Our CEO, COO, and other fearless leaders visited Webster yesterday. A lot of us in Production engineering were hoping that there would be some sort of clue as to what will happen to us now that Xerox is exiting the design and manufacturing of our Production equipment. Unfortunately, the speeches were the usual rah-rah about sales, sales and sales. One woman asked a direct question about what will happen to those of us who create hardware products, but Stevie just gave a long-winded answer that said nothing.
The COO claimed that he did not want to do any more layoffs after the March reductions, but the company has since chopped people in manufacturing and the SI lab (and I'm sure other places in Webster). He claimed that the bulk of the cuts in March were in upper levels, and they tried to avoid cuts to the people doing the work. But that just doesn't jive with what has actually happened in Webster. He claimed that they didn't want to cut the people turning sc--wdrivers, but we hardly have anyone left turning sc--wdrivers.
Does the company plan to keep those of us in Production by moving us to customization or other groups? Are we just going to get a pink slip as soon as we transition to Fuji products? I think I already know the answer, but it would be awfully nice if we got a straight answer from our "leaders."