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bomb shell at work today [Archive] - PCMech Forums

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Byte 2.0
07-14-2005, 07:43 PM
Today I walked in and a close friend pulled me off to the side to let me know that our supervisor was no longer our supervisor. In fact that he may no longer be with the company.

The only thing I could think of was this is the man that I would every couple of weeks have conversations with about planning for the future and he would tell me how good the company has been to him for the past 10 years. How he has been taking advantages of the 401k and other company programs and how his retirement plan was to looking like he might hit the one million mark.

In fact I was strongly thinking about taking similar steps, knowing I currently make much less then him but never the less based on conversations with him I did start my retirement plans.

Anyways so we hear he is no longer over us as a supervisor and may be leaving the company, but no one is giving any reasons. Based on knowing him for the past 9 months, I knew he would not have done anything to hurt his position at the company.

Later we finally get the news, from him in an email, that he is the victim of the budget Ax.

As many of you know, I work for a company that gets outsourced IT work from other companies. These are divided up lets say in contracts. The job I do is on one contract and he was the sup over it.

It seems that the contract after only 9 months is on the edge of costing more to maintain that it is bringing in. So in order to make it more profitable, they are cutting him.

OK, now that you have some of the information, here is the way i see it.

When the contract was negotiated, they underbid too much. Not my sups fault as he was not part of that process.

Seems to me, if we lived in a fair world, the people that made the agreements too low in the first place should be the first cut in a budget savings, since they made this mistake in the first place.

Since he was cut, leaves the rest of us wondering how much trouble the contract we are on is in. We have several temps, which started the same day as many of us full time. The temps work the same hours, just are not getting the same benefits.(it sucks as we all came over at the same time, many of us from the last job together at another company all together.)

We know it was not performance based as we had been hitting all of our service level agreements for the contract.

Kind of makes us wonder if anyone else is up to be cut. As from what I can see, we are on the edge of maintaining the service levels, as if we are a person short one day, we can notice it.

[/rant]

Force Flow
07-15-2005, 12:06 AM
I've never taken to working for big corperations. There's something to be said about smaller companies or working for yourself.

Heck, I was kinda eyeballing IBM for a little while until they started laying people off left and right. No way I want to end up high and dry thanks to corperate cuts.

Byte, if you really feel that your job is hanging by a thread, it wouldn't hurt to get a jump on things and start glancing at the classifieds in the paper. That would mean less downtime between jobs *if* you do have to go looking for someplace else.

Jaggannath
07-16-2005, 01:23 AM
Prepare a resume on company time :)
Seems a little ridiculous, and I couldn't agree more... when someone in a different area stuffs up, it's never them that pays with their job, but the people doing the real work, rather than the people writing up reams of useless rubbish on paper.

Byte 2.0
07-16-2005, 07:54 AM
I know I can get another job if needed, but at less pay. I have one of the highest tech jobs in my area, which isn't near what it should be. Plus it is only a 1 mile drive for me.

Next best tech job is about 30 miles away and I would have to completely cross the city of Knoxville TV to get to it.

As of yeserday they took us in meetings with the next person up the chain, who said she was even blind sided by that. She was there to assure us it was not based on performance and that our sup had not done anything wrong. She was giving him high apraise. She said the decision was cost cutting by very high management, as she put it only sees us as numbers.

She said they actually did not know his name, they looked at a chart and eliminated his job. She told us, as for the work, we do, our jobs are safe as they can't afford to lose us.

Right now, so tight that only one person can request a day off at a time. If one person is off, we notice it with the extra work to pick up the slack.'

O yea, I am watching for better jobs, but I don't want to take a pay cut, so I am riding this wave for now.

mbossman2
07-16-2005, 08:34 AM
1st rung management is always a risky slot...it is a "learning" position for futher moves upward, but is not really mission-critical to the operation and can be added or deleted fairly quickly and cheaply...companies don't begin to value management until they assume profit and loss responsibilities (and are successful) for their respective buisiness units and this does not occur until a person manages management types...

Byte 2.0
07-16-2005, 09:11 AM
companies don't begin to value management until they assume profit and loss responsibilities (and are successful)

You made my point, I still feel they should have canned the person or people that made the bad contract, however that was probably the same people making this decision. :D

David M
07-16-2005, 01:30 PM
I agree with mboss. The lowest of the chiefs get cut first. The indians, who are doing the actual work for what the contract is paying for, are rarely cut. Upper management was probably just simply looking for a way to make it a more profitable contract. Sometimes cutting the lowest chief works and sometimes it backfires.

I get the feeling thats all it was about. In the meantime get your resume' in order and keep an eye out for other job opportunities just in case this is not the case.

Jaggannath
07-16-2005, 07:53 PM
They really need to trim the fat where it's storing the beer, not where it's padding the vital organs :D