Company "ReOrg." After a year of record-breaking profits, the Fortune 500 I work for laid off 4000+ employees in a profitable decision, and now is looking at my department. What are some things your higher-ups have done that make you rage?

mpchwm · 3 months

I worked for a big media retailer that no longer exists. At one point they laid off about 10% of the corporate workforce (around 160 people) to "save money" (including several of my IT friends who made under $40k) and within a week created 5 new VP positions in Merchandising (all $200k+ positions). This was just after the CEO sank $165 million into a failed merchandising system overhaul and was paid something like $35 million to leave.

DrWallyHayes · 3 months

Hired me as a contract employee and told me that they expected my contract to last approximately a year (granted, no time frame in writing). Laid me off after two months.

However, in those two months, they purchased some equipment that only I was going to be using - to the tune of about $17,000 plus a service contract. Once they got rid of me, they were saddled with an expensive purchase that they couldn't use.

CSec064 · 3 months

I supervised a 24 hour one man coverage setup over 8 hour shifts. So three separate people work each day. I have a constant problem of if someone requests a day off, how the hell am I gonna get that covered if everyone's already booked? I'm always told that I will be assigned someone to cover days off, someone that is a part time employee and just fills in at different places across the city when need be. This will work out for... a few days. My boss then assigns this guy permanently to some site and never tells me so I ask "hey where is so and so I need some coverage." "oh I assigned him elsewhere." Thanks douche bag, don't yell at me for having over time next week.

AParanoidEmu · 3 months

My previous employer had a fucked up overtime policy for engineers. Engineers are typically classified as exempt employees, so they aren't due overtime (nothing wrong with this). Such was the case at this company.

Now, the company had a bonus program which, depending on your personal and the company's performances, you could get a bonus at the end of the year, anywhere from 0-15% of your salary. Sounds good, right?

They also had an overtime policy for the engineers, which would kick in if the company purposely overbooks the engineering group and requires everyone to work extra hours to get the jobs done. Since we would bill projects directly, the time was easily trackable. So anyway, maybe they would require 50 billed hours per week for a couple months from everyone, and you would get an extra 10 hours a week of pay (straight pay, not time and a half). Sounds good for an exempt employee, right?

The kicker? Well, at the end of the year, if you had accumulated any overtime pay, that was subtracted from your bonus. So if your bonus was $5,000 and you had $2,000 in overtime, your adjusted bonus was $3,000.

That was one of the many reasons I left for greener pastures.

edit - clarity

leftofleftists · 3 months

I worked as a temp at a regional bank that was bought out by a huge bank.

The "transition specialists" were so stupid that they told IT when they were going to be laid off and they left them in place until then. The clean system we had went to sheer hell.

A month later, the specialists laid off the check clearing people. Told them when. The couple of days before their last day, $20 to $40 million in cleared checks disappeared.

They knew everything about banking, not a lick of common sense but MBAs out the kazoo.

I heard later that they threw out 25 to 50 boxes of paper documents that proved the regional bank did not owe Social Security $10 to $25 million. They had already made the refunds. The new national bank paid the "overdue" refunds in cash and threw out the "trash."

UniqueConstraint · 3 months

As I saw a number of people around me getting laid off I checked with my manager (the CIO) to see if my job was safe. He said I had absolutely nothing to worry about. Less than two days later, he laid me off. A week later he asked me to come back (I didn't).

The same company had 25 or so MBA new hires fresh from grad school that were scheduled to start around the same time. They first delayed their start date by a month, then another month. They were getting paid the entire time, each person's salary was over 100K. When they delayed the start date another month, they told them to start looking for new jobs but that they could keep their signing/hiring bonus which ranged from 10K to 50K. So they effectively paid people to work but do nothing for 90 days, then told them they weren't needed but that they could keep their singing bonus. Some of those guys made off with close to 80K for doing absolutely nothing.

you'll need to login or register to do that

create a new account

login