Layoffs coming at my company (again)

[cjsmith]

The company I work for is aiming to reduce expenses by ten to twelve percent, and has announced today that they will achieve part of that by a reduction in headcount. I haven't yet heard percentages of people to be cut. Since they're obviously aiming to hang on to their most profitable business areas, and will do the layoffs in "markets that do not show signs of short or intermediate-term recovery", then I expect divisions in bad markets will get hit much harder than ten or twelve percent. The CEO said "reducing or eliminating investment" in some areas, so maybe whole groups or product lines will be closed down completely.

The area I work in is an obvious candidate. Our market shows, frankly, no hope in the short term. We're going to take it in the shorts.

I hope they get it over with quickly. Last time we waited months to find out.

I hope there's a severance package. Last time around it was generous, and the company is in better shape financially now than then, but I've never seen a second round have it as good as a first round did.

Losing a job isn't so bad, I guess. I don't really like this job. But if they can the whole product line, that's several years' work for a lot of people down the drain. I hate to see that happen. It's a good product, just too early for many still-wounded customers.

I wonder what I'll do if I can't find work in high tech. I don't have many unrelated salable skills. Good attributes, yes; skills, no.

Comments

[tsjafo.livejournal.com]

*hugs* Prayers and good thoughts on the way.

[harpwolf.livejournal.com]

Skills are easy... attributes are harder to come by. Good English, lucid communicator, actually shows up, effective at completion, that kind of thing. Somebody with all that going on is worth their weight in gold.

Best of luck.

By the way I have an intuition that I know you from somewhere. Me - Bob MacDowell. Pagan, Munch.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Thanks. Aim 'em at the economy at large, if you would (the prayers and good thoughts, not the hug -- I'll take the hug m'self!).

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Somebody with all that going on is worth their weight in gold.

Thanks. It seems such a person is easy to get rid of when the axe falls. After all, I don't have ten years' experience in, say, massively parallelizing compilers. Generalists are harder to justify keeping than people whose resumes show obvious rarity.

By the way I have an intuition that I know you from somewhere. Me - Bob MacDowell. Pagan, Munch.

Indeed you do -- Munch. Hi! Been a long time! :)

Re:

[tsjafo.livejournal.com]

The economy at large gets its own prayers and good thoughts. So many people are out of work it's frightening. And for some reason it always seems to happen right before or during the holidays. Its just plain wrong. I hope things go well for you.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

And for some reason it always seems to happen right before or during the holidays.

I wonder if there are end-of-year accounting implications involved in that pattern.

Me, I'd much rather get laid off January 1st. That way, if I don't find a new job my severance pay will be taxed at a much lower rate and will therefore stretch farther.

On the other hand, if I am going to have no job, it'd be nice to have a little extra time around Christmas. My folks go in for Christmas in a big way and I am always very rushed and stressed at that time.