Slashdot Mirror
How Were You Fired?
IanBevan asks: "A couple of years ago, the company I was working for was taken over by a larger competitor. I was told, right up until the last minute, that my development job was safe. Shortly thereafter, our illustrious team leader issued a new project plan, and I discovered that all my tasks were suddenly due to finish in about one week's time. Not being a great believer in coincidence, I asked my boss if there was 'anything he would like to tell me'. Of course, there was. Looking back this seems quite amusing now, but it could certainly have been better handled by the PHBs. I was just wondering, how have other Slashdot readers discovered that they have become 'surplus to requirements'?"
I wasn't fired.
They fired me in a straightforward way, just calling me into the office, my manger and his manger in there saying "we're letting you go" and shakiny my hand.
Now, the headless maniquine with my name across the chest and a knife in the book with fake blood collecting in a pool was *totally* unnecessary and maybe a little tasteleless.
Not even a letter.
I was off sick at the time and instead of the payslip I was expecting I opened the envelope and it was my P45. It was a Saturday morning too so I had to wait until Monday before I could even speak to anyone about it.
(a P45 is the document you present to your next employer regarding the tax etc. you have paid)
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Not quite the same, but my response was this:
My boss came to my desk and said he had to talk to me. So, I followed and in there was his boos also. I figured I was about to get laid off, since there had already been two rounds of layoffs before. So, pretty much I said when I sat down, "I'm getting laid off, right?" They nod, "We hope to have work again within a month though." I say, "Sounds good, I hope to be employed elseware within a month." The say that the layoff goes into effect at the end of the week, which it was a tuesday. I head back to my desk, call my wife. I then tell my boss I am taking vacation for the rest of the week.
Hind sight says not to take vacation for the rest of the week as it might influence their references quality, but I was still working within about a month and half. So all wasn't too bad.
Norris/Palin 2012
Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
I worked for a local cable company while I was in college, as a traffic manager (collected and forwarded billing) and playback engineer. I was the only part-time employee -- everyone else was full-time. Our main purpose in life was to produce local-origination cable programming and serve as crew members when third parties rented TV studio space.
One random day, during the first day of a TV shoot for our primary third party client, several members of our "parent" cable station (a facility several towns away) showed up unannounced to work on the production. When asked why they were there (by the office PHB, who was as clueless as the rest of us) they said it was "to train as backups" when we were shortstaffed. Rumors started flying, and we "trained" them, which is a lot different than actual training.
The VERY NEXT DAY, the same people showed up for day two of the TV shoot, with the parent office's PHB in tow. The visiting PHB immediately called each person into our PHB's office one by one to fire them, as the "trainees" from the day before kicked us out of the studio and took over the third party production.
After everyone (including our PHB) had been fired except for myself and one full time employee, I was told I could keep my job if I was willing to commute several towns away for a one-hour "team meeting" every afternoon before driving back to my job in the regular facility -- an impossibility given my college schedule and the deteriorating condition of my car. I not-so-respectfully declined. The one remaining full-time person was told he was being kept on, at which point he quit (also not-so-repectfully). We all left the building en masse, and started helping each other look for jobs.
The end result: we all found placement elsewhere very quickly, the lucrative third party 2nd day shoot was a disaster, and the client never rented the space again -- in fact, they immediately shifted their business to a facility that one of the fired full-timers went to after the disaster. With the satellite office's primary source of revenue gone, the office was more or less shut down...which was probably the point in the first place.
off.
Showed up to work and didn't get paid. CEO didn't come in that day and nobody could tell me when/if we would be getting our money. Turned out that no, we never did get our money. Fucker called us in a few weeks later and asked us to continue working for free. Meanwhile he got his daughter a modeling agent, cell phone, various invitations to hoity-toity parties... a real class act.
Read my old journal entries for how this nearly ruined my life, yay!
rooooar
I arrived at work on the day of the layoffs to find the doors locked; the only door unlocked was the main entrance, staffed by security guards, inside and out. When I entered, there were processing tables, you told them your name, they told you which room to report to. ...
..."
So, I was escorted to the room, where the corp counsel was waiting; he went through my severance package: essentially 2 weeks salary IF I agreed to sign of saying I wouldn't sue them; I didn't, because It appeared to me that they were violating WARN
The funny part: this guy then demanded my company ID, since it was company property. "Fine", I say, "after I retrieve my personal belongings from my desk." He says I can make an appointment to come get my stuff next week. I say "fine. You can likewise make an appointment to come by my house and get your ID next week." He says, you don't understand, we need your ID, it is ours. blah blah blah. End with "You don't understand: I am not turning it over until I get my stuff. You can't make me, and you can't threaten me; what are you going to do, fire me? It's a matter of principle, and there is no room for negotiation. Besides, I intend to get my stuff, today, regardless, so you can just make this easy on both of us and avoid an ugly situation if you just let me collect my belongings, which is what you SHOULD do anyway
I was escorted to my desk to get my stuff. Who knew that they wanted it back that bad? (I was the only one that left with a box; everyone else got a laugh out of that one...)
I wasn't fired.
And if I was, I wouldn't be proud of it.
I actually revelled in it because everyone else that worked there seemed to have to struggle to escape the lame jobs they had. Some languished for years there. I went on to play with computers and escape the coffee grind. Thanks Larva Corp.!
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
In the early 1980's, I worked for a software spin-off of an engineering company that was going down the tubes rapidly. One Friday I went to work to find:
1) A very polite policeman at the door.
2) No electricity.
3) No management people.
4) Confused employees.
5) An envelope at my desk with a check for 1/2 of my pay.
6) On the memo line, it read: "WYSIWYG"
7...
8) no profit.
Well, I showed up for work on time as usual. I noticed that my card would not work in the door. No problem, it has happened before. A friend of mine let me in. I get to my desk and notice someone else sitting there. He gives me a look of confusion and for a moment, I thought that perhaps I had accidentally come to the wrong desk.
That's when it hit me. I noticed a box on the floor, with all the contents of my drawers dumped into it. As it dawned on me, I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was my boss. He told me that he needed to talk to me.
There really wasn't much to talk about. I followed him to his office and sat down. He told me that HR will mail me my check in the next couple days, and that I was not to come back on company property ever again. At that time, there was a knock at the door. I was staring at the floor by then, and did not notice the five police officers who entered the room.
I noticed soon enough as I was roughly hauled up out of my chair. I was thrown against the wall and searched, and then cuffed.
As I was led out of the building to the waiting squad car, I could hear my former coworkers laughing and deriding me. I hung my head in shame as I was led out.
After a few days in jail, I was arraigned for six felonies. They were accusing me of stealing company trade secrets, and poisoning a variety of projects. I swear to this day that I had no part in any of it.
In the end, I was acquitted of the crimes, but my career has been completely ruined. While I used to make $120k a year, I now struggle to feed my family on the meager $15k a year I make hacking together PHP scripts for short term odd-jobs. I try to swallow my pride and suppliment my income by working nights at various fast food places, but I have not been able to last more than two weeks at each job.
That, dear slashdot reader, is how I was fired. Thank you for reading.
One future, two choices. Oppose them or let them destroy us.
I came to work after being off with a major flu. My card didn't work to get me in the door and I had email that said that someone couldn't find me in the company email list anymore. I went to get my mail from the front office and my mailbox wasn't there. This was all before anyone told me.
I was told that it was due to restructuring of the company. I just happened to be the most well paid programmer on staff. Let that be a lesson...don't stick your head up too high - you might get it chopped off.
I was the most loyal employee they had. Others had left and come back again, sometimes twice. They were kept and I was booted.
Why be loyal to any company anymore? There is no reason, financial or otherwise, to be. I hear that it used to be that way. Now everyone is out for the almighty dollar.
Makes me sick.
My wife owned the company
http://Lenny.com
The problem is that in most companies, upper management makes decisions that affect the underlings, and unfortunatly, keeping the underlings in the dark is the only way to control them. Rarely do you see upper management being open with subordinates.
Besides, they can tell you anything they want. Unless you have some sort of terms in writing, you are at the mercy of their whims. Even then, it is typically so much in the company's favor that you are still out of luck.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
Pretty much no warning. Not even rumors until the day it happened.
They started about 10AM, dropping about 15 workers at each meeting and multiple meetings going on simultaneously. This occured at 15 minute intervals for at least the rest of the day-- my group got dumped at 4PM; we hadn't even heard they were laying us all off until they got to us. Of course, they had security "escort" all of us from the building after giving us 10 minutes to pack. All of this was back in late July 2000.
Of course, all the money they saved went to absolutely insane bonuses for the five or so top brass that Christmas. Absolutely amazing they got away with it, considering how precariously balanced the company was at the time, and how much worse things got the next year.
Won't name them, but I'll say it was a major worldwide telecommunications company.
Long backstory deleted, but the new PHB hired a consultant to come in and help me rewire the network (about 3 dozen Netware 3.x terminals with a big wad of spagetti in the breakroom...). We were there 'til 11:pm or later getting the job done, and decided to go home and I'd do the documentation the next day. Next morning, I'm about to start typing it up, and I get The Call...
I pointed out that all of last night's work will be pointless if it's not documented so you might want to let me at least finish my current task, but they refused to let me touch a computer after that - they offered to let me write it on paper, though... I heard that months later they were still employing that same consultant (who made about 4 times what I, as an entry-level guy, was pulling down!).
A week later I found a job at 50% more pay - and this was 1995, well pre-boom. (not quite a happy ending as I've been underemployed for 2-3 years now, but...)
Perfectly Normal Industries
i had a dot-com job where i was the manager of a large community discussion area, for which we had a number of paid freelance moderators. one day, at a point when everyone pretty much knew that our days were numbered, i got a call from my boss's boss (who worked on the other coast). he wanted to know if, just for his reference, i could send him all the information pertaining to the moderators i managed, including contact info and invoicing for the past few months for them? just in case, you know, anyone needed it.
i got laid off the next week, but, on the bright side, so did he.
jf
I haven't been fired (yet) you insensitive clod. Posting on Slashdot at work certainly isn't helping though.
i've never had perm job you insensitive clod!
.
really.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
home sick with the flu puking my guts out over the toilet when I got a call from one of the Senior VPs. :)
Cyberbite Networks - Web Hosting, Dedicated Servers & Colocati
I was working on a startup ISP in Spokane at cet.com. And was promised to be made partner after we got off the ground. I worked nights, weekends, everything to help customers out. Then I found out my boss had a drug problem, and was taking money from company... Long story short, the day after the company was incorporated, I asked about my partnership. I was let go. Then the company was turned over to his GF and my boss was let go. Very strange.
.com days and went to work for a wireless telco. Corporate jobs are different beast, but its a steady paycheck.
I just Chalk it up to work/life experience, young enough it hurt me job wise. I moved away from Spokane during the
I was on vacation for 3 weeks in Australia for 'paid' vacation. The day that I returned to work we showed up at the door which was guarded by local police and some other security guards. They took people in one by one to goto their desks to pack everything and leave. People got pissed and ran in and destroyed the place, stole computers, trashed a plasma screen tv, and sole company cars and the RV. Some of the cars were scattered all over town on the side of the road looking like they were used in a bank robery gone wrong.
Everyone lost 2-4 weeks of pay along with many investors losing the 24 million dollars that were spend in 13 months. The CEO Wayne Irving II was seen a few months later running garage sales. The second man in charge, son of maytag founder millionaire (also somehow an investor) left town that week.
It reminds me of a bad episode of Office Space. I was working in CA while the company was in FL. At first the checks were coming late, then they started coming once instead of twice. Then they just stopped.
I started looking for other jobs and they had the nerve to call me and ask me why people were calling to verify my employeement.
My friend of 11 years who had hired me had to deliver the news. I have a great amount of respect for him because it was terribly difficult, but he did it directly and honestly. The added benefit is that I heard at the end of the day when it had been decided. The rest of the workforce heard the next morning when they came in for work.
Amateurs discuss tactics. Professionals discuss logistics.
I showed up at work like I always do and some guy name Steve ushered me to a sound proof room and made me listen to bad 70's music.
After a few minutes, I got to go up to my cubicle and there I saw it. My computer was being manhandled by another geek. The geek told me it was over but I had to hear it for myself. But, the computer never uttered a sound. I made that long walk out of that cubicle to never see my precious baby again.
I still love her Jerry
Yes, I'm an agent of Satan, but my duties are largely ceremonial.
The company I work for is being bought out.
I've had two other projects/jobs cancelled (and me along with them).
And now in addition to worries I get to read:
How to find a good head hunter
The benefits of being unemployeed (like growing a beard and hating GW Bush).
And now stories about being fired.
Fun.
I quit you insensitive clod. It was a shitty job anyway.
-------
Support Indy Music. Buy
Sorry, the story brought up some buried feelings...
Is that really true?
Early on in this process my boss had told me that I was one of the key people of the team and when I was gone, there would be no more team.
From November on, we knew the rest of us were dead and the question was just when. Couple days before Christmas I was called (on vacation) by boss and HR lady to tell me that I had 3 months of transition work to do, and then March 31 I'd be gone along with a few other people. The rest of the team (hardware and ops) would be gone in June.
The funny part was how my boss and HR lady were so apologetic because they preferred to give such news in person. Meanwhile I was laughing telling them "So I'm getting 3 months notice that the rest of the team didnt get? And you feel guilty about that? I should be thanking you."
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
I've never been fired. I'm more of a "quit in disgust" kind of guy. I did have an experience straight out of the movie Office Space (but preceding the movie by several years).
I had a job where I really didn't get along with my boss, and I really didn't like the way the organization was run. I'd said so multiple times, sometimes very loudly and publicly.
Then one day, the re-org hit the fan. We were told that we'd have to re-interview for our own jobs. I knew which way it was going to go, so I decided to have fun. I blew into the interview, and was brutally honest about everything. My interviewer was shell-shocked by the time I was done.
Short form: I was one of the only people in my group to keep my job. The carnage was bad: maybe 90% of my coworkers and even most of the managers were canned. It turned out that one of the people in charge of the re-org really liked me because I was the only one with enough of a spine to talk honestly about the problems in the organization. Everyone else just kissed ass and pretended that everything was okay.
Forward, retransmit, or republish anything I say here. Just don't misquote me.
Ian, Is there something you need to tell me? Am I reading /. too much? Security is heading this way.. yipes..
C:>FDisk
When Together.Net fired me many years ago for being late to my crappy tech support job once too often, the first indication I had was that I couldn't log into the network when I came into work. All of my accounts where disabled. So I saw my manager and was like
"There's some kind of a problem with my network account" and he was like
"Yeah, we sort of need to have a little meeting..."
The day went downhill from there.
After 3 more years of doing $8/hr ISP tech support, the remaning sheep received nice severance packages when Together.Net was bought out. I'd gone to college and gotten a bachelors degree. I think in the long run, getting fired was a good thing.
-73, de n1ywb
www.n1ywb.com
So our CEO goes on a business trip to the other side of the continent to meet with an important customer. The day is is to leave and return home he is met at the airport by a few of the Board of Directors. They tell him, "We're sorry, we just had a vote and you don't work for us any more. By the way, that plane ticket you have is company property, we'll take that please."
He is left stranded in the airport and has to go find a hotel because all the flights are full that night. Very classy.
One afternnon off at home, I'm visited by a co-worker who's also a friend of my wife. (It was the beginning of her shift, but businees was slow so she asked if she coul pop out for a little while and come over to our house. The Manageress said sure, please drop off this envelope while you're there.)
The letter inside is short and sweet: Regret to inform you...services no longer required, blah blah blah.
My first time being fired, and she couldn't even do it to my face!
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
One of my /. friends / fans has started Slashdot JobCenter where job listings and applicants can be found in one location. Give it a look. I've added my company's listings and there are a few others around. Granted, its not as good as some of the bigger engines, but at least you'll know that other /. heads are potentially going to be your screeners.
Clinton made me a Republican. Bush made me a Libertarian. Trump is making me question reality.
The first one hurt the most. It got easier over time, possibly because the jobs got less... fulfilling over time. I may have my problems with the first company, but they sure handled the layoffs well. Good severance package, not having the security goons to escort us out the door immediately, having a chance to talk to co-workers before disappearing. A class act, and well appreciated, even if I am still a little bitter about the whole thing.
You have a choice: tax and spend Democrats, or borrow and spend Republicans. Choose wisely.
GET THE HELL OUTTA HERE
I was managing a furniture store for about 1 year (worked with company for 3.5 years), I come in to open the store and one of the owners is there. The usual "hey what's up" greetings are passed back and forth, then the guy just ignores me. Once all the employees have come in, he pulls me aside and hands me a envelope with my pink slip inside. The official reason was lack of sales (me personally, not the store), which was funny since I was either 1st or 2nd every month for my store. The prick actually told me that I was being let go due to the high number of references he had been asked for about me.
:(
Lesson #1 - don't use a headhunter, they just don't care.
Lesson #2 - file for unemployment the next day. I did that, told them what he had said, and was asked if I would testify if needed. Obviously the answer was yes. They even called back 6 weeks later to verify my story! Turns out the company was under investigation, and my story was another drop in the flood. Sadly, they are still in business.
Each time they tell me to take a pay cut or they'll have to let me go. I call them on it and every time they call me back to ask me to come in the day after the deadline at the same rate of pay.
This time I flat out told them no. I told them that after that deadline, I am not coming back. So does that count as being fired or quitting?
So my Dad has to fire about 10-15 people - friends of his, etc.
End of the day, the PHB asks how it went, finds out everyone has been fired, and then FIRES my Dad, after making HIM fire everyone. What a cowardly prick the PHB was.
..........FULL STOP.
On a Tuesday morning, early in the month, after being at work a half hour or so, I got email calling all employees to a 10AM meeting in the only room big enough to hold us all (~300 probably).
The CEO seemed genuinely aggrieved at having to lay many of us (40%) off, reassured us that even then, at the peak of the dot-com bust, we would be getting 8 weeks of salary as severance, and our health coverage was paid through the end of the month. He asked us to return to our desks, where we would begin having one-on-one meetings with our immediate supervisors to learn the details of our layoffs, or new job responsibilities.
As I returned to my desk, I was considering all the projects I would need to wrap up and hand off if I were among those laid off, but when I got back, my computer no longer had access to the network.
I picked up my phone to call IS, but it, too, was disconnected.
It was by then obvious what was about to happen, and I had a pleasant enough conversation with my boss when my turn came. Turned out he had also been let go, and we discussed people we knew at other companies that might have use for me or him.
1) Early in the day, early in the week. Time to head home and immediately get started on the job hunt.
2) Early in the month, so I didn't have to worry about COBRA for a few weeks.
3) Real severance package.
I'm not sure what they could have done better, other than not laying us off in the first place.
Chris Owens
San Carlos, CA
This story showed up at a very appropriate time, as I was let go only a couple weeks ago.
I showed up to work slightly later than usual. Everything seemed normal until I tried to log in to one of my accounts, which wasn't working. This was immediately suspicious as everyone else's accounts were fine. Still, I went ahead and worked on my e-mail for a bit to see if things cleared up. About 10 minutes later my manager pops by my cube saying he needed to meet with me in his office. I asked him to let me just finish this one e-mail and I'd stop by. He looked obviously concerned. I finished the mail and noticed that my mail checks had started failing as well, meaning another account had been turned off. There was little doubt what was waiting on me in his office...
I got in there and he along with a person who just screamed "HR" by looking at her were waiting. As I sat down he pulled out a piece of paper and read a prepared statement. "Due to a restructuring of resources... blah, blah... you no longer have a position..." He then left the office as fast as he could to leave the HR person to explain my severance.
Once that was over they assigned me a shadow while I cleared out my desk and left. Apparently they also scheduled a meeting to distract the folks on my team while I was packing. (I suppose that's for the best... I doubt I would have liked to have one of them walk up and ask why I was packing.)
One thing I found humerous when I got home was a message on my machine... as I said before, I got in to work a bit late. Just before I got there my manager had called my house. "David, I have an urgent matter to discuss with you. Please call..." I'm almost surprised he didn't just say it on there, since the tone of his voice gave everything away...
It's amazing how quickly stuff like this can happen... you go in to work business as usual and suddenly you are out the door.
I worked for Barnesandnoble.com doing QA work. On sunday night at 9:30pm, I get a call from my rep at the temp agency (I had a perm position with BN.com). He tells me that BN is letting me go. I didn't have time to get a copy of the sunday paper to look at the classifieds because all the places were closed.
About 2 months later I get a job offer from IBM.com through a new agency, which I take. That week, I get a call from the rep from the previous agency askinng me to take a job with him at some company, and he would offer me more money than what IBM was offering. I told him no.
------------------
Someone who worked with me at another dot com was asked to have a meeting with management around 3pm. They told her they had to let her go, immediately, but he's a two week serveance package. She then told them she had a new job lined up already that starts monday.
I was glad it worked out for her in that case because management was a bunch of dumb fudges which is fodder for a whole nother post.
---------------------
When I worked at IBM, during my first few weeks there, we had a small group of html monkeys, including myself there working on their redesign. One person wasn't doing well, and she was let go. Unforunately she wasn't told she was let go until she showed up monday morning to find someone in her seat. I knew as of that friday (3 days prior) she was being let go (because the project manager was cool with me and was a big mouth). Neighter him nor the temp agency had the respect to call her and tell her prior to monday.
She called the agency and had it verified. They asked her "what are you doing there, you don't work there anymore". Mind you the agency was sued by IBM later on due to their business practices.
I worked for a software company (it's initals are B M C) in Austin. I'd finally got out of the IT department and away from the IT manager (affectionately referred to by everyone as 'Squiggy' because he looked like the dude from Laverne & Shirley). After 9 months of bliss in another department where I had no immediate supervision (boss in another city), I get a call one Tuesday morning from my boss (who's in Houston) and a local HR rep.
They tell me the department's being phased out and I can either go back to the IT department (and work for the same asshole) or take a severance package. All four of us in the department were getting the same deal.
I talked it over with the wife, talked to the IT manager (yep, still a prick) so I walked over to HR and asked for the severance.
"Sure. Come back in a couple of days. We'll have the paperwork ready" she says.
"I'll see you in an hour" says I.
I took my $7800 severance (I'd been there four years) and took a contract position at Dell a week later testing laptops for $6K more a year.
Unfortunately, that position was cut when the bubble burst. I was 4 months into a 3 month contract-to-hire position. They'd gone as far as assigning me a telephone and a desk (something they DON'T do for contractors, unless they're hiring you..)
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
We all knew it was coming. The company was switching lanes more than a lexus in rush hour traffic. The bill collectors were calling constantly, they repo'd the cubicles.
Then one day around noon the boss called an all hands meeting and broke the news to everyone simultaneously. The entire company was being laid-off. He had out final paychecks in a stack of envelopes and handed them out. He then gave his secretary some money and took orders for what we wanted. She came back with beer soda chips and stuff and we sat around playing cards, ping-pong and generally having a good time.
We were a start-up, we were all friends, no hard feelings. It was just the way things were. Don't make the VC, push for profitibility. If you can't maintain the cashflow we all go home.
"WYSIWYG". That's classic.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
and some gasoline.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
I was laid off, but since my boss really liked me (and opposed the layoff), I got a month's warning.
So my coworkers took me out to lunch to cheer me up, wish me well, and offer advice, tell me it would all work out for the best, etc.
When we came back from lunch, all of them were called in to HR, laid off, and told to clear out IMMEDIATELY.
So beginning that afternoon, and for the next month, it was just me and their empty desks.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
I was fired in a good way, if such a thing is possible.
It was not really a surprise. I could see it coming. Others had been fired before me, as the company slowly nibbled away at us. I was one of the last non-Indian people in the department. I'm not being racist here: in fact, it was an Indian who helped me to get this job in the first place! I'm not blaming the Indians at all for this, and in fact, two of my best leads for finding another job are through Indian managers or owners. There's no denying the simple economic difference in wages between India and the USA, though.
They did a really cool thing for some H1-B Indians who would also be affected by the layoff, though: in lieu of being laid off, the company gave them the option of returning to India for a guaranteed job at the company's Indian office, paying local India wages (much less than USA wages, even for H1-B's). Many Indians took this option, including my boss. The layoff was across-the-board, affecting Indians as well as USA citizens, but USA citizens bore the brunt of the layoff. I believe that the company was preparing to transfer the entire office to India eventually, so they were taking steps in this direction, and it would have been only a matter of time.
My boss simply called me into his office, shut the door, and that was that. It was not a surprise to me, because I could see it coming for several weeks. On the same day I was fired, about 20% of the company was also fired! This is a company that had about 1000 workers at the time, so it wasn't a small layoff by any means. There was extra security around, but no harassment. They had brought in lots of cardboard boxes for packing. I was able to back up all of my personal stuff (bookmarks, etc.) that was on their computers, and burn a CD to take it home with me. In fact, they let us work through the end of the pay period (several more days)!
Because they were kind, I was kind to them in return. I cleanly documented things I was working on at the time, and organized things in such a way that anybody coming in would be immediately able to find what they were looking for (I was in charge of an internal Linux distribution at the time). When it came time to go, I said my goodbyes, gathered as much contact information from my coworkers as possible, left my contact information, gave my card to my boss, and walked out. No unpleasantries at all.
And the best part? The company was later called on the carpet for violating the WARN Act, so they ended up having to give everybody 60 extra days on the payroll! The WARN Act requires 60 days of notice before a large layoff, and since they failed to do this, they had to make up the 60 days. It was wonderful to get a mini-sabbatical of two months of full pay for sitting around at home and resting! Nice.
Now, unfortunately, the savings is beginning to run a bit thin so I'm looking for another job... not much to be found....
Dr. Demento On The 'Net!
After graduating with a BS in CS in 2000. I had a job in fast food. min wage 5.25 /hr not even 36 hrs a week. I quit that one worked for Molex "through" ManPower evil temp job company. I interviewed with Molex, but they had me fill out Manpower paper work so I ended up being a Manpower temp. person for just over a year making 7.25 / hr for 37.5 hrs week usually and 45 or 52.5 hrs when we were lucking to get over time. That job I got layed off. I was welding wires. Not exactly the computer job I wanted. My next job was 8 /hr for 4-5 hrs doing tape backup on and AS/400. It was a nice night job. One day I showed up and asked for the key and sent me home. I called the temp. company that I was working through and they didn't know anything about it. They could have easily had them call me, which I'd have perferred.
Thank God, I've got a Tech Job with a City Government working on the police department's comptuers. I nearly got let go at the end of the 6 month trial period, which thank god that they didn't. I'm making about 26K and happy job wise. I'd have loved that 40-50K a year that I was supposed to make in 2000, but that'll never happen. I'm thinking of switching industries, but what the hell does a BS in CS with a Math Minor switch to? I like my job, but I really *need* more money.
I worked for a very well-known fortune 500 that acquired another very well-known fortune 500. First there were layoffs. Then more layoffs. And even _more_ layoffs. All the while we were told that enterprise unix was important to the new company, and we were led to believe that our jobs were safe. Thru all the rounds of layoffs, our lab had only lost a few percent, so we thought we were safe (and important).
Then one morning we had a hastily-scheduled meeting with our 4th level manager who had just flown into town. He informed us that our lab was closing, and he thanked us for our service to the company. At the end of the week I was released along with several dozen coworkers, my boss, our section manager and our lab manager.
You stole my answer you bastard. Well played.
Me: I, I, I, I, I didn't receive my paycheck this week.
Boss: Uh, you're gonna have to talk to Payroll about that.
Me: I, I did and they, and they said -
Boss: Uh, we're gonna need to move you downstairs into Storage B.
Me: No...I...I...
Boss: Uh, we have some new people coming in and we need all the space we can get.
Me: No...no...no...no...but...but...but...I, I, I -
Boss: If you could just pack up all of your stuff and move it down there, that would be terrific. See ya. (He walks away.)
Me: I can't...Excuse me. I believe you have my stapler?
BTW, I was at home taking care of my sick, disabled wife and infant son.
Nice that they kicked me when I was down.
I quit before they had the chance. Why let them have all the fun?
"The road from legitimate suspicion to rampant paranoia is very much shorter than we think." - Picard
5-6 of us in the conference room, all kind of shell shocked, waiting to go talk to one of the managers or whatnot, and one of us starts:
"Should we go out there and just stare at everyone?"
Someone else "How bout we throw a hysterical tantrum in the middle of the reception room?"
"come back tomorrow wearing a black trenchcoat with a suspicious bulge?"
"With a smoking,ticking box labeled "to the management?""
This sort of thing went on for 30 minutes, we were all laughing hysterically by the end of it. I wish i had a tape of it.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
nt
WARN
Sorry. Should have made that a link in the original.
I took my two weeks' paid vacation and went to Israel to relax and socialize for a while. A friend was having a birthday, so I timed it to surprise her, and we hung out for a while. Great fun, explored Jerusalem, was having a blast.
One day, I get an email from my now-roommate Mike, saying I should probably talk to Gerhard before I got back. I emailed back to ask why, and he pasted an IRC conversation.
The long and the short of it was that my boss had apparantly found a PHP programmer to replace me, because he didn't like that I 'didn't do anything' while I was there. Nevermind that he hired a PHP programmer (me) to do a perl programmer's job without telling me that I'd have to do perl, I didn't do perl and so was let go (fair enough).
Because I didn't have a job to go back to, I just decided not to show up for my departing flight, stayed an extra week, lied like an SOB and faked some documents to get my return ticket moved up a week, and went back to Montreal. When I did, I found that all my papers and belongings at my desk had been thrown out (!!) and I had to fish my own hardware out of my old work computer while the boss was gone. Salvaged my MP3 collection at least.
I don't really harbour them any ill will, except for not telling me I was fired even after I got back (and for Gerhard not to bother emailing me himself) - not to mention not having any notice whatsoever. Fact is, I wasn't the sort of person the company was looking for and vice-versa, and I was going to leave the company anyway (tell me honestly, would you work for a company whose owner is a good friend of Alan Ralsky?), but still, it would have been nice to have official notice.
--Dan
When hardware asked in the quarterly meeting why the company wasn't doing anything with their group - Plenty of smart people, enough to design the next version of the product, but it wasn't happening. He got the run-around.
About the same time (latter I'd guess) the general manager of our branch "resigned for personal reasons". Rumor immesadiatly was he was demanding a roadmap for the next version of our product, got a promiss to have it by (about a month before this date) and didn't get it.
The entire time after this we worked hard to get the latest version out the door. The date it entered test was the data they formally anounced our jobs were going to india.
Working there was not longer fun, and hadn't been for a several months even before that, but until 3 months before I could honestly say it might just be a normal things it could get fun again. I should have paid the warning signs more attention.
And I at least saw them, and didn't know what I was seeing. I told family (actually a little before the 3 months) that I was going to be looking as soon as some personal things were taken care of.
Go FUCK yourself, Carl. And you too, Jeff. And Especially YOU Mark. And what's more, Those no-talent cocksucking loser "managers" can all eat a big fat dick for all I care. You know who you are. Greg. Angelo. Deval. You have no skills. You never have. You never will. Your kids HATE you. Your wives HATE you. Everyone HATES you. You're going to grow old and die lonely old men with no friends and no family. Or, you'll rot in a jail cell like your fatass "friend" MikeB for fraud or embezzlement or some other white collar crime. I wonder how you'll all like taking it up the ass... Bunch of morons. Idiots. Losers. FUCK YOU ALL!!!
I was a contractor and my contract was up for renewal.
:-) Three months working for the moron was more than enough.
I was asked to come to a meeting where my knowledge would be evaluated (job was dbase in the dos days).
About the 2nd or 3rd question was: "How many files can you have open at one time [on a DOS system]?"
To which I replied "Yer kidding, right? I have no idea, nor do I care. I've never hit it, but I know that there's an environment variable that will let me change it at boot time. Could we just skip the questions that don't matter and could be looked up trivially?"
My "boss" wasn't impressed - mostly embarrassed, I hope. Anyway, I wasn't renewed, which was fine by me
My wife and I had a small wedding, followed by a reception (read, pool party at the new house) several months later. I took vacation the week of the party to help prepare. My dept. lead calls me on Tuesday or Wednesay saying "Bad news, company decided to shut down the R&D dept. at our location (only profitable line of software they had). If you want, you can come in and "work" the last couple days of your vacation so you'll get more pay on your severance check. My response was "Is the company honoring the three-month severance letter they sent us a year prior? Yes? Well, I'll just stay on vacation until we all get laid off Monday."
Me, I was ushered out quickly because I made the mistake of actually giving them a heads up since I was a fairly critical employee and was planning on moving to be with my (then-future) wife-- as soon as I could find a job and give proper notice. Turns out they'd already removed my salary from the current FY's books (it's all about the numbers, baby) and needed me to stop drawing it asap. Moral: Keep your fsking mouth shut, no matter how honest you happen to be.
To their credit, they did grant me a reasonable declining retainer, but I don't give them that much credit since lots of the critical knowledge in my head hadn't made it into anyone else's yet. :)
Hired a new CTO advisor guy named Owen with a Military background... He was all about buzzwords and BS. His catch-phrase was something about a bullet-speed train on lazer rails. What a load!
Anyway, within a short time myself and the rest of the software testing department were called into a late Friday afternoon meeting and told that we were all being let go and that we would be escorted downstairs to the door by security and could come back on Monday for any of our personal belongings!!
This user account is inactive account replaced by the PDA
At my last company, the owners of the .ws registry, I was asked to give all the root and other passwords to my boss cause "he hadn't asked for them for a while and you never know when something might happen".
That night, I tried to check our BB site to see system status before going to sleep. I couldn't get in. An hour later, I realized I couldn't get into anything. My last check was waiting for me the next morning.
It seems my position as the only IT guy made them afraid of retaliation... so they acted like @sses preemptively.
So I started an IT consulting business and now own North County Computers.
My most recent layoff experience was pretty obnoxious. I was a senior systems administrator for Global Crossing's Denver office in 2001, when the first round of layoffs were coming.
We all knew which Monday would be "axe day," and I'd even discussed that previous Friday with my manager what steps I should take once the layoffs started. He said I'd get a list, I'd need to deactivate the appropriate accounts, and might be needed to help update the phones and access card lists.
Monday came. I went to work, got started on my usual tasks, and it seemed like a normal day except for the air of dread hanging over everyone since they knew what day it was. Around 2:00pm, my boss came by and said "hey Will, you got a second?" I said "sure," and followed him to is office, expecting to be handed a list of people whose accounts needed to go away. Instead, as we approached his office, I noticed a woman sitting there waiting for us who I'd never seen before, and immediately recognized the classic "two witness firing trap" with my name all over it.
Getting fired or laid off never takes long. It took less than five minutes to explain my severance benefits (which they stopped paying when the company filed for bankruptcy -- the bastards) and to hand in my badge and keys. They'd set up a "career counselling" service that began with a twenty minute meeting right there at the office, which I annoyedly sat through. After that, they handed me a box, and let me collect my own things (under supervision of course). I would later learn that the very instant my boss collected me from my cubicle, another manager raced to it and ripped the power cords for my workstation out of the wall; apparently they were doing that to everybody worried that we'd all installed "dead man's switches" on the boxes or something. Heh.
That Friday, four days after my employment with GX ended, I got a call from one of the survivors asking for help on how to remove my accounts from their systems (I was their only remaining systems administrator for the office servers at t that point). Heh.
Read my stuff.
Today was my last day at my job. I was working on a contract that had been extended through next June. Well a couple weeks ago I got a call from my contract company rep telling me that they were wrapping up the project early and I was getting the axe in 2 weeks. This suprised be as the project was no where near completion so I called in to work to ask one of the employees what they knew... and they had heard NOTHING. So I called the PHB... he said 'yep we're speeding up the move of the dept and contractors are going first'. I was ok with this if not THRILLED (I've got a 7 week old baby that would like to have diapers I'm sure). The NEXT day I go into work and the PHB has sent an e-mail saying that the company was doing a large global headcount cut and that in our dept (across two states), the decision was made to axe two contractors in Atlanta... me and the other guy on my shift were the two sacrificial lambs. I was quite bitter for a while till I realized that all the other victims of the headcount chop didnt' get a couple weeks of notice. All said and done it was a strange situation, though now it does look like the rest of the dept only has a few more weeks. I can't say that there was much justification for us to still be around mind you... they've cannibalized our depts responsabilities for so long that we didn't have all THAT much left to do. oh well... cookie crumbles and all that.
CharlesP
wordtrip.com
A bunch of people, myself included, were recruited from out of state for developer positions in Alabama. Seven months later, the company wasn't doing so well. Wandering around the office at the end of one thursday we noticed that everyone who had been with the company a year or more was in some kind of hush hush meeting in the main conference room. We figured it out and we had our things all packed up by the time they told us on friday. On friday we were each pulled into one on one meetings with two of the CEO's, one of which was also fired. They gave us two weeks severance pay plus vacation... but technically they owed us all a little more than that because they hadn't quite been living up to our contracts. We had to sign don't sue us papers to get the severance. Anyways, after the firing we all went out to lunch on the non fired CEO. After that we all went home to break our leases ($2500 Ouch!) and the non-fired ceo went home to his huge house, cattle ranch, giant plasma tv, fishing pond, and ATV course.
First all we employees had to gather in the main meeting room. Management told us to reach under our seats. Below about 5 seats were taped slips of paper. Those five people had to perform in this humiliating contest. They had to do something or say something to embarass themselves. The president of the company is sitting there as judge. Whoever has the right to be the most mortified, in his judgement, won the showdown. I lost, but it was close. Had I won, I would have kept my job.
Then he starts calling us, one by one. Each of us goes up. Some were told to go back to their desks. They were the lucky ones. They survived to work another day. The rest of us had to pick up our commerative plates--the ones we got when we started--and hand them to the president. He said, "So-and-so, you're dead to us." Then he throws the plate into the fireplace (the office was an old mansion). Then we had to leave. People were bawling. Women were fainting. It was something I'll never be able to forget.
I don't think anybody can beat that one.
Like many others, mine's not firing but compulsory redundancy, but hey...
This had been going on for a while - shaky dot-bomb, done well for its first year then took on a load of people and started to go down the tubes.
We'd already been through two redundancy waves across all departments (we did tech training and consultancy, with a bit of s/w dev on the side), and so were feeling a bit jittery anyway, when my extremely-non-PHB boss came in and told us basically that the receivers had taken over the company, that it didn't look good, and they were coming in tomorrow to meet with us.
We all looked at each other and thought a loud "Uhuh", and packed up our personal stuff for grabbing that evening.
Next day, receivers come in, disappear straight into the meeting room, and ask for us to come in as a group 20 mins later. Was handled professionally - simply a statement of "we don't have money to keep paying you, so we're making you all redundant. If you could leave before lunch we'd be grateful"
Personally, I think we surpised them - we had been expecting it after all, so this was met with a shrug, and comments of "Fair enough. To the pub, then?".
Best part was the fact that we got compulsory redundancy from the govt, plus pay that we were due that month, so being without a job got me more money that month. Plus we'd already arranged for the whole dev dept to phoenix ourselves into a new company (which is currently going well, thankfully).
The main problem after that was getting the notice pay that we were due - it's been 18 months now and _still_ the paperwork's crawling its way through the system. Ah, well. It'll be nice when it turns up.
My husband used to work for HP. When we started hearing about the first round of layoffs, we started looking for another job for him. (A good thing, too. Carly decided she wanted to buy TWO gulfstream jets and needed to clear out some more employees to do it!) Managed to avoid the whole nasty mess of being fired. Keeping your ear to the ground and jumping ship when your instincts tell you is a good thing in the current market climate. My father-in-law used to work for Rolls Royce as what they called a lifer. Back then, companies took care of their employees, and did everything they could to keep them. 40 years tenure in this day and age is nigh on unheard of. These days you're lucky to last 4 or 5 years in a larger corporate environment. All the dotcommers that flooded the IT market in a rush for gold sure are making life more difficult (but not unbearable, if you actually know your stuff). It may take longer to find that diamond in the rough job, but you'll find it, if you're willing to consider job hunting a full time job in and of itself (or in my husband's case, get your stay at home wife to do the legwork for you ;).
That every single one of you worthless lazy pricks who got fired and hasn't found another job yet is a drain on honest hardworking people everywhere. You are violating your God-given mandate to produce, produce, PRODUCE!!!!!!!! GET A JOB, LEECHES!!!!!!!
Thank you,
The Cato Institute
That sounds like something a racist bigot asshole would say.
On a day of layoffs, I got an email from the boss of my three-man (not including the boss) team. It said to come to a meeting, and was addressed to me and one other coworker.
So come the question: were we being laid off, or is he?
Now, the remaining guy (who didn't get the email) was the most hard-working guy on the team, and not somebody I'd expect to get laid off. But it seemed strange to be laying off 2/3 of an already understaffed team.
When we got to the meeting, the boss started talking about the layoffs. I stopped him, asking, "Are we being laid off?" "No." "Is ?" "No."
It turns out the coworker was on vacation, and the boss had called him up earlier.
It turned out okay (for my team, at least), but boy was I scared for a little while!
Now you listen to me, you smooth talking son-of-a-bitch! Let me lay it on the line for you and your boss, whoever he is. Johnny Fontane willl never get that movie! I don't care how many dago guinea wop greaseball goombahs come out of the woodwork!
Everyone knew the company was in trouble, so they called a meeting for all 25 people or so in the region with some big manager from HQ.
So he starts going through a PowerPoint presentation covering the state of the company blah blah blah.
Then, one fancy transition effect later he comes to a slide that says LAYOFFS and has a list of about half the people in the room. People are yelling "Holy Shit!", girls are crying, it's mass chaos as he robotically reads every name on the slide.
Then he flips to the next slide: PEOPLE STILL NEEDED, reads the names, shuts off the projector and leaves the room. Fortunately, I was on the second list, but quit soon after.
When I was in college and working at a restaurant, the boss took great delight in pulling timecards from the rack on the wall. He'd wait for an employee to show up and start looking for his timecard, and then casually walk by and say "oh, that reminds me..."
"It was a summer's tale: Just a boy, his Linux, and a head full of dreams..."
A few jobs back I was fairly outspoken about the level of software piracy in a certain university department. An external software audit had been announced for early Feb and I had finally decided to take some leave over Christmas and the New Year. On the day before my leave was to start, the guy who had just been dressed up in a Santa costume for the Christmas morning tea thing (my boss's boss), came into my office and told me things weren't working it and I wasn't to come in again and that my contract would be paid out in full. If I didn't leave quietly then they'd use their position as a reputable university department to sabotage the reast of my working life. I only found out later that they were not a reputable university department.
So we fix the problem and I get chewed out for giving the vendors permission to actually test for what the problem is. I know that night I'm looking for a job by my own choice. Monday it's by their choice.
Worked out fine. First Christmas I had actually relaxed in for years, stress level went *way* down, started to play a musical instrument, and after about two months got a new job and a $15k salary increase.
Wish they would have fired me sooner.
Well, we all knew things were going badly, so it didn't come very unexpectedly. I'm good friends with the sysadmin, and the fact that we were moving to be absorbed in the parent company, and the fact that the sysadmin told me that he had to lay out the network infrastructure in great detail to the IT team in the parent company, made all kinds of alarm bells go off in my head.
/dev/random.
When the day came, we were all called in a meeting room, where we were told that if you're name isn't on the whiteboard, you're fired.
After that, me and the sysadmin (who obviously also got canned) went back to our workstations, backed up what we wanted to an offsite server, and had some fun with 'dd' and
With absolute swiftness and no dignity whatsoever, despite being a good performer and well-liked throughout the company. And no severance package, to boot.
. . . in July, 2001, with several hundred other people. It was what you could call a "massive layoff."
I'm happier now than I ever was working for that organization. I can't help wondering how many senior managers there are Out There who blame the deaths of their companies on the recession when in reality their own arrogance and inflexibility were actually to blame.
DUCT TAPE: The Election Supervisors' Secret Weapon
About three weeks ago (On Sept. 11. Timing is everything, isn't it?), my team was sitting around, discussing plans for a major overhaul of our software, when another developer came over.
"Are you guys talking about (our Chicago office)?"
We told him we weren't. He then explained he had just received a call from one of them. That office had just been informed that they were all being laid off and the office was being shut down in 60 days.
We all wondered why 60 days, because in the past, layoffs were immediate. If I had known about the WARN act, I would have known what was coming next.
A few minutes later, we were all called into the conference room and handed envelopes. The company was firing 75% of its employees, and the envelopes would tell us if and when we were being let go. My wife (who works at the same company) and I were both fired, but have jobs until Nov. 10. It apparently wasn't the best way to handle it, because even some who were keeping their jobs thought they had been fired.
It wasn't all that unexpected, because the company had been in a slow death spiral for about a year. Things could be worse. Since our manager was also laid off, we can now come and go as we please, and spend our days looking for jobs and working on our home business.
human://billy.j.mabray/
"Every good system has a backup." -- Dale Hanchey
I remember it like it was yesterday, er, that is, because it was today.
PHB called me into his office and starts getting down on me for using Hungarian notation in my Java code. One of the guys on team had complained to him about it (that same gimp that always insists on prefixing every java instance variable with a 'this.' suffix). My boss of course, the typical PHB, blows the entire thing way out of preportion starts lecturing me about being culurally sensative (you see, my PHB is ACTUALLY Hungarian). But at this point I still think its about my coding style and hadn't realized that there was any misunderstanding. Figuring since we are wrapping up the Java-based project anyway and will soon be moving to an MFC-specific client-side app I say something to the effect of "Serge, slow down, if you don't like my style I can switch over to reverse polish if Hungarian isn't good enough for you". Well, at this point, he just lost his shit. He starts screaming at me thowing his arms left and right like a George Kostanza 'Koko The Monkey' imitation, screaming in some half-english, half-hungarian mish-mosh. At this point, I notice that people in the office have stopped working and just staring at us (the cubicle space is wide open and his office is against one of the walls with one of those big glass windows.) Then, I notice my buddy Higgins in the back laughing his ass off in the corner behind my boss. At the exact second I see my buddy, I realized my boss's confusion and just totally lost it. I just couldn't help it. I started laughing so hard I was in tears and I had to violently fight the urge to start rolling around the floor in laughter. Needless to say, the 'crazy Hungarian' (one of his many nicknames) was not impressed. He ordered me out of his office, so I just shook my head and laughed it off back to my desk, took an early lunch and didn't come back.
It will be interesting to see what happens tommorow. Worst case scenario, I've got my consulting side-line to hold me over until something better shows up. I also just finished burning a CD with the last dev version that has all sorts of GPL-infringing code. We'll see who has the last laugh in this one, which I guess is me already anyway...
All your base are belong to us!
HTTP/1.1 404?
Tuesday Morning, my Project Manager (Tom Mawhinney/Cianbro Corp (hey its all the truth, so libel doesn't apply)) tells me that Friday is my last day - definitely NOT customary for engineering staff. This was after I was told by others I would be retained after the project was over.
So I get a little pissed and make an appointment with th HR person. After ranting a little, she stops me and says "I'm not sure what's going on, but Tom's boss and I told him to give you 3 weeks notice." I wrack my brain, and remember that we DID have a conversation about how crappy the construction market was, but at no point did the word "layoff" come up. My conjecture is that he was afraid that I would slack off if given a lot of notice. I guess he expected me to act like he would have and did - unprofessionally.
Coda: 5 years later, I get a form letter asking me to "come back to Cianbro." One can imagine the glee with which I composed my reply. Burn the bridge, you ask? Think Tacoma Narrows, but doused in napalm.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
I was recently interviewing a replacement for a tester I work with (I'm a coder, I often get stuck interviewing). We plan to fire him in about 2 months, he won't be told by project manager/hr until the day it happens, our whole office knows. Even better, he is well aware of our interviewing, but we're interviewing for an additional 2 positions so he doesn't realize he's being axed. Afterwards I bet he figures out we were waiting until his replacement started, thinks back and realizes we were keeping him in the dark for months. We just can't be without someone filling that role, even if badly, and they won't tell him and risk having him turn off. Even worse, he was known to be a dud hire for about 6 months and no one did anything.
But wait!!! There's more! After he got hired he pulled over another dud tester with him. About after they let this guy go, the other guy will probably be on the chopping block. But first he'll have a month to think he's safe while we get some new hires up to speed.
Our management uses nothing but the long knives....
Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification
Short of it is: If more than X amount of people get fired you need X amount of days notification.
WARN ACT; PUBLIC LAW 100-379
SECTION I. SHORT TITLE; TABLE OF CONTENTS.
(a) SHORT TITLE. -- This Act may be cited as the " Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act".
(b) TABLE OF CONTENTS. -- The table of contents is as follows:
Sec. 1. Short title.
Sec. 2. Definitions; exclusions from definition of loss of employment.
Sec. 3. Notice required before plant closings and mass layoffs.
Sec. 4. Exemptions.
Sec. 5. Administration and enforcement of requirements.
Sec. 6. Procedures in addition to other rights of employees.
Sec. 7. Procedures encouraged where not required.
Sec. 8. Authority to prescribe regulations.
Sec. 9. Effect on other laws.
Sec. 10. Report on employment and international competitiveness.
Sec. 11. Effective date.
SEC. 2. DEFINITIONS; EXCLUSIONS FROM DEFINITION OF LOSS OF EMPLOYMENT.
(a) DEFINITIONS. -- As used in this Act --
(1) the term "employer" means any business enterprise that employs --
(A) 100 or more employees, excluding part-time employees; or
(B) 100 or more employees who in the aggregate work at least 4,000 hours per week (exclusive of hours of overtime);
(2) the term "plant closing" means the permanent or temporary shutdown of a single site of employment, or one or more facilities or operating units within a single site of employment, if the shutdown results in an employment loss at the single site of employment during any 30-day period for 50 or more employees excluding any part-time employees;
(3) the term "mass layoff" means a reduction in force which --
(A) is not the result of a plant closing; and
(B) results in an employment loss at the single site of employment during any 30-day period for --
(i)(I) at least 33 percent of the employees (excluding any part-time employees); and
(II) at least 50 employees (excluding any part-time employees); or
(ii) at least 500 employees (excluding any part-time employees);
(4) the term "representative" means an exclusive representative of employees within the meaning of section 9(a) or 8(f) of the National Labor Relations Act (29 U.S.C. 159(a), 158(f)) or section 2 of the Railway Labor Act (45 U.S.C. 152);
(5) the term "affected employees" means employees who may reasonably be expected to experience an employment loss as a consequence of a proposed plant closing or mass layoff by their employer;
(6) subject to subsection (b), the term "employment loss" means
(A) an employment termination, other than a discharge for cause, voluntary departure, or retirement,
(B) a layoff exceeding 6 months, or
(C) a reduction in hours of work of more than 50 percent during each month of any 6-month period;
(7) the term "unit of local government" means any general purpose political subdivision of a state which has the power to levy taxes and spend funds, as well as general corporate and police powers; and
(8) the term "part-time employee" means an employee who is employed for an average of fewer than 20 hours per week or who has been employed for fewer than 6 of the 12 months preceding the date on which notice is required.
(b) EXCLUSIONS FROM DEFINITION OF EMPLOYMENT LOSS. --
(1) In the case of a sale of part or all of an employer's business, the seller shall be responsible for providing notice for any plant closing or mass layoff in accordance with section 3 of this Act, up to and including the effective date of the sale. After the effective date of the sale of part or all of an employer's business, the purchaser shall be responsible for providing notice for any plant closing or mass layoff in accordance with section 3 of this Act. Notwithstanding any other provision of this Act, any person who is an employee of the seller (other
Out of work for 18 months, give or take a little consulting. Lived off credit cards slowly circling drain...
Hired at DigitalGoods.com (saw brushed metal conference room door, oddly shaped, very colorful furniture, conf. rooms named after foreign currency, thought "uh oh").
Two weeks later, boss on vacation, I get a note at my desk to see HR Manager. HR Manager hands me a key and a note that I'm supposed to disable the accounts of 40% of the staff, including one of the internal IT Ops people (I was Production Ops).
Week after that, the Dev's and IT kind of revolt. They demand to be able to do Java/Unix bootcamp project in addition to regular workload since we all know we're going to get whacked and want a resume builder.
Total of 6 weeks with the company, we're all killed. I got 3 paychecks. Made far more during the shutdown as a consultant doing liquidation, inventory kind of stuff. Bought much gear off the liquidators at less than bargain basement prices.
Overall I think it was one of the COOLEST jobs I've had. Although I was only there briefly, I got to work with some of the best people ever, made contacts, and was able to find new jobs for several of my ex fellow cow-orkers.
Very valuable, got good bootcamp-type experience with some stuff, won a dollar on an uptime bet that could never be proven/disproven, and got lots of gear cheap. Of course it helps that I found another job quickly that time.
I like music
I was called into the CEO's office. There were four pieces of paper on his desk. One was a check for my last two weeks pay, the second was 2 weeks severance pay, and the third was a letter of recommendation in positive terms. The fourth piece of paper was a contract wherein I would agree to never disclose that he had been embezzling, since that would endanger his negotiations to sell the company and smear his "good name," and that if I ever told anyone, I would be liable for $50k in liquidated damages, as the contract clearly stated. I was told I would only receive the checks if I signed the contract. I refused, I said it was illegal to withhold my previously owed pay. He screamed at me until he was blue in the face. I signed the contract and wrote "signed under diress" underneath the name. Embezzler CEO tore the paper up and threw it in my face. He said he'd blackball me forever unless I signed. He threatened to have his buddies break my legs if I didn't sign. I finally signed, just to get the asshole out of my face. I immediately went back to my desk and found the VP, who wanted me to hand off any work remaining on my CPU, whereupon I found that my hard disk had been formatted by the CEO, presumably to wipe the evidence I had collected of the his embezzling. The VP was positively livid, but he knew the CEO had done it and not me. VP was tasked with watching me clear out my desk, and escorted me off the premises. I drove to the bank and immediately cashed the checks. Then I consulted a lawyer as to whether a contract signed under diress would be valid. The lawyer said I could probably win and have the contract nullified in court, but what would be the point? I'd be free to tell the truth about embezzler CEO, but I'd spend thousands litigating it and there wouldn't be any money in it for me. The best I could win was a wrongful termination suit, and I could get my old job back, oh boy what a prize! The asshole CEO blackballed me anyway, I haven't had a decent job ever since.
I worked for a dot com during the later part of the boom. It was a pretty decent place to work. Then, we started to run out of money.
They had 4 rounds of layoffs, but I was a key developer (team lead), so while all my direct reports were let go, I remained. Our development group went from 7 down to 3. Those of us who remained were given our "severance" in-advance so that we wouldn't worry about not getting it if the company ran out of cash. Pretty neat idea.
Anyway, on Sept 10, 2001, the rest of my team and I got laid off. We were told that there was one developer position in another group, and were asked if we wanted it. I declined (was sick of the uncertainty, and wanted to find a job before Christmas time), and one of the others did so also, leaving the third to stay.
On Sept 11 we were going in to tidy up the code for mothballing, but with the WTC attacks it took several hours to get to the office, and when we did we were sent home in case other attacks were to follow (we worked in downtown Atlanta).
At the max we had about 120 employees (I was #42), and the day I left there were 14 still employed. That company is out of business now, but they treated us as fairly as possible when we were laid off. Our severance package was 4 weeks of pay, plus our computer. It was a pretty fair deal.
I had a job offer in 2 weeks, and within 6 weeks was working at the new company. It's not fun like the dot.com, but it pays the bills.
- Vincit qui patitur.
#1 and #4 were the most surprising; #4 was the only one that really hit hard since my daughter had just been born.
Once my replacement was adequately trained I applied for my holidays to begin the following week. On friday afternoon I handed them my resignation and walked out the door (to cries of "you can't do this to us!").
Funnily enough, one of the other employee tried to emulate my technique but did it the wrong way around (hand in resignation, then request holidays for the remaining notifivation period). Strangely they didn't grant her holiday request. :)
Of course I still had to serve them documents explaining what laws they were in breach of when they tried to screw me out of the sick pay/time-in-leiu and the penalties if I had to sic the government on them. Very typical of the scams they played.
Their response to my leaving was to fire half of the remaining staff... I felt bad about that for some time. They also demoted one of their most loyal employees to cover the gap (or at least ensure the directors wouldn't be bothered by customers) and he was so shocked that they would repay him in this way that he quit, taking about half of the companies servers with him (they were his).
Ironically the replacement I trained and I have remained good friends and our kids play together most weeks. He has just resigned from the same company with the difference that they had not let him hire/train a replacement.
Oh and they have just released an enormous update to their software. They are soooo fucked....
I love my current job and the people I work with. They respect me and I respect them. It's amazing what a difference it makes.
Q.
Insert Signature Here
I got an IM from a co-worker the night before saying he'd received a phone call saying "Don't come in tomorrow..." I wasn't at home, but there were no messages for me. I didn't have CallerID at the time. I went in the next morning and specifically tried to find an HR person, even asked the receptionist (wife of the guy on IM) if she knew anything. After a few minutes, I headed to my desk.
There was an e-mail about a meeting set to take place in 15 minutes, so I headed down to the break room - the only place large enough to hold all the people. I had been sitting for about 5 minutes when an HR person stuck their head in and asked to speak to me. It was pretty shitty, because I knew I was the only one in the room who wasn't going to be there the next day.
I had to train someone on my job, which proved to be difficult, as they had locked out my account in the 5 minutes I was away from my desk, and then they spent 45 minutes deciding if I was trustworthy enough to be allowed access to my files.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
... I refreshed my browser...
... and got this...
Got another job the same day. Aah. dotcomm days, where are ye?
Scott Adams could make a book out of this article, I have never laughed so hard in disgust in my entire life.
Demand 12 weeks severance pay.
One can act with consideration & dignity, and still come out on top.
I gave notice at an old job, explaining that I saw no further room for advancement in an IT dept of 2 people, and other inherent problems with retail support. I purposely chose a time when my departure should have minimal impact. Still, they came back to me & asked what it would take for me to stay on for four more months. I explained that a 50% increase in salary and more consideration at holiday time would keep me for that length of time.
They agreed, but at the end of my new contract, my boss told me that the management had been worried that as a lame duck I might take advantage and slack off. I had impressed them very much by continuing to work my ass off.
The funny thing is that a good friend of mine a few companies later had almost the exact same story to tell. We'll always have good references, anyway.
When I finally was laid off, it was by being offered a relocation to the East coast, but our family is here in Califoria, so I took the layoff. Now I've got to either find or make a job.
In terms of finding out about layoffs, in IT one sees lots of things that make such things obvious. I mean nothing unethical, mind you, but just things like noticing strange patterns of upper management behavior, or your example of sudden, inflexible, and arbitrary realignments. "But why does all this have to be done by the 5th?"
One friend said to watch the water cooler. In three companies, he had seen the water cooler removed days before the layoffs hit.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
Debra came in the next morning, hugely hung-over after partying all night. She went to the cooler to get some water to take a couple of aspirins and the executive approached her and said, "Debra, I've never done this before, but I have to lay you or Jack off."
Debra replied, "Could you please jack off? I have a terrible headache."
(courtesy of The Humor Source)
I worked under the table (tax-free) as a tech at a local shady computer shop. It was great... the money was good, the work was easy, and I got to make my own hours.
One day I came into work and noticed that my time card wasn't there anymore. I went to my boss to ask for a new one. He told me that I wasn't required anymore, and that I should go talk to the secretary and collect my last paycheck.
I was nice enough not to tattle about the fact that he'd been having us install unlicensed copies of Windows 95 when we ran out of license slips. Or about all the stolen laptops he fenced and resold.
http://chrismetcalf.net
Laid off 3 times from a major defense contractor in the late 1980's (at the end of the Ronnie Regan dayz..)
:-)involved to re-instate my pink slip. (3rd time *WAS* a charm!!)
First time.. no biggie.. I actually 'dreamed' about it the night before (bizzare eh?) Had a similar premonition about my wife (also an EE)
about a month prior to her axing from moto a few years back! (scary eh?) Fortunately that chain was broken about a year ago (dreamed that one of my good friends also EE was getting the axe from his job) so far the premonition has not held true in that instance.. whew!
Found another temp position.. they were behind on a project, needed an embedded code geek, I needed another 3-8 months to find a 'decent' job. Perfect fit until program management tried to hijack the project and move it across the country (to the east coast)
Most of us were midwesterners and wanted no part of that.. so I looked and looked and finally scored.. had plans to move to AZ then when I went in to discuss with my 2nd line mgr why I did not get an 'offer' package to move to the east coast.. he did not even know that I worked in his organization!? DOH! So then I told them of my intentions to leave.. and the bastards pulled my pink slip. Had to get the local engineering professional assoc. (read UNION?.. you can probably guess the company now..
The ironic thing was that other divisions of the company were coming in and hiring/interviewing.. they run like 300 of us into an auditorium and try to sell us on moving to huntsville to work on the intl space station. Then they are like all arrogant and crap about making the 'cut' to join their organization.. yeah whatever dudes.. that project has obviously been a *raging* suck-sess!
cracked me up.. happened 1.5 years into my career as an electronics engineer.. really opened my eyes to the way things *REALLY* work.
Never settle, never work on stagnant projects.. always keep your eyes open for what is going on around you. You can bury your head in your CRT and work your ass off, but in the end you'll be the one that no body knows about and out the door first!
The joke in the group was a fellow named 'Van'
(his nickname was Van Gough.. like 'where is
Van? where did Van go?'
I was laid off.. he was retained.
I worked for a rather small (~8 staff) company. The MD went on 'holiday' for two weeks. By the end of the month (4 weeks later), he wasn't back yet, and we didn't get paid. We stayed there for another month until we got a call from him, asking to close up the company. It was terrible.
I got a job at another company. One of my colleagues didn't like me, and managed to get me fired. I was told there was a disciplinary hearing against me, please be there at 9. I went the next morning, and there were a bunch of false accusations made against me. I then had the floor to defend myself, which I did. The HR person then said, sorry, you're lying, here's a cheque for 2 weeks pay, please leave immediately. I went back to the office to fetch my stuff, only to find the new employee sitting in my chair! I was fired even before I got there.
About a year ago my mom was called into her bosses office and offered an early retirement package and asked not to tell anyone. She accepted the offer and they even threw her a retirement party. Two weeks later the doors were locked and the remaining employees got nothing, not even 2 weeks severence.
Well the company I was working at was going through the whole re-org process. I had survived two rounds of heavy layoffs. Fortunately for me after the second round I had decided to get back into school and cut back my hours at work.
:) Gotta admit though, getting fired hurts no matter what the circumstances are. The CEO kissing my shoe might have helped.
I was good buds with my bosses so I knew from the rumor mill that there were going to be layoffs that day. My boss wouldn't tell me who, even though he had always done so before. So I knew something was up. When my boss suggested we all go out to lunch on his dime, I knew for sure. I told them I knew I was getting fired but just got a grimacing look and a shrug in return. I kept trying to convince myself that I didn't really care.
Later that day my manager pulled me into the server room and let me go. He was really cool about it, didn't have HR escort me out. Just sent me down there on my own. Meanwhile others got police escort.
I still keep in contact and do some occassional work for them.
You know how they stress 'soft skills' to technical people, especially customer support? Yeah, I do my best. I have been laid off - February 2002, imagine that - and I'm not telling that whole story because I liked the company and though it was difficult; it was a good experience and I got much from them. Unemployed except for some very brief temp jobs installing printers, I worked a 3-month contract in October that was extended one month but I chose to take a more permanent job, much much closer to home, that December. I've been promoted twice since then and it's not a startup. Remember what I said about soft skills? Make sure you have the technical skills too and exercise them without arrogance.
I think with the interesting people, their lives can't possibly be wrapped up into a nice little package.
During my vacation I got a call from one of the major share holders of the company I was working for, asking me if I'd like to work for a company he was starting...
Noone had bothered to tell me that that we'd actually filed for the ol' Chapter 11, although it hardly came as a surprise when I finally figured it out.
Cig? No, thank you.
so... did you like, i dunno, take them to lunch after the whole event? I actually feel that they kinda deserved it (the lunch).
My life in the land of the rising sun.
I got told that my services were no longer required when I was recovering from life-saving surgery. The cold-hearted bastards even sent me a letter asking me to come into the office to discuss my position whilst I was still in hospital recovering from my operation.
The cowards didn't even have the guts to tell my co-workers that they were letting me go. They announced that they were going to reshuffle someone else into my position at a meeting and, when someone asked what my new role was going to be, weasled out a few lines along the lines of "he's decided to focus on other priorities".
All this despite knowing that I would be able to return to work within four weeks - one of which was the Christmas/New Year holiday period when the office was virtually dead. Not only did they have that in writing from me, they had it from my surgeon, who was a world-reknowned expert in his field.
Basically, what it boiled down to was my boss (not my line manager, but her boss) didn't want me around. He couldn't fault my performance so he dressed up my ill-health for his own advantage. My line manager even suggested that I apply for the vacancy created by the co-worker who moved into my job. I told her that I was never going to allow the bastard who sacked me the opportunity to do it twice.
I swear, at that moment in time, I felt I was as low as it gets. I had someone who loved me and she gave me a reason to live, but I had just gone from being in the prime of my manhood to death's door and back, only to find that the one thing I was most looking forward to - the one job that I truly loved - had been callously taken from me. It was like being kicked to the ground and then, at the first sign of life, kicked to unconciousness.
It's a good thing that I'm not an American living in America. If there was ever a time in my life that I would have picked up a gun, walked up to someone, and calmly shot them through the head that was it. Some people are just scum. This guy was the king of them.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
I just walked out. It was the crappiest job I've ever done - formatting hard discs all day, every day for a refurbishing company.
Every now and then I'd swap out some dead RAM, or stack machines on palletes.
Thankfully I now I have a job I love doing, where I actually get to help people get somewhere in life, instead of screwing them over on over-priced hardware.
A week later, he called me into a meeting and told me I could either take redundancy (about 5 months net wages), or I might possibly be able to get transferred into a pre-sales role (i.e. lots of travelling around the country, for no extra pay). I took redundancy and used it to go freelance.
An additional factor in my choosing that decision was prior information from my boss that the entire company would run out of working capital in ~5 months time if things didn't turn around. That was two years ago and they've just broken even again. I can't help but think that someone was bullshitting, or the books aren't telling the whole story. That said, all the founders are gone, people are still being "let go" and some are even quitting without jobs to go to, so I guess morale is basically shot.
The freelance life hasn't worked out as well as I had hoped, but I still think taking the pre-sales option would have been worse.
I worked as a computer lab assistant for two years at a local college (satellite office of a bigger college out of state), i was 16 at the time (2000). my friend, who scored the job of netadmin (MCP in NT4.0... MSCE track... guy can't build a box to save his life, knows squat about linux, etc) got me the job of lab assistant (read: assistant admin guru). I knew squat about linux back then, didn't know any better :).
:) i mostly surfed /. for those 3 hours, repaired the occasional (usually 1 a week... 98SE POS, later 2k/98 dual boots (with removable racks... that was real fun installing em (fried 6 20GB HDs, the cheap racks never said anything about they keylock killing power/data...)
The job was 3 hours a week, 9-12 every saturday babysitting two labs (12 and 9 computers, respectivly) for $9.25 per hour, not too shabby considering i had unfettered access to the lab's T1 line every saturday
anywho, june 2002, i hear from my friend that they're reorganizing and can no longer afford to have a full time tech staff (read: us) and announce tha they are outsourcing from then on. He gets let go from a full time spot, and gets the outsourcing contract (substantially less pay, i'd imagine), i hand on for another 8 weeks, wind up moving furniture and taking down old lans for most of it, then i'm let go, quietly.
Ive gone the freelance route since, i can't say it's lucrative, but it's semi-stable work that fits my schedule (High school, ya know). I am searching for a non burger-flipping job, but no one wants to hire a computer geek with 0 retail experience or HS diploma... yet...
Logistical Chaos Officer http://www.slagg.org - LAN Gaming in Sarasota FL,USA
FILES=[value] (usually this was 8, I think)
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
I was working for a streaming company when we sort of got the feeling it wasn't going to last long. Showing up at work for two weeks with nothing to do doesn't help morale. Anyway I was called into some shabby office and told what was up. I took my envelope with me to my desk where all my things were already packed up. As a parting gesture while the managers and bosses observed me, I played an MP3 from the film Halfbaked where Scarface yells "Fuck You, Fuck You, Fuck You, your cool...and Fuck You, I'm out!!" It felt a little better. After work we went to a nearby bar to get pissed and the company attorney was there. He had a shit-eating grin and was bragging because as we were all getting fired he got a 10k raise. Fucker.
--Residential Interior Design
Starteds working there in March 1999.
On morning in May 1999, I am called into my bosses office. Laid off.
Got two weeks severance, quarterly performance bonus, quarterly sales bonus, and my last two weeks paycheck (all told came to about 9 weeks pay).
Since I was fresh off the job hunt, I called the job that I really wanted but turned down (because it was 25 miles away as opposed to right across the street) and asked them if the position was open.
Yes it was. I cruised down, signed on the line, got a 2K a year raise, and went back to collect my stuff (since I had walked to work I asked for permission to go get my car.)
25% of the core product developers and most of the parser group went down that day.
It was quite humane: my only regret is that there was a chick working there that I was so close to bedding (I had already taken her home for "lunch"). Oh well.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
I worked for a small software company in Cary, NC, owned and run by a guy who was insane. His MO was that he'd hire someone, treat them like royalty for about six months, get tired of them, and fire them. As one of two sysadmins, I found out about a firing when I was told at the close of business on a given day "Disable Joebob's login tonight - he's getting fired tomorrow."
The company had about 12 people, and I saw about half of them turn over in nine months. Of course, about seven months into it, I was told "You need to show $NEW_SYSADMIN how to do the stuff you do." I saw the writing on the wall, and started quietly interviewing.
One day, I came in and attempted to log into my workstation, and my password didn't work. I knew what was up then. The owner came in and said "Can I see you in my office?" Four of us got the axe that day.
Apparently the guy's still at it - $NEW_SYSADMIN got fired about six months later, and he even fired a few of his inner circle who I thought were untouchable.
If anyone's considering interviewing with a small software company in Cary that does serial console work, drop me an email and I'll be glad to fill you in on the horror stories.
Wadda ya say now, Smarty?
This is a story I still feel bad about almost ten years later!
I was working in a small company office, about a dozen tech sales and a husband-and-wife management team, let's call them Bob and Joan. As a regional office, we were doing badly. We all really liked our managers, they tried really hard, but sales were poor partly because of their management and partly because we were just not trained for the task of selling the rather rubbish products anyway. And so we were all talking behind our managers' backs about it, and we schemed a revolt in which we lined up jobs with our local competitor, who actually promised some real training on a good product range.
The day before we were all due to hand in notice and skip the sinking ship, our managers called us into a meeting and started to tell us the office was being closed and we were all being fired by the head office. They were really cut up and they both started to cry, saying they felt they had let us down! Not one of us had the guts to admit we already had something lined up, and we trooped out of that room and rushed off to confirm our new jobs.
Two weeks later I heard that Bob had had a nervous breakdown - he had spent the previous two months stressing over how he could protect "his people" from head office, which was about the same amount of time we'd spent scheming.
I was one of three engineers on staff, and had been given a fair amount of responsibility, but very little time to document anything.
One day, the CFO called a meeting, told us all that the company wasn't doing well, and that 1/3rd of the staff would be fired.
Being the new guy, I was the unlucky 1/3rd of Engineering. To make matters worse, we were given no notice, and no severance. We were simply strung along, left to assume that the company was still doing alright.
It doesn't surprise that when that company folded, the CFO showed up to the fire sale with a trailer and bought out whatever servers he thought he could get away with selling.
It also doesn't surprise me that by firing me, they ended up losing many weeks worth of work, and whatever amount of money would be related to that. They deserved worse.
Raptor
"Procrastination is great. It gives me a lot more time to do things that I'm never going to do."
Long story, but I was fired for political reasons. A co-worker tipped me off a half hour early (he was told to disable my accounts when I went to a meeting) so at least I wasn't surprised.
They fired me, then I was told I could be escorted to my desk to get my personal crap, and "oh, you need to tell us all the passwords you use".
I had to explain to them that if I told them, I would still know them and they wouldn't be secure. Dumbasses.
I laughed as I knew that theu have to change passwords on 50 routers and a ton of servers.
My life changed for the better after that.
Back in 1995 I worked for Evolving Systems in Denver. I was a pretty good place but had its share of sleezy management. We got all the free cookies, chips, and soda we could consume in return for withering 60-70 work weeks. One Friday afternoon one of the officers sent out an email that all of the company servers would be down that weekend for maintainance. This was a bit suspicious given that I had never known the company to not operate on the weekend. Monday morning we came in to find the doors locked. The entire staff was herded into a large meeting room and told that there would be a large layoff. We were to go to our office (everybody had one!) close the door and wait. Out in the halls you could hear knocks on the doors and lots of whispering and shuffling. I just sat there waiting for the angel of death to knock at my door. It never happened, but over 100 of 400 employees got axed. The severed employees were treated respectfully, but there were guards all over the place just in case someone went rogue. Afterward the CEO sat the remaining group down and told us how we were specially choosen and should stick around. I found a new job in a month.
an ill wind that blows no good
The facility guys left a giant pile of those colapsible cardboard boxes on my manager's desk while he was off at meetings. We all looked at them and tried to convince ourselves that there was a different explanation. The boxes disappeared when he returned to his desk but returned later that day when the blood was spilled. -IT
----
---- "Excuse me. Where's the children's gun section?"
There's a difference. A big difference.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Our own Catbert called us in one by one and seemed to take some pleasure in firing us techies, I think cos he just seemed to think all the stuff we did was a waste of good marketing money. The laugh was they layed off the hosting arm of the company without telling the sales force, about two days before their star sales guy lands this massive contract that could have saved the company, if only they had the systems to back it up! The next week Catbert is on the phone - would I like my job back? He creeped and crawled and tried to make out it was some clerical error etc, but by then all us techies had new jobs and happily watched the old company slide into oblivion.
I'd just like to point out that prefixing every instance variable with "this." is a commonly recommended practice. It's one of the things mentioned in "The Elements of Java Style".
Hungarian Notation, on the other hand, is a piece of idiotic crap used by C programmers to make up for a brain-dead type system. It's completely unnecessary in Java.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I was working as a consultant for a major elevator company in the US as a network admin/tech support slave. I've been there almost two years, they'd given me applications for permanent employment. Two days before by two-year anniversary (and one month before my first marriage), the big boss called me in his office. Here I was thinking, "Woohoo! Finally." I got there, and the manager from the consulting company was there, along with the corporate boss, and a big box. "Sorry, times are tough, and you're the highest paid consultant at the moment" (Never mind that I was the most experienced one there!) They just cut me like that, no chance for negotiating a slightly lower pay or anything. Poof! Gone! So, after I was gone, I was a bit peeved to say the least. Just to be able to vent a little, I sent an email to the corporate bossman, saying "You've put me in a real fine mess with all the plans for my wedding I now have to scrap... People shouldn't be treated like cattle. I wouldn't wish this on anyone - how would you feel if you ended up in the same situation?" The idiots read that as a threat against the boss' familiy somehow :P It was fun talking to some of the old employees there, hearing that "If XXXXX comes on the premises, call the police immediately" Talk about knee-jerk reaction!
I got made redundant from my last job, a website development company who were losing a lot of money very quickly. Everyone was made redundant, except the CEO and his secretary.
We all got other jobs, and worked out our notices, and on the last day, the boss was pleading with everyone to stay, on double salaries for some unknown reason, even though as far as we knew there was no more work coming in.
Did I stay? You must be joking...!
I was a manager for a large well known company that got hit ( like everyone else ) by the bursting bubble, and I had to lay off about 1/3 of my staff. The list was given to me, which I suppose is just as well since they were/are all good workers.
On that list was a personal friend that had been working at the University I attended years ago and that I had only recently sucessfully recruited out of his comfortable, safe and stable job. On top of that, his first child was going through a great deal of medical attention because he was born with heart defect that needed several operations to repair ( if it could be repaired at all ).
If you have never been on this end of the stick, I can tell you that it's no fun. I'm no PHB. I went to bat for my staff all of the time. I was a rather well known for picking what seemed to be loosing battles ( however, it turned out that they usually just had longer time horizons ). I was sick to my stomach for weeks and must have lost 10 pounds before it was all over.
At any rate, I broke one of the first rules they told me, which was DO NOT let any of these people know in advance. I called him as soon as I knew he was on the list, and asked him if he thought he could get his old job back. He was stunned, but he understood what I was doing and why.
Turns out he was able to get his old job back, but if I had waited a day or two longer that might not have been the case ( as it was about to be listed ). He was able to keep the signing bonus, and as a Laid Off Employee he was given a very generous severence package ( 6 months pay and vesting as I recall ).
Oh yes, his son came through with flying colors and is now just fine.
Eschew Obfuscation
Oddly enough, it wasn't my fault. But that forking cloud of smoke and burning astronauts signalled the end of that job.
I've always been a surplus to requirements... I'm really anxious to see how I will be fired if I ever get a job.
"he drew his sword Ringil that glittered like ice... and he wounded Morgoth with seven wounds..."
i cant believe there is such a fuss about the aimster model. this just goes to show that geeks have no taste.
Then, I get the new PHB. From the word 'go' she hates me, and I didn't care for her. My next annual review suddenly I'm a complete f*@#-up, and can't do anything right. Six months later, I'm given the dreaded written warning, told I had a "bad attitude", and that I needed to straighten up and fly right.
So, I asked "what makes you think I have a bad attitude?". "The things you say." "Such as??" Of course she couldn't give even one example of anything I had said or done that would show a "bad attitude", just that I had one.
So for the next few months, I'm in a weekly meeting with PHB and HR drone. Finally, I finish up a month-long project that was hot hot hot. Finished it on-time, under-estimate, it worked perfectly, and made the customer (in their exact words) "extremely happy". Customer even took me out to lunch (hmmm... lunch...) to say "thank you" for my efforts on the project.
Three days later, I'm fired, they claimed I had "never shown improvement". I pointed out that my latest project was a stunning success, and if that wasn't "improvement" then what was? No response from PHB or HR drone...
So, after over nine years, they claim I can't do my job - that I had been doing for nine years.
Bastards...
I was once fired at 5:00pm Wednesday afternoon before the Thanksgiving weekend. The staffing company reasoned that since I had been showing signs of stress (hmm, really?), they didn't want me to do anything rash when they informed me that an 18-month temp-to-perm placement had been bought out by the customer.
Oh, and by the way, could I please leave now?
I ended up demanding two weeks notice (and pay) as a professional courtesy, since had I walked out I probably would not have gotten my last check. (They eventually agreed to pay me for two weeks.)
Karma only matters to me now and zen.
i was working at a dotcom as a sysadmin. they only had 7 people, but they wanted someone to keep their network running, so that justified a full time person.
about two months before i left i'm checking the printer for some reports and see the minutes of the last meeting. i look and see it says the company has only enough funds to operate for another month.
i started looking almost immediately.
Free Webmail
I apologize for the length, but it must be told like this.
Yeah...
SO after leaving a popular, yet horrific ISP ruled by the followers of L. Ron Hubbard (that story is pretty bad, as well), a friend of mine came to my rescue during my week of unemployment.
He mentioned that him and and another programmer were working on a web-app that would be the holy grail of auto sales...
He was happy there, and he was paid, so I joined. A small company like this was a welcomed change from the corporate lies I had just escaped from. The other programmer turned out to be a good guy -- as with the rest of the staff there... with the exception of the boss / owner.
The man wasn't too intelligent, but thought himself a god. Given his constant drinking, we started to (and still do) refer to him as the Angry Drunken Dwarf. If any of you know of Hank, his might help to give you a picture of what we are dealing with here.
Anyhoo, the man was always tossing acronym's and jargon he had just read in an outdated business/computing magazine, and DEMANDED his product have all of those features that he had no idea what they even meant, and that it be completed in a week. You couldn't argue with the man, either. If he wanted his web-app to be "API compatible", you might as well smile and nod, and tell him it was done yesterday. Arguing with him that something couldn't be done or (gasp!) 'didn't make any sense' was like asking him to yell loudly in your ear using as many offensive remarks about you as he could in the process. Oh, how we hated him..
Throw in his ability to get people to pay down on something they had never seen, then refuse to give them a refund when they get something of *cough* lesser quality (which they refused, and then the dwarf sold to someone else without giving their deposit back), and you had a lot of other people whom hated him.
In fact, this hatred took on a life of its own, into what we could only see as the funniest piece of justice ever served.
So I wake up one morning to my friend and fellow programmer at X company on the phone, telling me not to bother coming in today -- as the Angry Drunken Dwarf informed him that he would no longer be able to pay us.
That evening my friend called me back with an amusing story. It seems that, while he was gathering his things to go home, two hugely muscular men in suits came in, and started talking with (your friend and mine) the Angry Drunken Dwarf. Not to be outdone, the Angry Drunken Dwarf returned fire in his mannger that we had all come to know, with only his beautiful cherry office desk between them.
Suddenly, the men grabbed the Angry Drunken Dwarf by the collar and yanked him over the desk and onto the floor *on the other side*, where the commened beating him.
My friend called the authorities and, fortunately for the Angry Drunken Dwarf, my friend managed to separate them. You have to understand, my friend is a 6 foot 250 pounds of muscle black-belt in juikido jujitsu of 6 years. It wasn't easy for him to get them separated.
So the men leave, and later the cops show when they feel they had waited long enough. It seems those large men were witht he mob -- that's right, THE MOB. The Angry Drunken Dwarf seems to owe them a lot of money. Our account mentioned a figure around 3/4 a million.
So the next day we arrive, received our last paycheck (we received a personal check, which we cashed before he could stop payment -- yes, he would do that), and then he begins to ask us to work for free -- still promising us how much money the software was going to make.
During this speech, a policeman shows up and serves the Angry Drunken Dwarf. The officer cheerily announces (he must've gathered what was going on) "Hey, you're being sued!".
A lot of people began suing the Angry Drunken Dwarf.
A few weeks later, I get an email from EBAY (our software listed on ebay) that the secret service was looking for any info or any person whom had bought f
I got a phone call from one of my co-workers just after noon. The company, which was in no apparent financial trouble up to that time, was closing immediately.
There are advantages to hearing news like that at a distance:
No escorted office cleanout ritual. They had to be nice to me - I had their hardware and their data in my house.
No drama. I wasn't even tempted to scream or throw things - who would see?
Everyone else got the news first thing in the morning. I had a three hour jump on them due to the time zone difference.
We collectively found out later that our spinout had been a political football within the parent company, and the parent's reneging on contract work for the spinout was a major factor in the sudden collapse.
Two days later the parent company came back to the techie subset of the spinout employees and told us they had forgotten they were contractually obligated to deliver the final version of our new system (due about a year out)- could we finish it up for them as consultants?
We did - for hourly rates roughly equivalent to our old salaries, with a 50% bonus on delivery of the system. Biggest single check I've ever cashed...
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
...I'd take the job!
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
I've never been fired.
Last 3 places I've worked for I ended up getting sick of much too prevalent office politics, ageism, laziness of coworkers.
I quit, and am quickly snapped up after referrals from friends, former associates, and former coworkers.
-----
It was very simple.
"We don't have any money to pay you."
The IT department was pared down 75% three months later.
Fortunately, someone else offered me a job the day before.
A guy comes for an interview. Gets an offer.
Accepts it. Relocates (with his family) across the continent.
Gets laid off 2 days BEFORE he starts working.
Company only compensates him for relocation expenses. (Even that was kind of murky I never got
all the details)
No,this is not a joke. I was one of the interviewers. Some manager above the hiring one
decided to cut this particular position.
This probably will fall into the neather regions due to my AC posting, but someone asked, and I'd like to respond.
I arrived on a monday morning at 7:30am as I normally do to scan the e-mail reports of the weekend activity, check bug reports and prepare for the arrival of my developers and the rest of the engineering team (I managed a team). At 9:00am, the time everyone else started arriving, the Director I reported to came into my cube and asked if I had a moment. No problem, I said, I was not worried - we were as lean as I thought we could get and I performed some critical and very unwanted duties - I was safe.
The Director lead me to a conference room, closed the door and gave me the bad news. I got a packet of papers to sign, which I refused to do until I had a chance to read them over, and was asked to leave and come back later that day to get my personal items in my cube. The severance was OK so I signed the damn papers and came back at noon to get my stuff. There weren't too many dramatics as this had happened before and we were all used to it.
What stunk was that I tried really hard to manage my developers fairly and consistantly. But they fought me at every turn. Many of them went over my head weekly to the Director - you see they were old budies with the Director. Anyway, I'm sure they got a kick out of it and called me a PHB, etc. Which sucks. I tried to do the best thing for the company and the people that reported to me. And neither realized the value involved.
I wish this had a good ending, but it doesn't. long-term Unemployment sucks.
Have you ever noticed though, that most companies wait till the last moment before letting the employees know that there's something wrong. Wouldn't it be better to let people know as soon as possible? At best maybe everyone can come up with something that might save everyone's collective ass. At worst everyone knows what's going to happen and can soften the blow.(1)
(1) Now if the top managment are crooks...well.
Out of the blue ' we have decided to outsource all IT functions as we dont deem IT to be an intergral part of our business '.
Asked for my keys, watched as i cleaned out my desk, then was escorted out the door like a criminal.
They left the emergency password/line running for 5 months.. But im honest.. so didnt take advantage of it.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
After working at a startup for about a year designing sites for seven dollars an hour (fresh out of college, I didn't know any better), the boss man starts to become more and more demanding. He starts calling me on days off and on weekends, even paging me during my uncle's wedding, expecting me to jump up and run to the office to fix what he thought was wrong.
The weekend before I quit I got a call at home. "What the hell do you think you're doing? We told the client he'd get 3 pages for his site, I printed it out and it's twenty pages long! You get back in here now and fix it!" I didn't go in, instead I worked out the following week giving him a chance to at least acknowledge he'd been an ass. He didn't.
On the last day just before lunch I downloaded "Take this Job and Shove it" (he loved Napster), stuck it in the startup folder, powered down the computer, cranked the volume on the speakers and left. I never knew if the song played when the computer started up, but in my mind it did.
If whales learn how to use weapons we're all screwed!
Parent article wrote: "Under present laws, there are events a company can't tell employees about until it has told shareholders"
Depends, in many case how the company's structured. In some public comanies that value teamwork, a lot of information is shared. Of course the flip-side is that all employees have inside information so are more restricted in selling stock.
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/02/team1.html
'
Whole Foods supports teamwork with a
wide-open financial system... Sensitive
figures on store sales, team sales,
profit margins, even salaries, are
available to every person in every
location. In fact, the company shares
so much information so widely that the
SEC has designated all 6,500
employees "insiders" for stock-trading
purposes.
Mackey (CEO)calls it a "no-secrets" management
philosophy. "In most companies," he says, "management
controls information and therefore controls people. By
sharing information, we stay aligned to the vision of
shared fate.
The curious team member at any level of the company has
access to nearly as much operating and financial data as
anyone in Austin. In Ron Megahan's Bread & Circus, for
example, a sheet posted next to the time clock lists the
previous day's sales broken down by team. Another sheet
lists the sales numbers for the same day last year. Once
a week, Megahan's store posts a fax that lists the sales
of every store in the New England region broken down by
team, with comparisons to the same week last year, as well
as year-to-date totals. Another weekly fax gives sales
information for every store in the company, although it
doesn't break down sales by team.
There's more. Once a month, stores get detailed
information on profitability. The report analyzes sales,
product costs, wages and salaries, and operating profits
for all 43 stores.
'
'The first prerequisite of effective teamwork is trust.
At Whole Foods, building trust starts with the hiring
vote. Another element involves salaries. How better to
promote trust (both among team members and between
members and leaders) than to eliminate a major
source of distrust -- misinformed conjecture about who
makes what? So every Whole Foods store has a book that
lists the previous year's salary and bonus for
all 6,500 employees --by name.
'
If you're in that situation again, an obvious job lead, at least until you find something else, is to ask the consultant if he'd like to hire you. After all, you know the network better than anybody....
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
On the other hand, getting your kneecaps broken is less than ideal...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
As a somewhat older professional who actually has people skills, she had the view that a manager's first job in that kind of situation is to keep her people informed and use whatever contacts she had to help them find new jobs. That was easier during the late boom and early crash than it was when they laid her off a bit later.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The bank that the company used was a small local bank, and when they saw 50 people lined up at their door wanting to cash checks, some of the tellers started worrying if there was a bank run going on and was their bank having trouble, but the folks in line reassured them that, no, you're doing fine, it's just our company tanking.
I've probably gotten a few of the details wrong, and deliberately obscured others, but most of the story's pretty close to correct...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I wasn't fired. I resigned.
#6
I've only been fired once, thankfully, and it was through no act of my own. I was working as a subcontractor for a particular company on its bread and butter contract. I.E. this contract was the only reason the company existed.
I went to work one day and I was at work for about 2 hours when I get a call from my employer to let me know that the corporation had terminated his contract at the end of the previous business day. I can't say that I was all that surprised though since I had caught wind of the contract cancellation a little while before it happened, and before many of the managers had heard about it. The corporation was going though some scandals and I beleive the official word was that it was all part of a larger cost cutting maneuver, but I heard that there were several other reasons the contract was cancelled. Still, it sucks getting fired though no fault of your own.
Then again, I'm now back working for the same corporation but at twice the pay. Who knows how long it will last this time? I still don't know that the corporation is in the best position financially and legally, but there's no sense in worrying about it. With the current state of the job market where I live, it's become hard to find good jobs with my current set of skills, and certainly not any that pay me as much as this job pays. I'll just ride the gravy train as long as it lasts and then worry about another job whenever the gravy runs out.
I think the worst part about working for yourself is the relative lack of job security.
Massive layoff handled very badly.
CEO of the corporation (www.booksinternational.com) had a $10,000 per day cocaine habit. In order to keep paying for this habit, he mass layed-off all us pissant workers making $9.75/hr for illegal mexican immigrant workers making roughly $2.75/day. Go NAFTA!
Posted AC to protect the innocent...
We had a round of lay-offs. I wasn't one of them. But several friends were.
Beginning of the week (Tuesday, as one of the unlucky ones worked 4 10 hours days and wasn't in on Monday)... first thing in the morning, the person's immediate manager, that manager's direct peers (managers of other development teams in the same department), the department manager, and the company president call each into the office, explain the terms, and tell them to take the day off and think about it.
Once they have informed everyone, they call all the survivors together (we didn't know what was going on, or that anything was going on at that point) and announce it. Open question session afterwards (and believe me, some of the questions were tough)...
What were the terms? 2 weeks to finish up any work you were working on or documenting current code or whatever. You didn't have to come in. You could do it at home.
You could even spend the 2 weeks submitting resumes and you'd still get paid for them. Plus accumulated holiday/sick pay. Plus 6 months severance.
At least I know, if this company is going to lay me off, that they're going to be as civil and decent as anyone could possibly ask them to (and a bit more)
I was laid off from a national retail PC chain... they told everybody else in the saturday morning meeting, but I had the day off. I phoned up a friend from work the following day, to see if he fancied going out for a beer, and he expressed his condolences. Of course, I didn't have a clue what he was talking about until he explained ("Uh, you're sorry to hear about what, exactly?").
Like tinyurl, but one letter less! http://qurl.co.uk/
Well, I hired someone who stunk. She had excellent creds, fluency in several languages / systems and answered several questions about our system very well etc.
That interview was the high point of her productivity. We went on to answer piles of questions from her about complex data structures and many things basic. I had to pay out her contract and send her home; it was dreadful. She will not write in to this discussion whining about getting fired.
He-freakin'-larious, sir. Thank you for entertaining me :)
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Back when I was in college, I had a job at a local computer shop. They had a contract with my college to set up student computers for the network.
Anyway, I was hired to do that part time and then go back to the shop and do normal repair for customers. Things were getting kind of slow with the student network setups.
So one morning I checked my email and saw that I had an email from the owner/boss. He said something along the lines of 'Please stop in to help the other guy with student computers and then after that we won't really need you any more because things are slowing down with the student setups and the contract isn't being renewed'.
Apparently he forgot about telling me before that he wanted to train me and have me get some certifications, leading me to believe I had a future there even after I graduated.
I do realize that they probably needed someone working full time that could be in the shop or go out on calls more often than I could. However, he could have had the decency to tell me the truth or at least tell me in person instead of in an email.
Angry Drunken Dwarf sounds A LOT like a former boss of mine. His name wouldn't happen to be "Joe", would it?
------
www.moneybythenumbers.com
Fraid not. If I had to give my boss a name, it would be "Chux", the Angry Drunken Dwarf.