Laid Off: Enjoying the Unexpected Summer Vacation

[gravenewworld]

Yay, looks like I get summer vacation!

 

[lisab]

Well that's a good attitude...sorry to hear it, though. What field of work was it?

 

[waht]

Laying off is part of life. Last time I got laid off well before the economic collapse I got another job with better opportunity to meet new people. I've made then more friends than in high school.

However, at my current job I'm walking on the tip-toes. The company went corporate greed. We now have twice as many job responsibilities as before I started, and without any compensation. The managers became evil, and are pushed by even more evil managers higher up then they are ad nauseam.

 

[arunma]

Sorry to hear this. Do you have any other job opportunities you're looking at?

 

[Evo]

Sorry to hear that. Just remember the saying "when one door closes another opens". Well, something like that. Hang in there!

 

[Cyrus]

Sorry to hear that. Your bail out package is in the mail, sit tight.

 

[gravenewworld]

Well that's a good attitude...sorry to hear it, though. What field of work was it?

Medicinal chemistry.

Sorry to hear that. Just remember the saying "when one door closes another opens". Well, something like that. Hang in there!

That's exactly how I am taking it. Maybe this is a blessing in disguise, suddenly grad school looks very attractive.

 

[Huckleberry]

Laying off is part of life. Last time I got laid off well before the economic collapse I got another job with better opportunity to meet new people. I've made then more friends than in high school.

However, at my current job I'm walking on the tip-toes. The company went corporate greed. We now have twice as many job responsibilities as before I started, and without any compensation. The managers became evil, and are pushed by even more evil managers higher up then they are ad nauseam.

I was kinda in the same situation last month. I was laid off a few weeks ago. I wouldn't say my managers turned evil though. I was on friendly terms with a few of them. I went to my manager's house for Thanksgiving, and the son of another manager is a friend of mine. They are in a tough situation as well. They had to take a 10% pay cut and are also in danger of losing their jobs.

The company I was working for was bought by a larger company late last year. First they reduced our benefits and laid off about 1/4th of the employees including the dead weight, most of the temps, and people near retirement. They offered them a reduced early retirement package. Then they took away the profit sharing plan from hourly employees. They brought in a team of japanese businessmen to restructure the procedures, which had us running in circles every day and not getting any more work done. Then they threw us into these new positions without any formal training and expected impossible results.

The results they expected were impossible because they only included the machine and operator time for a small volume, but they didn't take into account machine maintenance and downtime. So the numbers they wanted were barely possible if everything ran perfectly and never needed replenishing or planned maintenance. This ended up in a competition between shifts to make the amount of product they expected by siphoning off the work of the last shift and leaving nothing for the next. Overall, the new direction for the company created a slightly less efficient and much more stressfull environment. What really made me laugh were the "anonymous" surveys they gave us asking how happy we were with the decisions of the new management, and if we thought they were concerned for our welfare. Ofcourse, the surveys asked us the plant we worked in, the shift we worked on and our gender. So it wasn't really anonymous at all.

After the last layoff I told my manager that if there is another round of layoffs I would volunteer. One friday she came up to me while I was working and asked me to follow her. We went to the "room of death" and the floor manager was there. They gave me a severence package and watched me clean out my locker. Then I was walked out the door, gave my manager a hug and went home.

 

[jobyts]

Sorry to hear that. Just remember the saying "when one door closes another opens". Well, something like that. Hang in there!

Maria (Sound of Music): When the Lord closes a door, somewhere He opens a window.

well, you can skip the Lord part...

 

[Evo]

Maria (Sound of Music): When the Lord closes a door, somewhere He opens a window.

well, you can skip the Lord part...

What if the window is on the 14th floor? I'd rather have a door opening onto a solid floor. But that's just me.

 

[jobyts]

What if the window is on the 14th floor? I'd rather have a door opening onto a solid floor. But that's just me.

Also, a window for a door doesn't sound like a good deal.
It doesn't obey the physics laws of conservation either.

 

[Jimmy Snyder]

I have been laid off, quit, or took "voluntary retirement" from many positions in my career always to move to a better one. I've reached a point where I don't think that can happen any more, especially in this economic environment. Enjoy the summer, my experience is that hiring takes a summer vacation too. That's no excuse for not trying though. I hope that by September you will find yourself in a better situation than the one you left behind.

 

[mgb_phys]

Happened to me last august.
The company decided I was no longer part of their strategic vision.

No luck so far finding another job. But I have made about 1/2 my salary going back to do consulting work for them - it turns out that hiring two managers to replace one engineer doesn't actualy make products work.

 

[Borek]

it turns out that hiring two managers to replace one engineer doesn't actualy make products work.

Another option is to replace an engineer with four marekting people. It doesn't work either, but at least sometimes they get creative and prepare a funny ad.

Not that it makes you buy the product, but at least you smile.

 

[mgb_phys]

Another option is to replace an engineer with four marekting people.

They already tried that - the CEO had a nephew who could draw...

 

[Huckleberry]

Happened to me last august.
The company decided I was no longer part of their strategic vision.

No luck so far finding another job. But I have made about 1/2 my salary going back to do consulting work for them - it turns out that hiring two managers to replace one engineer doesn't actualy make products work.

This is something I've noticed also. Companies seem far more interested in implementing strategies for their vision of the future than they are about practical solutions today. They make policies based on their economic goals and not on their production needs, which results in impractical or sometimes completely unrealistic procedures. Management makes decisions based on management needs and are largely oblivious to production needs. Engineers get stuck in the middle and have to make management's impractical decisions viable for production.

I suspect that these corporate strategic goals aren't really based on the future at all, but on staying in the black today. So they make decisions to inflate their immediate worth, but cause the company to struggle later. They "fudge" the numbers to look appealing to stockholders. The practical production solutions won't always give management the numbers they are looking for, but are usually better for sustaining the company. Management values appearance. What actually works is secondary.

 

[Andre]

What if the window is on the 14th floor? I'd rather have a door opening onto a solid floor. But that's just me.

Not to worry, just closed all windows on the 14th floor today and went back living on the ground floor with a little garden.

Hang in there, Gravenewworld

 

[chemisttree]

There is still http://www.swri.org/HR/Search.htm?Type=Exempt"

 

[misgfool]

Happened to me last august.
The company decided I was no longer part of their strategic vision.

No luck so far finding another job. But I have made about 1/2 my salary going back to do consulting work for them - it turns out that hiring two managers to replace one engineer doesn't actualy make products work.

Yes, but the managers did cut the engineering costs by 50% or more.

 

[FredGarvin]

Happened to me last august.
The company decided I was no longer part of their strategic vision.

No luck so far finding another job. But I have made about 1/2 my salary going back to do consulting work for them - it turns out that hiring two managers to replace one engineer doesn't actualy make products work.

Huh. My company HR is a bunch of idiots in this respect in that they layoff people and then in 2 months bring them back as consultants and pay them twice what they were making before they got laid off.