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Morals and Layoffs
Radical changes in modern institutional structure have ushered in an era of short-term, contract, or episodic labor, writes economist Richard Sennett in his book The Corrosion of Character. Corporations have sought to remove layers of bureaucracy, to become "flatter and more flexible" organizations. In place of pyramid-style organizations, management wants now to think of organizations as networks. This means many more layoffs, writes Sennett, and also that promotions and dismissals tend not to be based any longer on fixed rules, since tasks are fluid, and the network is constantly redefining its structure.
Executives are paid more and more to re-shape companies, and work becomes less stable in direct proportion. Workers have never been more powerless, their tenure more fragile. Tech workers, many of whom came of age in an era of growth and full employment, are learning the lessons of the real world quickly. Tasks and missions are temporal, the people employed to execute them highly disposable. Work and workers are both flexible and expendable.
One of the most shocking and widely accepted tenets of the new techno-workplace is that the well-run company, the one that wants to compete in the global economy, has to be so fluid, evolving and responsive to change that thousands of employees can get dumped at one whack and it's not even controversial. That's a pretty long trek from the capitalist ethic that only a few years ago valued corporate loyalty as much as profits, and touted the company-employee bond.
And it raises all sorts of new questions -- especially for a generation of tech workers experiencing layoffs for the first time.
In the Corporate Republic, where corporations fund the political system, control most mass media, write legislation, and now dominate entertainment and culture (and soon, much of technology, from bio-tech to Net access), there are few agreed-upon rules about layoffs. Hardly any would get far in Washington, the world headquarters of corporate lobbying. (Congress, allegedly the public's lobbyists, are scrambling to get campaign funds from corporate donors.)
Unions, already on the wane, have never gained much hold in the Tech Nation, populated by educated, mobile, skilled and independent-minded workers. Some tech companies are comparatively generous -- extending health plans beyond the federal requirements with some benefits extending past a layoff date.
Cisco has offered to pay its laid-off workers for an additional year if they work for charities the company supports. It's nice, but it isn't the same as job security. And even that kind of moral responsibility is rare.
Under COBRA (The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act) passed by Congress in l985, some laid-off or terminated workers (those fired for reasons other than gross misconduct) are entitled to continuation of health benefits for extended periods of time. COBRA doesn't cover companies with fewer than 20 employees, and it doesn't cover all workers terminated under all circumstances. If the company goes bankrupt, for example, COBRA doesn't apply at all. You have to check and see if you're eligible.)
Corporations have no particular incentive to be generous, or even ethical, to terminated employees. Most answer to boards of directors and demanding shareholders expecting maximum profits. Generosity towards workers doesn't serve the bottom line, even when it might serve the company's long-term interests. One of the reasons Cisco treats laid-off workers well, company officials have conceded, is to keep morale high among remaining employees, who feel better about the company and the work they do for it.
All sorts of class issues are roiling the new, techno-driven workforce, amid the thousands of layoffs being announced weekly.
The layoff was once the more or less exclusive province of the working class. but in recent years -- and especially recent months -- it has become a fixture of the white-collar and managerial universe, and of skilled, educated, tech workers. U.S. employment figures show the number of workers on nonfarm payrolls plummeting.
Now lawyers and journalists are getting laid off as well as tech workers, and when reporters started hitting the sidewalk, layoffs became a big story in a hurry.
Yahoo, Dell, AOL Time-Warner and scores of other companies have collectively let go of hundreds of thousands of employees (soon, probably to be followed by layoffs at the new company formed by Hewlitt-Packard's acquisition of Compaq). A generation of tech workers, for the first time, is feeling the impact of a workplace in which corporations seem to feel virtually no moral obligation to the employees they let go.
So just what moral obligation does a company have to laid-off workers?
Some possibilities:
- Maximum warning. Employees ought to have between three and six months' notice before they're laid off, time enough to look for other work in a sane, secure way.
- Continued health benefits. Employment used to be a contract: you worked hard for the company, the company took reasonable care of you. Employees who have been with a corporation any length of time at all -- I'd say six months -- ought to keep their health benefits until they find new work, a guarantee not even COBRA provides.
- Innovative responses. The layoff has become almost a corporate reflex, a statement to analysts, boards of directors and stockholders that management is lean and mean. When the market drops, capital gets squeezed,or takeovers occur, employment gets slashed. This often seems short-sighted. Tech workers are skilled and valuable. It's difficult to predict the nature of technology, and of consumer attitudes towards technological products and innovation. People laid off today might be urgently needed in six months. Shouldn't they at least have a chance to come up with other tasks, products, functions or ideas before they're booted out?
For that matter, tech workers could seek out companies with humane policies towards their workforce, making the companies more valuable and competitive. They could also begin demanding contracts and codified job security when the seek and accept positions -- especially when the economy is in their favor.
Regulatory agencies consider the impact of corporate decision-making on the environment, the consumer, and on anti-trust issues. Why aren't consideration of layoffs and job losses a factor in mergers like that between AOL and Time-Warner, or Hewlitt-Packard and Compaq? Maybe the loss of thousands of jobs isn't worth the short-term savings of some mergers.
Let's not kid ourselves. In the Corporate Republic, we can't expect companies, governments, unions or regulatory agencies to strengthen a sense of corporate morality or humanity. Corporations are more powerful than any of these entities, as tech workers are discovering by the thousands. Workers are on their own. Companies will demonstrate loyalty when they re-gain a sense that it's more efficient, ultimately more profitable, to keep experienced loyal workers than to employ insecure short-term ones. That's possible. But it isn't likely.
Right now it's turning into a "you'll start carrying an ID or you'll cry and carry an ID" republic.
Security of the individual seems to be taking a very solid backseat to the security of the institutions that are supposed to be providing security for the individual.
Every institution seems to eventually forget that their strength comes from the people underneath, be it a company or a government.
Laws should spring forth from society and not be sent down from above. As well as a company's employees should work to better a company rather than having a company as a shelter from poverty.
We have forgotten that the relationship of larger institutions and the individual is a symbiotic one.
After allowing employees to take a voluntary pay cut to save their company and thereby their jobs, Hewlett Packard has found the $130 million in savings was not enough to make investors happy. So, some of the very same employees who gave up salary "for the benefit of the company" are seeing their loyalty paid off in pink slips.
But wait. In what they are heralding as "the next era in employee outplacement," HP is giving it employees a choice of how exactly they will be shitcanned. Apparently, the recent repositioning campaign about sending HP back to the garage where its founder, well, founded the company was no metaphor. By the time the company is done trimming, the remaining staff will be able to comfortably fit in an average two car garage.
Industry analysts say that if HP keeps firing people at this rate, they should be in the black by year's end, even if they sell nothing at all.
More than 6,000 HP Employees found this check-a-box note in their mail trays on Thursday morning.
[Note: "Have my manager fired or laid-off instead of me" was not part of the option menu. Neither was "Screw the investors, we're not in the f***ing commodity business."]
HP CEO Carly Fiorina says that she is excited about the company's brave new direction in outplacement.
"At HP, we've always been innovators in terms of employee benefits and employee options," said Fiorina. "We think other companies in our peer group will be following our lead."
Chief among the innovations in the program is the new "volunteer status" which allows employees to continue working for HP and serving HP customers without actually getting paid. While the money they would have made is not tax deductible, they are, as Fiorina put it, perfectly free to brag about it as they would for any volunteer work. The company has outlined preliminary plans for Habitat-For-Humanity-style t-shirts for the new volunteers.
"You would be shocked to learn what people will do for a t-shirt," said Fiorina.
C'mon, Jon, i've come to expect a certain "knee-jerk" response from you on these posts, and frankly I'm a bit disappointed that I didn't see it here. Actually, I'd like to see some answers. After the events of the past two weeks, I think that all of us are rethinking our job stability.
John
Boy, jus tlike Katz to pick up a 30 year old trend and call it new.
Of course, in the '70;s it was blue collar workers like steel and auto workers.
In the early 90's it was mid level managers.
Now it's affecting geeks who's geekiness is being able to start Front Page and write wysiwig web pages.
As someone who worked through the 90-91 recession, this is nothing new, keep your skills up to date and keep rolling with the punches.
I would like to point out that when the DotBombs crashed, 99% of the folks that lost their jobs worked in the IT Industry. if you want more security, allpy your skills to another sector in the market like the automotive or aerospace sector, or the public sector(though the pay sucks)
that way when the IT industry, which is very volitile goes down, you still have a job. yes ripples in the market can affect others, but in auto, ford just shuts down production at first, then if things get seriouse they go to long term layoffs on the factory floor then move to the engeneers and software developers.
yes you won't get the pay you would working in IT industry, but the job security is much higher.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Well, as a somewhat technology savvy teen who just turned 15, I was looking forward to a summer job at a local dotcom. (I live in the Silicon Valley) Now when I inquired about simple mindless tasks that usually hire youths, I find no vacancies even at McDonald's! Heh. Just something to think about. Why would they hire a youth when they could hire someone who needs to feed his family.
PayPal $$ if you sign up for free offers (eBay, cred cards, e
I'm finding it hard to see anything new here.
I'm ex-military. When I was in, I was a commissioned officer. As such, I was expected to earn a master's degree in *something*, and fill a number of other career checkboxes. Failure to do so would make me ineligible for promotion to Major, and therefore ineligible to serve 20 and get a pension.
While I was in, I had a mentor, a Colonel, who'd changed jobs 33 times in his USAF career. Basically, he started looking for a new job as soon as he started a job, and he started something new each year.
I liked that, and that's how I run my life. As soon as I get a job, I'm looking for a job. I don't expect anything from my employer, except what I negotiate, and I don't even expect that to last.
I can remember my mother telling me to get a good job and hold it forever. And keep my money in a bank deposit account. Safety first. Sorry, illusion of safety first.
It's a cold, prickly world out there. Get used to it.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
The five finger discount story went up at 7:54am. Your story on the same subject is up at 9:45. God you type fast!
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
Many times "company loyalty" only goes one way with the employee giving it and the company giving the employee "the shaft." I have been there. However, I find it silly to expect that I can walk away from my job anytime, leaving my employer with ruined plans and wasted money but they must give me advanced notice before letting me go.
Don't get me wrong, an employer treating me right before letting me loose would be great! As an employee I should be willing to do the same for my employer should I start pursuing a career path away from them.
Lack of job security is an American thing. Sure, other countries have made it easier to lay people off, but not to the extent it has been taken in America. Corporations have your government representatives in their pockets, and corporations don't want job security. But why complain, job security seems to go hand-in-hand with left-wing socialist policies that so many Americans sneer at. "Socialism" seems to be a derogatory word to many Americans. Even countries like Britian or Canada who could be said to be the most similar in the world to the US idealogically get called "more socialist", as if it's bad. You want job security, embrace a bit of socialism.
That sounds good, but you will not get much work out of people that know their job is gone in six months -- especially while they are looking for other work. You then end up fighting the urge to just fire the employee.
Click here or here.
I've been made redundant twice this year.
After working for Grey Interactive UK for 18 months the tech slowdown eventually forced them to loose staff. throughout this process we were consulted and kept up to date with goings on, and when it came to the inevitable announcement I was one of approx 30% of the company. I was told that GIUK would try to place me with another Grey company, and if unsuccessful, within a month I would be made redundant. I was free to use the facilities to print CVs, browse the net, and generally look for work. I chose not to pursue a relocation to another Grey office, and spent most of the time out of the office, however, it was good to know there was some support there.
I found work with a company called Zinc a few weeks later and things were looking up, however after five weeks (yes weeks) I was called up, out of the blue with no forewarning. I was told their parent company was asking then to make redundancies (much like grey), and as it was a Last in First Out basis, I was to go.. I was escorted out the building and given a weeks notice pay.
in retrospect I feel I was treated fairly by Grey and discovered that small things can make such a huge difference in how you perceive you are being treated.
I think the most important thing is to keep your employees informed. It was such an amazing shock to me and I still feel rather bitter about it (while having fonder memories of my time at Grey (of course I was pretty pissed off about it at the time))
I have since found a new job... far from ideal, however beggars can't be choosers in the current tech climate
EMACS?! VI?! I target the individual bits on my HDD by diverting the path of cosmic rays through sheer willpower alone!
I've been in this business for almost as long as the majority of users here have been alive. I've seen sweeping changes over the years as to how a company treats their tech workers.
When I started up true techs where few and far between in my geographical area. Most of the guys I knew who got into this business where starting a second career, thus older than the lot we have today, and had varying backgrounds like electronics wizards, telecom guys from the military, etc. We where treated with a lot more respect because the companies we worked for knew that they would have problems if we ever left.
The networks we put together weren't just made up of commodity hardware you can buy at the local CompUSA. Most networks where a reflection of the team that designed them. Little inconsistancies and tricks that only they knew about. If the sysop where to be let go, they'd be in for trouble.
Today we have millions of qualified(?) cookie cutter tech guys (and gals) out in the workforce. They've all pretty much had the same exposure to technology as they grew up and went to school. Basically, they're interchangable. I know this is a generalization, but it holds true for 99%.
It's very hard these days to distinguish yourself as a vital part of the corporate machine. Techs can be let go at anytime with the understanding that it will be easy to replace them with someone of equal ability and the skills required to manage an existing system.
load "linux",8,1
No, the employers caused this when they did the mass layoffs for "downsizing" in the early nineties. Anyone who even watched that from afar should have learned that loyalty ain't worth shit, and you should always (a) keep your skills up; and (b) keep your eyes open for better opportunities. Since job-hopping is more accepted in the tech business, this naturally led to people switching more oten during the boom. Now that we're almost certainly in a recession, it's more difficult - but that doesn't mean that we should all turn into starched-collared Organization Men again.
sulli
RTFJ.
I work in the Silicon Valley. A number of companies here find it hard to get workers because they treated layoffs wrong. Loyalty is a two-way transaction. For example, the armed services are learning this, because there appears to be a crisis of downward loyalty (this has been written about pretty extensively). Basically top brass sacrifice their subordinates, and it's quit working. Captain-level attrition was never higher.
It's the same in industry. Some companies -always- have waiting lists. Some companies play hell getting people to come on board. There's a reason for that. Corporate, like individual, reputation has a lot to do with how willing people are to work there. And reputation, both good and bad, is pretty often earned.
In the early nineties. People with years of experience and families to feed were competing for the same entry level jobs I was looking for. I ended up putting my CS degree to use working construction. Learned a little roofing, duct work, wallboarding, and other useful tech skills.
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Yeah, Katz, you're saying that now, but weren't you talking not long ago about the New Economy and how it would change everything?
sulli
RTFJ.
Not knowing Jon Katz' history. Has he ever worked for a company such as QWest ?
There is a financial reality here. Companies have to make money. Is it not equally immoral to keep everyone on payroll, at the expense of one's debtors ?
Certainly, there are some nasty companies out there. I know, I've worked for some of them. But the reality is that the "gold watch" methaphor was a short lived creature of the mid 20th century. Well, there were those friends of royalty who worked for life a particular despot, until their boss was deposed. At which point, their contract, along with their lives were usually terminated. That, or slavery.
While I wish loyalty was valued more by both employer and employee, the reality is that jobs are just that, jobs.
healyourchurchwebsite.com - WWJB?
If you are looking for work in the private sector (corporations) a Ph.D. is a complete waste. Salary studies consistently show that people in tech jobs with a tech bachelor's and an MBA earn roughly twice as much as PhD's. People with Tech Masters come in a close second.
People with PhDs in Tech jobs average somewhere between high school graduates and college dropouts in salary. Yes there are excpetions, but as a rule a Masters degree is the top of the line.
Remeber the old sayings about PhD? Piled Higher and Deeper; and Someone who knows more and more about less and less.
Chris
-- I need more coffee. It's Monday. There is no such thing as enough coffee on a Monday.
This thinking came because of the reverse...
Most companies haven't been thinking in terms of engendering employee loyalty for well over a decade now. I know, I've been in two of the downturns in the economy now- they (corporations) tend only to think of that bottom line. And worse, they think of it in only short-term thoughts. All this bloodletting they're doing to their staff makes them look good on paper, but they just got rid of at least part of the people that were needed to make their projects they have in progress go- they're butchering their medium-term and possibly their long-term profitability to look good in the here and now.
This all came about from the last downturn in the economy some ten years ago when there were...wait for it...mass layoffs not unlike now, etc. The companies showed absolutely no loyalty then- why should the employees show them any loyalty when they're going to keep doing it over and over and over...
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I found this post ironic because in the last few years many tech workers have enjoyed an ability to switch from job to job, garnering raises and promotions on the way. Employee mobility, especially in the tech sector, has been higher in the last 3-4 years than it probably has ever been. This, I would expect most readers here would agree, is a Good Thing.
But I wonder, don't "job security" and "employee loyalty" go hand in hand ? Sure, employees will be more loyal to companies that offer the kinds of perks Katz talks about, but aren't companies also more likely offer those kinds of perks if they had some reason to believe their employees would show them loyalty ? How, in this time of unprecedented worker mobility, can we fairly expect companies to extend things like 3-6 months termination notice when companies probably would be derided for expecting 3-6 months of notice when one of their employees decided to leave for greener pastures ?
In short, what kind of responsibilities ought we have to our employers ? Is it reasonable to expect that companies should be any less self-interested than we workers are ?
In the DC area we're getting tens of thousands of layoffs, but tech workers, especially those with clearances, are doing well. It's the airport/airline/hotel/restaurant workers who're getting screwed. You've got people who didn't make much to begin with being laid off and unable to find any jobs, not even minimum wage. On the other end of the scale airline pilots with $200,000/year salaries and $500,000 mortgages are getting pink slips.
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If I wanted loyality I'd get a dog. A job is a job, I can find anouther one next week. McDonalds would love to have me, and would start me at $40k/year with binifits if I applied. (I happen to know the folks to ask, but anyone willing to work hard can be up to that wage in a year of hard work if you go management) Welders are in great demand now. It seems there are never enough doctors, and the baby boomers aren't getting healthier.
Sure some of the above need training I don't have, but don't tell me I should be layal to my currnet job, I'm not, and I don't expect the same out of them. I work for money. Find me a job I can do for more money (remember both short and long term I can't be paid next year no matter how much money it is, and getting killed isn't worth a lot of money)
It is a job, not my life. I don't want to work in the same place for years. A lay-off isn't the nicest way to end employment, but it isn't the worst either. I can do any job you can think of. i'd hate some (management), I'd need a lot of schooling for others (medical doctor), and I'd suck horridly at others (novel writer, sports), but I could do it. Some days I'd give up my computer job to clean septic tanks in -40 tempatures. Other days I love my comptuer job.
[Bitter rant on]
I came into the job market in the mid 80's. Most Slashdotter's parents were ensconced in middle/upper management. NO jobs, LOTS of layoffs and bugger all security. You want to know why your situation sucks? Ask mummy and daddy.
[Bitter rant off]
that legislating job security also has real costs to employees, employers, and shareholders. Put bluntly, the harder you make it to let go of an employee, the harder it is for a company to hire an employee. If a company can't let go of an employee when it is no longer economically feasible, they'll think twice about hiring. Whatever benefit you gain by being able to produce marginally more units (or services) can be easily overwhelmed by having to carry a lot of deadweight around during a slump (it comes right off your bottom line). This inefficiency also inevitably ends up hitting consumers, which are employees themselves. Translation: It reduces the employees buying power.
You want job security? Prepare for a significantly more stagnant economy.
I would argue that many of the jobs lost in the US are jobs that may well have NEVER have been created in countries with socialist leanings. You want to talk about unemployment? Checkout those countries with such protections, they tend to be FAR higher than the US on the aggregate.
Here's how I see it as a tech worker that recently found work after trying all the normal avenues:
/. person? (for lack of a better example)
I don't want job security THAT much. If I am busy and getting paid what I am worth, I will be happy.
Most of the time, I will get bored with your company and move on when another opportunity arrives because of:
a) Dumb company practices, policies.
b) Clueless managers.
c) Clueless coworkers that make my job 2x harder.
I totally do nothing but contract work now with some friends with our own small LLC run out of a basements and cell phones. We literally walk into office buildings and go to individual companies and ask if they need something done. We do it until it's done, and get paid.
If they like the work, They owe me nothing, I owe them nothing. I move on to next company. Rinse and Repeat as often as necessary. Simple business transaction. And its not like there is a shortage of work.
Around here (Troy,MI) there are tons of businesses that need IT work done, and are willing to pay for it, yet all these IT companies are going under and laying people off, and you know what? Most of them are clueless "tech workers" with either no skills, or deadends. It does suck for them. I'm sorry that they decided to only learn FORTRAN because it made them good money at the time and demand is now down so they get laid off. I'm sorry that you only know VBScript, it's not going to get the servers/firewall up, NBX working, and database running. How many "tech workers" do you know that actually LOVE tech and learning the stuff as much as the average
If you need work, link up with a few friends and do it freelance at night/weekends. If you are smart and know your shit, you're going to get it done twice as fast as some 'solutions' company and get paid directly without hassle. Use the benfits of an LLC to negotiate a good health care plance. A few friends of mine were laid off when a IT firm went under, they all got together and contract themselves as a team, and now they have TOO much work...
Everyone might say "the tech sector is down", but AFAIK, people still need to use computers to conduct business - We all are still working in the trenches getting work done for people while HP/Compaq and others are walking around with their heads up their asses....
I believe that this is just one aspect of a very frightening shift of accountability and responsibility in the United States that has occured over the past 120 years. Abraham Lincoln once said that this "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth." Well, we've proven him wrong. The US is a government of the corporation, by the corporation, and for the corporation.
Look, for example, at the Anti-Terrorism Act that would make hacking a terrorist act, punishable by life in prison and subject to RICO statutes. I'm not going to claim any support for hacking, but there is something fundamentally wrong with a nation where financial crimes against a corporation are considered far more serious that violent crime against an individual, yet corporations cannot be held criminally responsible for their actions. If you break in and deface Union Carbide's web site, you could have all of your possessions seized just on suspicion, and spend the rest of your life in prison if convincted. When they killed thousands of people in Bhopal, they got a slap on the wrist.
This situation is nobody's fault, and yet everybody's failing. Our governent is based on popular support, and the will of the people. The way our politicians gauge such support is based on who they hear from, and what they hear. They hear from individuals, and lobbying groups that represent individuals. And under modern US law, corporations are very large and very powerful people, capable of shouting far louder than anyone else.
Abraham Lincoln also said, "I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. ... corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed." -- President Abraham Lincoln, letter to William F. Elkins, Nov 21, 1864 (from The Lincoln Encyclopedia [MacMillan, 1950]) (Quote reference thanks to Hank Kalet)
Where do you want to go today?
At the height of the dot.com, workers weren't exactly ticking to their jobs to help the company prosper,
except in the cases of golden handcuffs (long term stock options).
Now they expect these companies to all the sudden reward them with generous severances.
What good for the goose is good for the gander.
I don't see the problem.
"Do they owe anything to the people they dump? "
Sure, they owe what the contract promised, no more no less.
Corporations' disregard for their employees is equal to employees' disregard for their employers. Should companies give 3-6 months warning of layoffs? Why the hell should they? How many employees have to give that much notice if they feel like leaving?
Sure, people (including me) can lose a job at short notice. But, we can get a job at short notice. Even 15 years ago, if you left a job voluntarily for no reason better than to have 6 months unpaid chilling out with your family, it would make you unemployable in the eyes of many. Now, you are free to do that kind of thing.
Employees have far more information about the companies they join and work for. They are far more able to determine their employer's health for themselves. They have much better access to their managers. No more big boss on the top floor with the oak desk; most managers, while just as focussed on the bottom line, are far more approachable and forthcoming.
These days, few people would want to go back to the old paternalistic model. The quick hire quick fire culture was spawned as much by tech workers jumping for better pay every 12 months as it was by businesses jiggling their structures every 12 months.
It's the modern world, deal with it.
-----
"Workers have never been more powerless, their tenure more fragile."
That's an out and out lie.
Workers during the start of the Industrial Revolution and up to the 1920s had no rights. No sick leave, no family leave, no workman's comp, no ergonomics, no disability, no insurance, no prevailing wage, no holiday time. Layoffs came with no advanced warning, heck back then you couldn't even have the warning of knowing what the stock price was doing.
There were no labor relations boards, no legal recourse, no comp time...nothing but the punch-clock and the 5 o'clock whistle, and the knowledge that if you didn't go in the next day there were 5 or 10 immigrants fresh off the boat or train waiting to take your job.
Again Katz has forgot that there was a world before 1990 and he ignores history. People have it good now compared to one hundred years ago, a fact that Labor Unions lament as thier Union rolls decrease.
It is within my lifetime (and I'm only in my 30s) that people were still getting Gold Watches for 50 years of service in a company. If there is a single person of my generation, or younger, who actually remains in work for 50 years, never mind with the same company, I would be amazed.
Jobs have become disposable. And like disposable napkins, they get dumped more with an eye to being rid of them than anything.
Job security has become a joke. Corporations, not Government, dominate the political and legal scenes. Benefits packages have gone from being incentives to whatever the company can get away with. "Fat Cat" bosses get the cream, the workers get the bill.
This was demonstrated in England, about 5 or 6 years ago, during a particularly nasty drought. Yorkshire Water hadn't any. They were trucking emergency supplies in, daily, just to cover the barest essentials of the populace. When rain did fall, it "fell in the wrong areas". The meagre supplies that existed were being lost. 33% of the water was lost, as ancient piping fractured, with negligable maintenance to repair it.
Despite this state of affairs, the CEO of Yorkshire Water awarded himself something like 450,000 pounds (about $800,000) bonus, on top of a hefty pay-rise. Employees were lucky, if they got more than insults from those affected by the drought.
This wasn't an isolated incident, though it did force the British Parliament to consider legislation to prevent senior managers in corporations from soaking up the profits in this way. Never really came to much, though, despite a massive public backlash.
In America, with unions as corrupt as the companies they vie against, there is nobody looking out for the little guys - the ones who actually do the work that allow the company to exist.
Yes, Unions are as much to blame as the CEOs. Unions were initially formed in Britain as a cross between health insurance, unemployment benefits, scam prevention, and health & safety inspection, back in the 1600's. In Britain, at least some have remained fairly true to that vision.
In America, though, it's a different story. Unions have become monsters; frightening distortions of the common-welfare organizations from which they were born. They protect their income, not their members, and instead of curbing the excesses of the corporations, they feed off it. By now, we should have seen a worker uprising against the abuses that are common in the workplace. We haven't. Nor will we. In an environment where back-stabbing is the quickest way to the top, and an expectation of a fair day's wage for a fair day's work is the quickest way out the door, there is nobody willing to stand up on their own. And with nobody backing them, there's no reason for anybody to change their minds.
Monopolies, such as Microsoft's, should be impossible, as employees in different companies put their loyalty in their fellow workers, forcing the conflicting sides to work peacably together, not work to destroy each other. But it's not happening.
Why?
Because not only do companies erode benefits, where possible, and reward employees with festering paranoia, but they also oppose any who stand up to them.
If worker A gets fired, for opposing abuse in the workplace, you're not going to see them get hired by a rival firm. Too risky! This guy's a trouble-maker! Whistle-blowers face a life of being unemployed and unemployable. And, in the ever-tighter restrictions on welfare, the best they can hope for is a room in Cardboard City.
Where are the protests against this inhuman treatment? Where is the Civil Rights Movement, when civil rights in the one place you spend most of your waking hours barely exist at all? Where are the heros of the Working Class?
They don't exist. The average American has long been convinced that people on welfare are scum, unworthy of another thought. Since these are the very people who have most to protest about, America is deaf to their cause and needs. Worse, with a certain George Bush putting his hand in the welfare jar, to pay for his tax cuts & other assorted voter bribes, the voters - the Americans who matter to the politicians - will remain silent.
What does that leave us? Not a whole lot. An article by Jon Katz, a few objections by Slashdotters, but that's all we'll ever see.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Well, no. Not really. Even after a lot of job changes I still don't want job security. It's not for me. I'd rather have my independence thankyouverymuch. Right now I'm able to walk out the door without any notice whenever I find something I don't like at a job, and I think it's only fair for the employer to have the right to fire me without any notice whenever they feel like it. I like it that way. Don't have any family to support, never will. Why the hell would I want job security?
The decision to cut employees from a company is always not a very palatable issue for those who get to make the decision. I'm sure many get sleepless nights before and after making one. I've read somewhere this even ranks high among the causes of heart attacks in executives who need to make these decisions.
Layoffs however needs to be balanced against the realities of survival for the company. In other words, its a sacrifice of the few versus the good of many (hopefully). I know because I was there before and its not an easy task to be looking at your team and analyzing who should remain and who should go. I was not even sure if I would also be included myself in the rationalization of pisitions.
In these situations it is always better to do your utmost in your job because surely your boss will be able to notice this against others on your team. You can make a rational analysis too of your skills and capabilities as against other members of your team or the company's direction itself. Before anything else create your own "golden parachute" and jump before the ship goes on a nosedive.
$0.02
Return the bells of Balangiga.
While I agree that the idea that workers are 'entitled' to something after poaring their souls into a company is a GREAT idea, mandating this by law is a little overboard I think.
The entire notion that workers are 'entitled' to anything is just wrong. A company needs work done. It pays people cash in exchange for completing that work. PERIOD. You want more then that? Work for yourself. Easy enough..
I mean, what if you hired a painter to paint your house. He finishes, but when hes done, suddenly demand that you pay him an extra 50%.
When theres no work to be done, then the workers arent needed. So they have to find something else to do. If a company takes CARE of its employees, the benifits will be apperent. Treat them like dirt, and you dont attract good workers. Unions are, in reality, simply a company whos sole job is to hold companies ransom, using their workers as hostages. Ok, this sounds harsh, but really, thats what it is. THEY ARE A GOOD THING. If workers choose to go it by themselves, then great. They have the right to leave whenever they wish, JUST like the company has the right to say We dont NEED you anymore.
If we DO end up going down that road, then we might as well just say everyone works, and the government 'issues' them moneys. Instead of companies charging for items, the government places a fair price on things. This is what we're going to if we start mandating that workers are entitled to something other then fair pay.
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
Microsoft isn't innocent. They'd rather that it hadn't happened, but they aren't innocent. When a single company takes that large a chunk of the finances of an industry, then it's not innocent when the industry tanks.
But that's a long way from saying that they intended things to happen this way.
In a way, Microsoft is rather like Yahoo and Amazon. They used ballooning stock prices to create a speculative bubble. When the bubble popped, so did most of the industry built around it. And most of the "fault" should go to the stock speculators who blew that bubble so insanely large. Most of them have already been subjected to heavy fines for their part in the fiasco. In this spot I include the employees who were paid in stock options.
One of the groups that should be faulted is the accountants who wrote the rules that allowed taxes to be deferred for employees being paid in stock options. And who allowed the stock being paid to not be charged against the company immediately. Those *** got off scot free, and they certainly didn't deserve to. That was a reasonable benefit for a small company, say with fewer than 50 people. It should have been phased out as the size of the company increased.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
When I worked for larger corporations (>10000 employees) and spoke of expanding the organization, the question was always what would we do with these people should the program go away or once the program is complete? There was always the concern of getting into the position where we would have to lay someone off simply because we had nothing for them to do anymore.
In the dot-bomb economy, however, companies are more concerned in getting the product to market ASAP and expand rapidly, hiring many more people than they actually need (cf. The Mythical Man Month) without any concern, really, as to what is to happen to these people once they get product to market.
They seem to view people as a commodity (which is sorta true), but completely ignore the fact that they're dicking with peoples' lives. In a contract situtation it is understood that it can end at any moment, so prepare for that. But when one accepts a position, even though it is at-will, the employer has the responsbility to do everything in their power to ensure that employment continues.
"Stop whining!" - Arnold, as Mr. Kimble
Way back when, Henry Ford paid his workers well (relatively speaking), provided housing, schools for their children, loans, etc. He even once went to the wall to pay his workers bonuses instead of giving dividends to shareholders (sadly, the shareholders sued and won in court).
In general, however, people did not like the way Ford ran things. They felt that it was patronizing and condescending. It allowed Ford to excersize excessive control over employees' private lives and he could not resist the temptation. When you ask your employer to play parent, they will.
There is no such thing as a free lunch. Today, the deal is "do your work, get paid." It's a fairly simple deal and most people understand it. Hoping for a fat severence equivalent to several months salary is understandable, but the associated costs are so high that even more people would be laid off if a company chose that option.
Layoffs are hard, both for those let go and those who remain, but it is a fact of life and I don't see how being bitter can be of any help. Instead, true professionals will keep on top of the changes in the industry and learn what is necessary to stay competative. This threat of failure is what forces both companys and individuals to constantly improve. And that improvement will, in the long run, lead to a better life for everyone.
In short, life is hard and it will only get harder. Thank god -- because if life were easy, we'd all be living in sod shacks worrying if there's enough food to stay alive during the coming winter.
Cheers,
Rob
(Dammit -- mod the other one down. That's what I get for posting from unfamiliar machines and not using preview)
Under COBRA (The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act) passed by Congress in l985, some laid-off or terminated workers (those fired for reasons other than gross misconduct) are entitled to continuation of health benefits for extended periods of time. COBRA doesn't cover companies with fewer than 20 employees, and it doesn't cover all workers terminated under all circumstances. If the company goes bankrupt, for example, COBRA doesn't apply at all. You have to check and see if you're eligible.)
COBRA, my ass. When I got laid off earlier this year I found out I could keep my health benefits for slightly more than my rent, paid every month.
Oh, and I'm single. That's not even for the "family plan," which was a good _double_ my half of the rent.
Somehow, this doesn't seem like a terribly helpful program to the typical tech worker who's been dropped like a used tampon or a worn out dream.
--saint
What everyone seems to be missing in all the layoff paranoia is the same thing that makes it easy for a company to hire you, makes it easy for them to fire you. America has a very dynamic work force. They transition jobs very quickly. What this means is that jobs are almost continually being created and destroyed. A company can feel free to hire a bunch of people in hopes the demand will be there, because they know if the demand isn't there, they can fire them. Compare this with Europe, where layoffs are extremely discourged by the governments. You have less jobs created, because they know that once they hire people it is extremely hard to fire them. This is what causes the American economy to creat more jobs than most other economies. That is why the American unemployment is typically lower than other countries. So as we lament the ability of companies to lay off American employees, let's not forget that that same ability is what got a large portion of those employees hired in the first place.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
In the best of times, of course companies hire. In the worst of times, the only reason a company will hire is if they know they can fire them just as quickly.
That being said, most companies realize that when they hire again, people will remember how they were treated. So unless it is a dire emergency, most (larger) companies will give some sort of package.
"Love is never saying you're too proud." -Tonic
Some possibilities:
Maximum warning. Employees ought to have between three and six months' notice before they're laid off, time enough to look for other work in a sane, secure way.
Continued health benefits. Employment used to be a contract: you worked hard for the company, the company took reasonable care of you. Employees who have been with a corporation any length of time at all -- I'd say six months -- ought to keep their health benefits until they find new work, a guarantee not even COBRA provides.
Innovative responses. The layoff has become almost a corporate reflex, a statement to analysts, boards of directors and stockholders that management is lean and mean. When the market drops, capital gets squeezed,or takeovers occur, employment gets slashed. This often seems short-sighted. Tech workers are skilled and valuable. It's difficult to predict the nature of technology, and of consumer attitudes towards technological products and innovation. People laid off today might be urgently needed in six months. Shouldn't they at least have a chance to come up with other tasks, products, functions or ideas before they're booted out?
This would be best done in a collective bargaining situtation which is almost non-existant in the IT sector.
Plenty of professionals have unions (teachers,professors, nurses for example). There is no way this would pass into a law without being so watered down as to be completely ineffective. Don't like the idea of unions? Then maybe you might want to give up your weekend and 8 hour work day, without unions we'd have neither of those.
Yes, its hard to save, but forgoing a new PC or a few DVDs here and there can keep you living the way you are accustomed to when the shit hits the fan.
Companies do have an incentive to treat laid-off employees with respect: loyalty and morale.
Compare the morale at a company that just laid off 1000 workers with no severence package and was ignorant to the people to a company that did it "right", with generous severence packages and compassionate managers. The first one will end up losing good workers, because they will feel that they will be treated like trash, just like the people just laid off. Many good people will stay at the second company, because they feel that they will be respected and treated fairly. And they really won't even fear for their jobs, because they know that if they get laid off in a next round, it won't have too large of a financial impact.
Loyalty must be earned. And it does have an impact on the quality of the work that gets done.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
If the employee doesn't feel a sense of loyalty to the company, why should the company be criticized for not having loyalty to the employee?
The 90's were marked by workers hopping from one dot-com to another with remarkable speed, in search of a better deal. Headhunters were ruthless in grabbing workers, sometimes snagging them from the same company they placed them with as soon as the 'no-touch' period was over.
Where were the moralists when the shoe was on the other foot? They were silent, and the overwhelming response was positive towards a culture in which employees were free to pursue the best options available to them without guilt or recrimination.
And yet, Mr. Katz would have us believe that the worker is powerless before the "Corporate Republic". This same worker that drove companies into a frenzy to try to woo him during the boom, is now powerless when we slip into a recession.
Business is cyclical, and at the bottom of a cycle, jobs are hard to find, and companies layoff people as part of cost cutting. That's reality. It's the other side of the coin that gave us massive salaries and stock options, and record low unemployment.
The fact is, most people who are getting laid off are finding other work. The churn is going up, but the overall unemployment figures are staying pretty stable. Yes, if you had an inflated position, and were hired because you knew how to spell 'computer' in the midst of the boom, you're going to have some problems. But if you kept your skills up, the jobs are out there. Hell, my company's hiring people right now.
Loyalty appears to be on the decline, but on both sides of this issue, which would probably make for a more boring, though relevant, story. Way to take the high road Jon.
Yours truly,
Mr. X
...been on both sides...
You know what? When doing restructuring or cost trimming, companies around here actually make a strong effort not to fire anyone - they cut costs with equipment and maintenance, they re-train employees, they shift people from one place to another in the structure instead of firing in one side and hiring on the other side.
For most companies it all boils down to a question of "What is cheaper?", and when the firing of someone is a very expensive option, things like re-training sudenly seem very attractive.
It's not a question of technology, it's a question of society.
(Interestingly enough, in the US the only persons that do get big severance payments seem to be incompetent CEOs and the likes - the ones that put big companies close to bankrupcy usually get the biggest severance payments)
exactly. welcome to the real world. this kind of thing goes on all the time, has gone on all the time, and will go on, and on. recently, the tech workers have been exempt from this.
it all reminds me of the quote by Martin Niemöller:maybe we should have been paying more attention to the real world while we basked in our stock options and complimentary sports cars.
-samThe REAL sam_at_caveman_dot_org is user ID 13833.
Apparantly that's Katz's rule. Qwest "Tossed" 4000 workers? Hardly. I work in Qwest IT, and no one I know of is aware of a single non-management employee (in the generally used sense of the word, not in the sense that Qwest uses them to categorize employees) who has been released involuntarily from their position. Some contractors have been shuffled around and out, but, frankly, that's the risk of working for a contracting company, and that's why I don't do it any more.
What Qwest DID do was reaffirm its nearly inviolable hiring freeze with the goal of having 4000 fewer workers by the end of March, 2002. Perhaps there will be some layoffs next year, it's hard to say. No one, however, has been "tossed".
I believe we are seeing the first steps towards the Dysotopian Worlds of William Gibson, Bruce Sterling and other writers of the dark future/cyberpunk genre. I think I heard it here on Slashdot, someone said, if you want to see how your grandchildren will be living, take a good hard look at how the Palestinians are living right now. In two or three generations there will be 3 classes of people, the non-working poor, working poor and the super rich. The Bill Gates and Michael Dells of the future will be the real world leaders, while the governments become thier lap dogs. Declaring War on unspecified enemies, to jumpstart the Military-Industrial Complex, removing all pretense to a constitutional society and making computer crime a capital offence are just the beginning.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
> That's a pretty long trek from the capitalist
> ethic that only a few years ago valued corporate
> loyalty as much as profits, and touted the
> company-employee bond.
From an economics standpoint, this is completely out of left field. The only "capitalist ethic" that exists, going way back to Keyes, is "Make money. Give money to investors. Repeat."
Aside from that inconsistency, this article reads like so much of tax-and-spend entitlement programs that the liberals tried to force upon us in the '90s.
In the late 90s and early 2000, the "labor" market had all the power and called the shots. Now the pendulum has swung back the other way. Boo hoo, get over it. Give it 3-8 years and it'll come back.
Oh, yeah... and the dot-com boom/bust is not alone since the Industrial revolution, Jon. Have a look at the chart price stocks of railroads in the 19th century sometime.
-- "In order to have power, I must be taken seriously." -Mojo Jojo
I think this is a well written argument. But it is also a complex arguement. There are any number of things wrong with the practices of many corporations, but it is still the best system in the world, at least in the US.
Does a company owe you anything? I think that they do owe something. US history (can't speak to other countries) is full of instances where companies abuse workers and take advantage of them. A number of workers' rights have been exacted into law to prevent these abuses.
So what does a company owe you? IMHO, they owe you more than your next paycheck. As your tenure increases, a company owes you notification of ending your job. The same applies in the reverse. You owe them notice. I don't have a great solution for implementing this. Humans are driven by emotions and if you tell your boss you are leaving in 4 wks, you might get launched. I'd vote for a bill to prevent early terminations for people who have notified you.
This gets complicated. What about pregnancies? Does a person (male or female) who takes leave for a new baby owe the company some amount of time back at work? I think they do.
Ah, my thoughts run amuck...
What about CEOs (and other executives) who are paid quite handsomely in stock (options or shares)? Often they have a short sighted view of the company because their compensation is tied to company success. Not necessarily profit/loss/market share performance. Usually stock price performance. My wife's company, for example, has laid off quite a few people. Does the business justify it? I don't know, but I doubt it's all business related. I think that as the stock has declined in price, there have been more actions taken. To me, that is contrary to the fundamental nature of a company. A company exists to continue to exist and derive a profit. Working to raise the stock price, which has very little relation to the success of the company, is poor business practice. Once you have issued stock, unless you need to issue more, stock price has no relation to the company's performance. Except in investor's perceptions.
I saw a comment on workers leaving poorly run companies or those with poor benefits. The problem here is that information does not flow well between companies. There is no place you can go look and see what a company really does with it's employees or how they are treated. Unless you know someone in the company, you are gambling when you accept a job.
The flip side of that is a company does not know what they will get when they hire you. They are (to some extent), gambling that you will do a good job. We have all seen people hired who did not perform. Sometimes that is the person's fault (laziness, lack of QA, etc.) and sometimes they are not suited to the job. However, it's a learning experience. For both the company and the employee.
IMHO (again), employees have some responsibility to perform. I would not want to see IT worked unionized with some certifications (not the current ones, new ones that measure skills), some expectation of performance, and some rules or guidelines to protect the company. At the same time, employees should be somewhat protected from random or stock-related firing. I'm not suggesting a company cannot fire people or lay them off, but some notice is required and some benefits must continue.
One last pet peeve and I'll cease rambling today. I'm well paid. As a DBA/developer, I'm paid near the top of my profession. However, one thing I think should be implemented is that public companies (can't regulate privates) should have some rules to prevent huge disparities between bottom and top level workers. Corporations often give out huge salaries to attract top level talent at the expense of others. I'm not looking for actual caps, but some type of relative percentages between a entry-level manager and a CEO. Between a Director and a programmer. Maybe we would have to use averages among levels, but I think the disparities contribute to inefficiencies as well as ethical abuse of non-executive employees. Especially in public companies. I think there is quite a bit of fiscal irresponsibility to shareholders in this area.
Thanks for listening.
One note: CORBA does not (necessarily) apply if a company goes bankrupt or ends their health benefits. Keep that in mind if you are the sole wage earner in a family.
I wish somebody would layoff Katz so we wouldn't have to endure his pontificating. (BTW that's layoff as in terminate employment, not "layoff" as in stop heaping abuse on him)
You're using her as bait, Master!
The link provided by the AC leads to credible figures that directly contradict the claim about "at will" and unemployment rates. E.g. it shows that the more socialist Holland has unemployment rates almost half that of the US.
Katz is right, in today's economy a company does have to have a fluid structure to respond to rapidly changing market conditions. But laying off 4,000 workers is a sign that your company is about as fluid as granite.
At no time in American history that I'm aware of, not even at the start of the Great Depression, did the market go so sour so fast that a thousand workers that were earning the company profit yesterday were so much dead weight today. If you as an executive ever reach the conclusion that you need to lay off a gigantic chunk of your workforce, then either
1. You're just wrong, ie: you DO still need those workers
2. You should have been laying them off gradually for the last year or two
"Fluidity" is rapid structural change to meet the conditions of the environment. If that environment changes gradually, so must you. And no matter what the newspaper analysts spout about the significance of stock prices and what-all, the economy DOES NOT experience massive structural change over the course of a day, week, or month. No exogenous economic factors could rightly justify a mammoth sloughing of labor in such a short time.
I realize I'm just repeating myself. That's because the point is very simple. If sales slump a bit, shrinking profits, some staff should probably get the pink slip. Keeping them on (or worse, hiring more) will just worsen the company's situation if sales get still worse. Stayin in denial over the need to lay off a few hundred workers now, will only result in the need to lay off a few thousand later.
And NO, the company does NOT have any "moral obligation" to its employees. Employment is not a personal relationship, it is a business relationship. If I'm in a business relationship with someone, I expect them to be looking out for one thing: their own interests. Anyone who expects different needs to pause and remember what the PURPOSE of business is.
"Entitling" workers to benefits from their employers after being let go is preposterous, an aboslutely intolerable invasion of property rights. Requiring the extension of benefits involves the government re-writing nearly every employment contract in the nation. Further, it WILL increase the cost of employment. In a large company, the cost of maintaining the health benefits for a large number of layed-off workers will easily equal the salaries of several more workers. Thus the company will likely lay off more workers than it would without this requirement, in order to cover the costs of complying with it. So as we would expect from a short-sighted government policy, a regulation intended to help the problem of unemployment in one way, worsens it in another. Way to go, Feds.
MoNsTeR
The only "capitalist ethic" is that the terms of a contract must be honored. Corporate loyalty is a recent concept, borrowed from socialism as a kind of advertising theme, like corporate social responsibility in general. In practice, an employer and employee are independent parties with a contract between them that specifies limited cooperation for mutual benefit. Each tries to negotiate the terms of this contract to their own greatest advantage. Your talents, experience and your time are your capital. A job, health benefits, stock plans, etc. are the company's capital. You make a contract, and when it's over it's over.
The idea that a company owes something to former employees has nothing to do with capitalism. It's completely in the realm of social theory, which should apply equally to an individual's behavior. How much do you owe your high school teachers after graduation? What about the guys you used to play basketball with every week? Maybe these folks did a lot for you then, but this is now, and you have new friends. You have kids now. There's only so much time.
People who run companies are responsible for obeying the law and honoring their contracts, and that's all, same as everybody else. Whether people try to influence corporate morality by legislation, or by our behavior as consumers of products, or as consumers of employment, or through any other method, corporations will never be responsible for doing more than they have to.
Hear hear. We recently went through some difficulty .. wern't payed for 30 days. Not a huge deal, but it certainly required some faith in management that we'd eventually get paid and be back in a stable situation (which happened.) But while all this was going on, two of our developers stopped coming to work the day that our company said: "We can't pay you, so legally, you can go home, although we /will/ pay you, and this is how we will." Those two guys never found a job during this month, and when we were saved from our precarious fiscal situation, guess who didn't get offered new jobs going forward?
/is/ a two way street .. loyalty does get rewarded, but loyalty isn't 'showing up for work' everyday. It's taking risks for your employer; depending on the rapport between workers and management in your situation, they will take risks (when they can) for you. Of course, I can't stress enough that if you don't like your boss, your employer, your management, you shouldn't be in there in the first place .. so never expect security and loyalty in an environment where there is no personal accountability (read: trust and friendship) between the layers of your organization.
Loyalty and trust are the result of an open dialogue between workers and management, and faith in product. If you don't have faith in product (ie, business plan), you shouldn't have been working there in the first place. If your management doesn't keep the open dialog and honesty going, you shouldn't have been working there in the first place. But it
"Old man yells at systemd"
I was laid off 2 months ago by a small consulting company. There were 3 developers and the highest paid 2 were sent packing.
:).
This was really a devestating blow for both of us who were laid off. The other guy had gotten back from sick leave. His kid had been diagnosed with cancer and had to go through 2 surgeries, the second was a couple of days before we were laid off. He's also going through a divorce. I was truely afraid that he was going to snap.
It was my first job after graduating from University and I only had been there 3 months (2 years part time before that). I was just starting to pay back my student loans. I had just gotten a new apartment that was a little more in line with what I was making.
I'm moving out of my apartment today. I'm taking a break from packing boxes right now.
I have to say that I feel very betrayed by my former empoyer right now. I felt horrible when I was laid off, but I got over that rather quickly. My former empoyer promised that as soon as they got more work that they would hire us right back. I also got a few interviews (I was completely insulted in one of those interviews. I was offered $15/hr to program Java, c/c++, perl, ASP and coldfusion as well as design and program databases - is this what the economy has left us with?) and a few contracts to help pay (some of) the bills. A couple of days ago I found out that the person left behind was given a (rather large) raise and is now between myself and the other guy who was laid off in terms of salary.
I compared what I have been going through to a kick in the teeth followed up by a kick in the groin.
I confronted the person who got the raise and she told me that it was true. The next day I got a call from my Former Employer and she told me that I had upset the other developer and should apologize.
To anyone who's still reading, thank you, I needed to rant somewhere and my friends and family has gotten sick of my bitching
Thank you for the timely article, Jon. I could really relate to it.
I think the nature of the IT industry is that we get huge salaries to start (I did anyway), but it's almost expected that we could lose our jobs at any time. My layoff came as a complete surprise to me and everyone in the company. Everything was fine in the morning and in the afternoon my bosses were in my office with the door closed laying me off. I do suggest to treat your job like a contract. Stuff as much money away as you possibly can while you have it. You won't know when you'll have a job next.
-j
Like sex? Read and write about it! Indecent Blogging
Here's what's worse: even when the executive officers of a company take their responsibilities to those who work for it seriously, and the company is turning a *profit*, shareholders and analysts sometimes still put pressure on them to lay people off, so that (short-term), profits will be higher.
Kay Whitmore, I'm told, was the CEO of Kodak
through the early 1990s. The company was profitable, doing research, employing thousands. However, there was a good deal of pressure to do some head chopping, and Whitmore was reluctant to do it, especially since the company was actually making a profit. But apparently not enough. Analysts and shareholders decided that a greater profit could be realized by cutting more jobs, and they started with firing Whitmore so they could find someone with more of a stomach and less of a conscience.
(This is taken from James Lucas' and Warner Woodworth's "Working Toward Zion"... "Zion" being meant here in a general sense, not the Jewish state sense. The authors are Mormons...)
Tweet, tweet.
My wife works as a tech writer for a major airline. Although there were some minor layoffs before, she felt pretty secure in her job.
Until two weeks ago.
The airline industry had a disaster, and they need to lay off 20% of their staff in order to stay afloat. And they need to lay them off NOW. And you know what? That's okay. It'll suck for us if she loses her job (especially the benefits, since i'm a contractor), but we understand that the company is in serious trouble, through no fault of its own.
Luckily, i'm contracting at a well-funded nonprofit, so my position is secure, and our income is good.
Hand me that airplane glue and I'll tell you another story.
You *completely* missed the point of the post, it isn't about truning into starched-collared Organization Men. It's about actually treating your company the same way you want to be treated. I have known of people who were project leads who gave notice at 4:30 that they were starting another job tommorow. It's crap like that I was talking about, there is a really big friggin difference between being a "yes" man and just not being a prick to your company. In the tech industry, I knew of a whole bunch of people who's whole philosophy in life was to be the biggest prick (I know of some who actually pulled crap like this intentionally to "pay back", and wound up getting other fired because projects got scuttled because of their shit, luckily wasn't my company).
You want to change jobs and look for better opportunities, fine no problem, as long as you treat your employer with the same amount of respect that you want from them... give them some notice, actually talk with your boss before just going for the money (often they can get you some), it tends to be a two way street most of the time; looking at the past for some reasons a lot of the techs seemed to forget that.
Understand this basic truism - your job is not secure, it never was, it never will be. A company's primary goal in life is not to provide jobs for its employees. It's primary goal is to survive and the only way to survive is by making a profit. If a company has to make a choice between making a profit or shedding employees it will eventually shed the employees, it has no choice.
Fortunately you don't need or want job security. What you really need to strive for is career security. As long as you have unique skills you will be able to find another job and getting laid off is unfortunate but by no means catastrophic.
I've been laid off by a Fortune 500 firm and I've also been laid off by a 200 person firm. In both cases I was lucky and able to find a new job immediately. Keep current in your field and you'll have no problems. (Of course, if you're a ditch digger or a middle manager you might want to seriously re-consider your career patch
Don Dugger
"Censeo Toto nos in Kansa esse decisse." - D. Gale
Maximum warning. Employees ought to have between three and six months' notice before they're laid off, time enough to look for other work in a sane, secure way.
this is called severance pay. And don't you mean minimum warning? i.e., there should be some minimum amount of time that an employer would need to give to a laid off employee to find work?
also note that there are a lot of legal issues for public companies regarding lay offs that makes this impossible
"My mother never saw the irony in calling me a son-of-a-bitch." - Jack Nicholson
. . . yeah, after listening to the poets, campus organizers, et al.
i wouldn't argue for a second with the idea that the military is a noble and vital profession. it most certainly is. but they should not be setting national agendas, since the focus of their professional training is the use of deadly force.
take a look at countries ruled by military dictatorships and ask yourself if that looks appealing to you.
We're all berating companies that are losing money, because the executives lay people off instead of cutting their own salaries.
But I wonder; if you were making less money, which would you get rid of first; cable TV and convenience foods, or the kid that gets $20 to mow your lawn?
Either way, you're putting somebody out of work. How dare you choose not to spend that money.
So some evil executive chooses to cut 1,000 employees who are getting paid $60,000 apiece instead of cutting his $10 million salary by 20%. Never mind that 20% of his salary saves the company $2 million, and firing those 1,000 people saves the company $60 million in salaries alone, not counting the other expenses involved in having a 200 watt heater taking up a few square meters of real estate, no, he's being short-sighted and evil.
If you get laid off, you are out a $60,000 salary, and have to find a new job. It won't be impossible, because prospective employers will understand that you got laid off through no fault of your own.
If the $10 million a year executive refuses to lay you off, however, the shareholders will fire HIM, he'll be out $10 million a year, and it'll be hard for him to find a new job right away because he'll have a reputation for not being willing to follow the will of the people who OWN THE BUSINESS.
So how about instead of griping and bitching about the horrible evil executives trying to fire 1,000 people so they don't have to bankrupt out from under 30,000, and instead concentrate on how you can start putting in a whole day's work for a whole day's pay, instead of being on Slashdot on the company's nickel (yep, I'm guilty too), or printing your resume on the company's laser printers, or taking paper clips home, or stealing coffee filters from the breakroom, or otherwise contributing to the fact that the salary of an employee in this country today is a FRACTION of what it costs to have that employee.
Anyways, the fact of the matter is that there is no debating the fact that Denmark has had far worse unemployment on the aggregate, which is the only reasonable measure.
Not really, it's more of a drag on the economy. But even if you accept this, 1.6M may sound like a lot (and it is), but it's just
This also completely ignores other burdens the US faces which other most other countries do not face to a similar extent. e.g., large immigration of poor and uneducated people, pre-existing diverse populations, etc.
Sometimes the best solution to morale problems is just to fire all of the unhappy people...
I must say, on a more serious note, that I'm in the middle of a great book as I write this that I'd highly recommend to all. It is by Thomas Frank, the author of The Conquest of Cool and Commodify Your Dissent(some essays in it, anyway).
The book is One Market Under God . It is a profoundly engaging read, and discusses more than the matter of the eroding social contract that Katz touches on (and someone else rightly notes has been worsening over decades). It really delves deeply into mid-to-late 90s "New Economy" mythology- examining the religious texts of the myth (FastCompany, RedHerring, Wired (esp. Kevin Kelly's insufferable and blasphemous revisitations of the original luciferic lie itself, we-shall-be-as-gods!)), the Gods of the religion (the dotcom wunderkinds, the new economy billionaires, the venture capitalists, etc.), the mad prophets of the religion (Tom Peters et al), and of course, the religion itself- our New Economy!
HIGHLY recommended.
yes the days of 5-figure signing bonuses, new BMWs, and 16-year olds getting paid 6-figures are over. Try saving money when you are working to cover when you aren't. Try NOT keeping up with the Jones'. Try to keep two years expenses in liquid assets, its empowering. If you can't save two years' expenses, try reducing your expenses. A 5 year-old Honda runs just as well as a new one. A Toyota will get you to work forever; if you want a Mercedes don't buy a house. Try exercising a little restraint and in return you will gain the serenity of knowing that you are NOT tied to a job, that you CAN LEAVE anytime you want. Capital is empowering; ask your CEO. Live moderately, and you'll be suprised how LITTLE money you require. Try a little bit of personal responsibility instead of always asking Big Brother for a helping hand; that hand is the one in your pocket, around your throat. Try NOT needing any assistance to live, its good for you.
Capitalism his long been decried as brutal, cold and heartless. This complaint has been raised dozens of times by workers suddenly finding themselves without an income, since the time of Adam Smith in the 1700's. The great irony that Smith illustrated in The Wealth of Nations is that the very workers who felt mistreated and exploited by the system they worked in (and often were justified in these feelings) actually stood to realize enormous benifits. Because capitalism pushes society towards ever-increasing productivity, it is inevitable that, on the average, the quality of life for everyone will increase over time. The irony of this was sharper a few hundred years ago when workers were routenely maimed and killed by in mines and factories, or brutalized by their employers, or starved when they had not enough money for their bread.
Today, we reap the benifits of Smith's great irony. Capitalism has bought prosperity unprecidented in human history to those who have stuck with it. But amidst this prosperity, we forget at whose alter we make our sacrifices. Capitalism is not a kindly, beneficent god. It is a lusty, greedy and fickle god, who is capable of enormous cruelty towards those why often deserve it the least. We should not forget that beneath it's new robes and trapings, the engine of our economy is the same engine the drove us to the Great Crash 1929 and the Great Depression. It is the same engine that brought us through the panful boom and bust cycle of the late 1800's. And it is the same engine that maimed and killed innocent little children by the tens of thousands in the mines, factories and mills of the 18th and 19th centuries. It may have be better behaved of late, but it is the same god, and it will not simply become tame and docile because we want it to.
This is bunk. There has never been a company-employee bond, except where employers wished to exploit use feelings of loyalty and camradery to get their workers to accept lower wages. Loyalty and commitment don't ammount to a hill of beans when the quarter is ending and the board of directors has to submit a negative report to shareholders. This isn't cynical, or hyperbole. This is how money is made and buisiness is done. Just because high-tech is more cute and cuddly than coal mining doesn't mean that tech workers are free from the same covenant. Anyone who thought otherwise is delusional. And so it has been since our nation was founded. Read your history. This is not an invention of AOL-Time-Warner, Microsoft and Texaco. This is good, old fasioned bribery of the same stripe that J.P. Morgan and Rockefeller used. Nothing new here. Well, duh.My advice to anyone experienceing a pinch during these times (as I myself am) is that you should go and read your history. Capitalism is not a freindly thing, but there is much more to life than work, wages retirement and death.
Also, it should be noted that I am not an anti-capitalist, socialist or an anarchist. I work in the tech industry, and as long as I have a job I get paid a wage just like everyone else. I don't see a viable "alternative" to capitalism in systems like Marxism. However, I do beleive that capitalism should be containied to areas where it is appropriate. It should not be allowed to interfere with governance in any way, for instance. Markets are decidedly un-democratic. Additionally, I beleive that where capitalism is apropriate, it should be practiced in a rigorous, mathmatically pure way ("atomic" copmetition, as Smith termed it). Large corporations are anti-capitalist, as they attempt to avoid the process of competition in the determination of supply and demand. And finally, I beleive that the government should create systems outside of these capitalist structures to aid and assist workers who have been cast out or harmed by the process, and to fill the roles in which capitalism functions poorly (such as health care).
In spite of the suggestions and all the tests that I have made, I have not cavato a spider from the hole.
Making it expensive, difficult, or impossible to fire employees has major drawbacks. Put bluntly, the more difficult you make it to fire an employee, the more difficult it is to hire. The reason for this is quite simple, the costs in the event that an employee becomes unnecessary tend to far exceed the marginal benefits bestowed on the company by producing more goods or services. When the employee is productive, just small sliver of the revenues go back to the shareholders as profits. When an employee is unproductive, and continuees to be employed, their wage comes right off the companies bottom line. In other words, unless an employeer is damn sure that the demand for more goods and services will remain steady (or grow), they will NOT hire.
The end result is that:
The unemployed (all employees in effect) have a harder time finding work and moving around.
The employer has a difficult time staffing.
The shareholder has his profits pinched AND diminished.
The consumer (which we all are ultimately) has less buying power because the companies from which they buy goods are inefficient.
In the long run, the available work pool is also diminished because many workers that would otherwise be available are employed inefficiently [which is exactly what "your" laws do, almost by definition, because "you" feel the need to make it artificially expensive to shift employees around.]
Translation: It's really not good for anyone in the long run.
The most you can say is that in the short run it may sound good for the CURRENTLY EMPLOYED employee. However, when you look at this from an empirical perspective (e.g., unemployment figures in left-leaning countries), it's not good at all.
Now this is not to say that I support all firing and lay-offs. Firstly, I believe there IS a certain moral obligation to the employees, to try to look out for them, where it can be done reasonably. Secondly, there are indeed times when it makes more economic sense for a company to continue employing people even when they cannot be employed efficiently in the short run, but this is not what these leftist laws suggest. An employer that is looking out for his companies interests would (generally) do this automatically, assuming he is generally rational (which is a pretty fundamental underpinning of modern economic theory). The only reasonable difference these left-leaning laws can hope to make is that might prevent the employer from exercising his good judgement.
I agree completely. There's no reason to be a prick to your company, because the people who get that treatment are ultimately your colleagues who have come to depend on you. Good karma (lower case k) is worth having, the economy notwithstanding.
sulli
RTFJ.
Who else did what I did, running out at lunch after reading this (yes, buying online counts) and buying a copy of Sennett's book The Corrosion of Character? I found it in about five minutes at my local Borders (probably would have been quicker if I hadn't stopped to verify its location in TitleSleuth), picked it up, started previewing it, and had trouble putting it down to check out and come back to work.
Anyone who is at all interested in what we've traded away (and why) for our upward mobility should read this. I find it fascinating -- especially since I almost felt like I was looking in a mirror reading the example in the first chapter.
MOO;IANAL.
There used to be a picture linked here.
So it's a case of enlightened self-interest on the part of employers. The down side is that we consumers are no longer responsible for our health costs, so we have less incentive to keep them down.
I couldn't have said it better. Restricting the operations of a company in this manner can be increadibly destructive to both the company and the economy. An employer has to have the right to hire and fire people, as they see fit. Period. Inhibiting this is interfering with their ability to effectively run THEIR company.
The fact is that even if you accept 1% unquestioningly [I could easily debate this point, e.g., certainly not ALL the prisoners would have both actively looked for work and be unemployable. Also the various EU stats have their own footnotes, such as welfare jobs (see France), etc], the US still has sizable lead on the aggregate. In fact, it's been argued by many economists that those that were unemployed during the economic boom were effectively (and will always be) unemployable. So it WAS an _effective_ unemployment rate of 1% or so (if you include your prisoner argument). Whereas in many parts of Europe, the unemployment rates are so chronically high that this argument simply cannot be made.
Yes, but you have to pay for it yourself. Which is difficult when you are unemployed. My COBRA currently costs $435 per month for me and my wife. Almost exactly half my unemployment check.
Why do you want ancient companies? From what I see, most prominent companies start off creating something worthwhile, and eventually ossiffy into fossils that just drag down the country. Established huge companies can do bad, irrational things that no startup could afford. Are you happy about AOL/Time Warner? Will you be happier when they're 50 years old and own everything? Personally I'd be quite happy if they were broken up right now. Yes, a lot of people would lose jobs, but a lot of money and people would be freed and re-injected into the economy.
Stagnation is not good. When you wish for 50-year old companies, you're wishing for stagnation.
Is that the US markets have proven far more flexible then the European ones over the last decade. American companies have had the option to size their staffs as necessary. And over that same period, the US economy has created far more money, which has flowed down virtually to level of the economy.
There are distinct advantages to flexibility, and the momentary pain that the US is suffering right now, is NO reason to trash a system that has worked phenomenally well recently.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
"Employees ought to have between three and six months' notice before they're laid off, time enough to look for other work in a sane, secure way."
That's got to be one of the most absurd statements I've heard, even from Katz. Part of the modern economy, is that companies need to react quickly. We're moving to a system, where companies like Dell plan their inventories to be at less than a weeks worth of goods. In the modern economy, companies simply don't have long periods of time to mull decisions. In 6 months, a company can be gone. I've worked for companies that the company lasted less than a year from inception to closure.
I particularly like, how 2 paragraphs later, Jon is even suggesting that no employer can predict what staff they'll need in 6 months. So he doesn't even agree with himself.
If you're going to suggest nonsense like this, it seems only fair, that employees give 6 months of notice when they intend to leave for somewhere else.
At least in California, it's made very clear when you're hired, that you're hired "at will". That's good enough for me, I know that I could be curbed at any time. And I accept, and embrace that state.
"Employees who have been with a corporation any length of time at all -- I'd say six months -- ought to keep their health benefits until they find new work, a guarantee not even COBRA provides."
And where in gods name do you suggest the money for something as insanely expensive as this, is going to come from?
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
As i see it, labour laws have a very small impact in a country's success compared to things like a good judiciary system (and believe me, the courts in Portugal are slow and mostly incompetent) or freedom of press (Portugal was under a fascist dictatorship until 1974).
Maybe this is a prejudice from my part, but i would expect that Italy suffers from similar problems as Portugal.
At the second job, the owners called us all to a meeting one friday afternoon (payday) and announced that they couldn't pay us because we had run out of money. Two weeks earlier they had called us to a meeting to tell us the company was just fine and they didn't want to hear anyone say otherwise and we weren't going to go out of business any time soon.
Had they fired half of you two weeks earlier, the rest might still be working there today.
As for your subject line; good, it was supposed to be insulting. There are a lot of good people out there, perhaps you're one of them. But I'm sure you know damn well that there are a tremendous number of slugs, and they're the ones bitching the most when they lose their jobs. The rest of us don't bitch, we go find another job.
My father worked the same job for 20 years at a time. I have yet to have a job that lasted more than 2.5 years.
Then accept the level of pay your father did for that job, and they'll be able to keep you for 20 years too.
You can't have both the level of pay modern tech workers expect AND the level of job security our parents had. It's got to be one or the other, and I prefer to make my high salary and possibly miss a couple thousand in income every few years than to make $30k every year.
If it really concerns you, don't spend $10k a year of your salary. Put it in the bank, and live on it if you lose your job.
Oh; and every morning when I get up, I ought to be thanking whatever power or powers run this universe that I wasn't stuck in my first corporate job for 20 years. Think back to your first; do you really wish you'd been there the rest of your life?
Seems to me that they produce a hell of a lot of things- many things you're not aware of.
The generators and turbines that power all the AC plants in the country...
The refrigeration systems that cool office buildings and the electric motors for just about everything AC powered...
The lightbulbs most people use...
Many of the plastics you use...
Jet Engines on the airliners you fly in...
Many of the household appliances you use...
Furthermore, GE provides all kinds of services...
GE is somewhere over 100 years old and does seem to be doing the opposite (They are worth some 349.14 Billion, bringing in some 12.7 billion over the current share value each year...). Now, you might be claiming that this is the exception, but you left no room for exceptions in your claims.
Frankly speaking, I wouldn't mind a few 50+ year old companies like GE or IBM, thank you very much.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas