I'm a younger employee in my early 30s. I hear a lot of folks talking about age discrimination and I see it often. Management has told me that "you're the future of the company so youre safe from WFR." I am so torn right now because I see the advantages to staying with a smaller HPE bring more profitable, more concentrated, and without a lot of the dead weight that I see taking up dollars and time daily. However, the ever-possible WFR concerns me greatly. What would you do if you were me? Jump ship or ride it out?
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Speaking of the tag for #AGEdiscrimination as one of the responders posted here, this below deserves that same tag as well.
For Any Large Employer, “Blacklisting” Those Laid Off is a Form of Age Discrimination; Math Geek Demonstrates it Here!
This is not directed towards any specific employer, it is generic… Please forward if appropriate… Well OK, it DOES seem to apply to HPE!
The short version is this: As a brand-new college grad (or other youngster new to the work force), you haven’t yet had the chance to get laid-off and blacklisted forever. Every year that you work (the older you get), the greater your chances of having been blacklisted forever. It’s that simple!
Caveats and Details.
This kind of logic (here and below) would not find traction in court for a smaller employer. So you have 15 employees, and you forever blacklist those who you lay off? Big deal. Not that much impact.
You have thousands of employees, and sometimes hundreds of thousands in a given metro area? Your workers are a HUGE fraction of the local community, especially in certain specialized job areas? Your laid-off older folks will have to move long distances to find new work? NOW we’re talking!
But the biggest caveat here is we’re talking “probabilities”. The offending companies (when accused) will doubtlessly try to pull the following garbage: “Oh, no, there’s nothing that’s “probabalistic” or random about our performance reviews and resulting selections for layoffs; They are all 100 percent totally factual and rational and objective. No subjectivity involved! None at all!” . Unless your workers are driving “X” measurable lug nuts per day… Those kinds of jobs being long-gone in the USA today… Then this is just flat-out not true! Let’s say, for example, that you are trying to persuade a jury of this… (Make sure your selected jurors have worked for a boss at some time in their lives). Any rational common-sense juror will KNOW that there’s subjectivity in performance reviews! So dealing with “the probability of your getting laid off” (alluding to some randomness) is NOT an unrealistic assumption (or approximation), and most jurors will KNOW this!
Before doing the math, for you TOTAL geeks, we are dealing with “prior” probabilities here… The perspective of a brand-new hire, who does NOT know when the axe will eventually fall. Yearly “posterior” probabilities are not of much interest… Say the axe-chopping-rate is 1percent per year. After each year passes, it is still 1% for the next year, assuming you’ve not gotten chopped yet… Otherwise you’ve already been chopped, and your probability is 100% ! That’s not of much interest…
Assume 1% then… 99% chance you still have your job one year from now. 5 years from now, it becomes 100% minus (0.99 times 0.99 times 0.99 times 0.99 times 0.99) or 100% minus (0.99 to the fifth power), or 95%.
If you run the numbers, it looks about like this:
Rate 1 yr 5 yrs 10 yr 15 yr 20 yr 30 years (Prob. Of Still Have Job)
99% 99% 95% 90% 86% 82% 75%
98% 98% 90% 82% 75% 67% 55%
97% 97% 86% 75% 64% 54% 40%
96% 96% 82% 66% 54% 44% 29%
95% 95% 77% 60% 46% 36% 21%
(That last 21% means you’d have a 79 chance of being laid off by then).
Does anyone know the current rough numbers of employees v/s how many are laid off every year, for a sample company? That would give us a rough “probability” of being laid off…
I don't think management knows who is getting laid off or when. I've been laid off four times now. Almost every time, my manager was as surprised as I was.
TBH, getting laid off has always been really good for me. I used those layoff checks as the down payment for two different homes. (This is over the span of thirteen years.)
I can usually find work in less than a month.
Just to be safe, I interview for jobs all the time. I'd already been interviewing with a company for two months when HPE laid me off. So I segued from one job to the next with no gap in employment. I banked the severance.
Here are a few practical things...
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If you are putting money into the 401k, which you should, don't leave until after the new year. Company matching lands on the last day of the year. You'll loose out on retirement money if you do decide to leave before the new year.
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I say this sadly but HPE is getting squashed in a shrinking middle which is not good for long term job prospects. I'll use servers as an example. The cloud and white box servers are changing the game. How many people require high end (high margin for HPE) servers? That number is shrinking and will continue to shrink as more businesses go to public clouds and white box. Why would a company buy a Mercedes when a Ford will do the job just fine?
Note, there will be a long term business for servers. It's a shrinking space rather than a growth opportunity.
HPE needs to change up spaces to a certain extent to grow and that's something many in management have not wanted to do.
Expect HPE to be dealing with a shrinking space for quite some time unless there are leadership changes to people who are willing to make directional changes.
- There are lots of companies and jobs out there. It's worth being loosely coupled to the company and more tied to the market. Don't be a company man or woman. Look out for you and the people around you rather than the company.
Do NOTHING extra. No more school, no extra hours, no picking up the slack when others get chopped. These psychopath prey on the weak and the desperate. Do you job well and no not succumb to their bullying. They will leave you alone and go harass a weaker target. Has worked well for me for over forty years.
My managers told me the same but then laid me off at 26.
Be the future of some much better company. Meg won't stop until her and her cronies are the only Americans left.
I like the other posts here; lots of good advice!
Lemme add my 2 cents worth…
“It all depends” is the answer, as is so often the case in complex questions (the case in all cases except a few, to include simple math; “What is 2 + 2?”).
“Do not love that which cannot love you back”, as another poster says… Very wise, there!
Are you in a highly specialized HPE-only skill? Like writing script files that apply ONLY to HPE-customized, internal software? Then either diversify your skills w/in HPE, or bail out!
Seek skills that can port over easily outside of HPE! HPE is a floundering ship, it will NOT be here 10, maybe 5, years from now!
Are you stuck in a town or city where you have to move, and moving is painful? Example: Houston, software engineer or EE hardware engineer. All that can be had is oil and gas jobs (long commutes and hard to get these jobs, petrol jobs are hurting), or HP / HPE, and they “blacklist” those that they lay off… Or… Very small smatterings of medical jobs (again, for EE, software) or NASA… And once again, a LONG commute, if you moved here for HP / HPE jobs (do NOT do that!).
Anyway, lots of variables here, that only you can answer… “Dear Abby”, I am not… Sometimes MeThinks that “Dear Abby” oversteps her bounds, badly, giving advice to folks that she so-so barely knows…
Well anyway, one last thing to mention: I am not sure how significant this one is. I am told that non-HPE employers are looking more askance at ex-HPE employees, as HPE becomes more and more, the playground of utterly ruthless office-politics players. This is the inevitable, logical result of years and years of layoffs, and of “forced distribution” performance reviews, under which system one has to make others look bad, so that we can look good, and keep our jobs. Non-HPE employers are understandably reluctant to hire the champions of such contests (they totally ruin any semblance of teamwork, needless to say). So this latter factor (however significant it may or may not be), militates in favor of bailing out NOW! Before ALL that is left at HPE, is champion backstabbers!
For details on this concern, see https://www.thelayoff.com/t/PNAE9z6 “Don’t wait for new year. Find a job while you can.” …
On the other hand, if you are thinking of totally changing your field (quitting engineering, going back to school, becoming a patent or other lawyer), this latter concern can be pretty much ignored.
One more thing OP....we haven't had a lot of dead weight around here for a long time. You really should use different words. The extra layers of management maybe but most of the worker bees are pretty good.
Lots of good advice to stay current, get a masters degree, etc. Be sure to cultivate a wide network in the industry (not just HPE). You will need it when HPE decides you are too old. Sad but true. Good luck. There are lots of interesting jobs in HPE. Learn as much as you can.
Tagging it: #AGEdiscrimination
I'm a younger employee in my early 30s. I hear a lot of folks talking about age discrimination and I see it often. Management has told me that "you're the future of the company so youre safe from WFR." I am so torn right now because I see the advantages to staying with a smaller HPE bring more profitable, more concentrated, and without a lot of the dead weight that I see taking up dollars and time daily. However, the ever-possible WFR concerns me greatly. What would you do if you were me? Jump ship or ride it out?
You are getting older, one day at the time. It'll come.
I recommend to stay, ride it out, and constantly learn. I am with the company since 30+ years and despite all these restructurings I still like it. Once you are older than 50 you will become a highly endangered species and the only thing that keeps you employable are top and up-to-date skills. Even if you could earn a few k$ more annually, don't fall prey to become a back-office 'professional', focus on what customers value most and are willing to pay premiums for. The better is the enemy of the good, so always strive to be much better than all others.
Get all of the training and industry certifications that you can while you are there. Keep your skills up, and if you like the work and the pay, stay there. Most of the big corporate entities are in the same situation, bowing to the desires of wall street, not the customer or employee. Look out for yourself, because no one else will. Use the company programs; they will pay you to volunteer, to get another college degree, to donate to charities, and contribute to your 401k. But keep your resume up to date, and get to know your peers in the business outside of your employer, through trade organizations and standards bodies, write white papers, etc. Get your name out in your sphere of interest.
Run fast and jump high.....i have been here 35 years and if I did it again I would have gone with a government job that has security
If you're happy stay. WFRs are everywhere. Gain as much experience as you can and you will be employable no matter what happens. You shouldn't live in fear of WFRs. It's part of the industry. It's part of business. Gone are the days where most people join a company and stay until they retire. I too am with HPE and have been for 11 years. I've seen many of these cycles and the key is to realize it isn't personal. I've managed to build up a lot of great experience during those years and know that I can port them elsewhere if and when the time comes. Easier said than done, I know. There are always people around you whispering about another one coming. They're wrong as often as they're right.
A word of warning though: I too was told I was the future but it's over in a blink of any eye. Now I'm part of the older demographic. Enjoy it while you can because it doesn't last long at all.
Jump out.
Well, if some manager actually told you that you were safe because you were young, that would be illegal. But, that said. You are probably lower paid and have fresh skills, so you very likely will be safe. Long term, you have seen what loyalty looks like in HPE. Keep your skills current, keep your eyes open. In the VOW it asks "If you were offered a comparable position with another company for similar benefits" You should look out for your best interest. HPE cares about you as long as you are the cheapest solution the accomplishes the task. Once they find someone in Elbonia that can do it for $10k/year, you will be outsourced.
Never love something that can't love you back. HPE doesn't love you.
Many hospitals use Radiologists in India since they are cheaper and can read x-rays due to the web.
I am not sure about this company at all. They seem to be rotting at the core.