

What has been the last big innovation AEP has created that made utilities more effective? Just curious. Feels like executive management growth strategy is cutting employees; I’m not sure of the executives who is bringing new ideas to the table.

This company is a disaster. We are in the power business, the name of the game is safety and reliability, you get those two things by having experienced and knowledgeable employees, but our staffing philosophy is the exact opposite, a revolving door of second-class citizen contractors who are out the door to brighter horizons the second they get a real job offer somewhere, and who could blame them? All so corporate can save a dime and make next quarter look good for the parasites at the shareholder meeting. I really worry about the future of AEP, what are they going to do in the coming years when the guys holding this thing together are all gone or retired? This isn't McDonald's man, we're in the utility business, you need dedicated, valued employees who are in it for the long term.

No surprise there. Therace is so desperate to save money from anywhere she can. They need to cut expenses from every corner of IT. They'll strong arm the vendors as much as possible. They did it last year and the year before.
IBM should just say, we'll see ya in a few years when you get a new CIO

AEP might be booting IBM. Contract under review. Shhhhhhh.

Pushed the button, now have to wait a month to see it goes through, then another month to leave. What a joke they can't even get this done right. In the past, it was like 2-3 weeks and you were gone