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Radio Shack E-Fires 400 Workers
KingSkippus writes "You've got mail! ...and no job! The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is reporting that RadioShack has notified 400 workers by e-mail that they are being laid off. The e-mails state, 'The work force reduction notification is currently in progress. Unfortunately your position is one that has been eliminated.' Nothing says thank you for your years of service to our company quite like an e-boot out the door."
0wned!
Listen p*ssy. I'm sure your the same homo that posted earlier about alf's boner and you just want to remain anonymous fo
Let's get a hand for RadioShack and their PR skills! I've always wondered when things along this line would start to happen. I'm surprised it didn't become popular to fire people by voicemail when that was the "new" thing. Firings can become a very confrontational situation (especially since the messenger didn't always have a hand in the process), so I wonder if the messenger decided that email would be better than hell.
Radio Shack actually hired these guys from Sony's Advanced Systems Sodium-Chloride Electronics Division (SASSED). The sassed employee's were fired for explosive behavior, assault, and battery. Even though the workers were feeling blue, Ray Sirr, a manager on the project, said that other employee's were safe, and the fired employee's were pre-picked, and put in a queue, cataloging it all. I just hope that all of you, PC in all, realize what was going with, by quickly scanning what i have written.
Have you read my journal today?
I'd say this is worse than getting a job application rebuffed by a form letter. With a job application, they don't know you and you really are little more than a name (at best) and a number (at worst) to them. For termination of employment somebody really ought to know who you are and what service you have provided the company. It's inexcusible - and a good indication of what those up the ladder really think about their workers. "Your job is very important to us... please hold."
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
Reminds me of "Office Space".
Obliterate advertising!
My only question is if they outsourced the e-mail pink slip processing to an Indian firm. That would have given Radio Shack double plus style points. I would not be too shocked if someone goes e-postal over this.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
"you-can't-fire-me-I-equit"
I'd reply with, "Ha Ha, joke's on you. I've been working from home for the past 8 months, and have been selling the store's LED flashlights on eBay."
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
They should be e-happy they got e-fired because Radio-Shack e-sucks. Besides, they can always be e-hired again at BestBuy or some other know nothing e-electronics store. At least I e-think so...
Have you ever met a Radio Shack employee? Methinks they should all be fired (and replaced by someone who knows what they are talking about).
I used to want to work there, back when they sold computers and gizmos for hobby electronics instead of being a glorified cell phone store (though I do suppose cell phones are a type of radio, so it is more fitting...)
Well it all depends. How many employees left their red Swingline staplers in their stores before they were locked out?
I'll be honest, we're throwing science against the wall to see what sticks. -Cave Johnson
Radio Shack has been in real trouble for years, since shortly before I left. The article mentions RSH stock price closing just over $18, down from around $80 before this all began. I can't say that I am surprised that they chose email as the way to go on the firings.
Make sure you don't have any beverage in your mouth when you read this: All members of Radio Shack management and all of their top sales people from the entire company, plus most of the corporate staff (thousands of people) just returned home from an all-expenses paid 3 to 6 day drip to Las Vegas, NV for a "Peak of Performance" rally. More like a valley of performance, but to hell with it.
FairTax baby!
Being fired through a form letter, or email must be soul destroying.
Now those employees can sue Radio Shack, because they can claim that every time they hear a "new email sound", they break down into tears. They won't be able to find a job working with computers.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Nothing says "e-mail what now? Must have gotten caught in my spam filter, heh..." like going into work anyway, and forcing the boss to say it to your damned face.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
One of the guys who received that mail should have followed it up with a mail to everyone@radioshack :
"Pls ignore the previous mail.It was a prank mail by someone."
Wincopy
At least in CT, sales people on the floor make $7-$8 per hour base (excluding bonuses), with higher tiers (managers-in-training, asst. managers, managers, etc.) obviously making higher bases and different sets of bonuses. No floor salesperson has their own radioshack email address, only a store-wide email account.
And no, they don't ask for home address anymore, only your zip code for marketing / store stock purposes, which you can decline with no argument. Addresses -are- needed in some situations though, for things like service plans and Answers Plus (in-store credit card) accounts though.
They got Radio Shafted.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Laid-off workers got one to three weeks pay for each year of service, up to 16 weeks for hourly employees and 36 weeks for those with base bay of at least $90,000, the company said.
Hey, at least they are taking care of their upper management with up to 36 weeks of severence pay. Otherwise, they might have to actually give up a whole week of vacation in the Bahamas! Who cares about the nameless masses below them. That's why they are nameless masses!
Beware of Sales Reps bearing gifts.
Or even better,remove the 'To' field of the original mail and send to everyone @ RS.
Wincopy
I came in late and everybody was standing around excited for me to check my mail.
Do you have a meeting? Do you have a meeting?
Um, yeah, in 30 minutes.
Oh man, that sucks. Only a few of us got it, and none of the boss' friends got the meeting invite. You're gone.
They were right.
Ummm... hate to break it to you, but that wasn't a girl.
Radio Shack is now Radio Sack
Wincopy
They won't be able to find a job working with computers.
...Although, yeah, I do kinda feel sorry for them when they get laid off like that.
These are Radio Shack people. They don't know anything about computers anyway.
When my co-workers were sacked by email I breathed a sigh of relief when I didn't get one. The next morning my swipe key wouldn't get me in the door. The guy I asked to reactivate my swipe key at lunch time was the one that let me know that I had lost my job.
Mr. Kim: You got a message.
Korben Dallas: Yeah.
Mr. Kim: You're not gonna open it? It might be important.
Korben Dallas: Yeah, like the last two I got were important. The first one was from my wife, telling me she was leaving. The second was from my lawyer, telling me he was leaving... with my wife.
Mr. Kim: Aigh, that is bad luck. But grandfather say 'It never rain everyday'. This is good news, guaranteed. Hey, I bet your lunch.
Korben Dallas: Okay, you're on.
Mr. Kim: Come on. [opens message, in a excited voice] 'You are fired'. Oh, I'm sorry.
Korben Dallas: At least I won lunch.
Mr. Kim: Good philosophy, see good in bad, I like.
I also disagree with this being "soul-destroying," but for a slightly different reason. It could have been a lot worse - TFA says that there were multiple face-to-face meetings prior to the announcement, with an opportunity for employees to ask questions. There was also a severance package. It wasn't the best way to approach the problem, but at least it wasn't unexpected.
I heard a rumor from what appeared to be a reliable source that Radio Shack had to close a bunch of stores because they lost their contract with Verizon. Apparently cell phone sales were carrying the stores.
Do you need any batteries today?
The firing of employees by email is just another way to automate away just another management function. If people find it acceptable to be fired by an email, rather than a face to face meeting with a manager, then this means we are just one more step to automating away most of management in company decision making. Anything that eliminates the jobs of useless corporate butt munchers who are adept at convincing their superiors they are valued exployees in the company with "people skills" is not just a good thing, but a great thing.
This means that eventually expert systems and other AI based systems will execute all firings in a fair and objective fashion. If you fail to meet your quotas, the "Virtual CEO 9000" will fire you with a nice little trite email. If you meet your quotas, then the "Virtual CEO 9000" may indeed give you a raise. No performance review will ever again be necessary where you have to interview for keeping your own job every year through kissing up to your former human manager, rather the "Virtual CEO 9000" will instead be constantly evaluating your usefulness to the corporation in real-time and compensate you objectively.
Just imagine what this would do for a company like Oracle that has about 10 maybe 11 engineers doing all the real work in the company with about 50,000 managers whose idea of work is schmoozing with other like-minded individuals on a golf course all day long. The "Virtual CEO 9000" could cut out so much bloat that profits would go so through the roof that Larry Ellison could pay down the entire United States national debt of 65 trillion dollars or whatever it happens to be right now.
Seriously, I have not figured out why the board of directors at our largest corporations has not already outsourced or automated away executive management yet, when they happen to be the least efficient and least accountable group of people in your typical corporation these days. The "Virtual CEO 9000" doesn't need stock options to the tune of 400 million dollars like one of Exxon's former CEO's, instead it just needs some electricity to make the kind of decisions that your typical corporate bean counter makes based solely upon some Microsoft Excel spreadsheet calculation where they say "AHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAA THERE IS THE FAT WE NEED TO CUT. THAT DARNED IT DEPARTMENT IS NOT SELLING ANYTHING AND INSTEAD IS JUST COSTING US A LOT OF MONEY, LET'S FIRE SOME EXPLOYEES AND SLASH THEIR BUDGET!".
Oh wait, I forgot that modern corporations usually have a board of directors that also just happens to be personal friends of the executive management they are supposed to be directing. Nevertheless, my point still stands that being managed by a cold, unfeeling, computer application like the "Virtual CEO 9000" is still better than being managed by the sociopaths that typically run our public companies today.
In the early 80's I was a CPU designer at a large mainframe company that was going through waves of RIF's. All layoff's always happened on Friday, and the sysadmins were always given a list of userid's to disable before hand. So, it became a regular Friday morning ritual for everyone to get a cup of joe, joke about whether their login would work, and see if they could get on the system. An officemate typed his password incorrectly one Friday and nearly crapped. Most victims had their desk half cleaned out before their manager found them.
Heck, at least these people got an e-mail.
Well, if that is now really legally acceptable I know what's going to happen next, expect a new type of spam, the 'sack' spam. That also has the effect ot training your spam filter so you'll never receive the real one. As a matter of fact, it probably pretty much nukes this for the next time it's attempted.
Insert
But not for the reasons you might think. The natural reaction is that it's too impersonal. That's really the least of the problems. The big problem with email is that it's not reliable, and not very official. What's to stop someone sending out a prank notice to non-fired rad-shack employees that says they're fired? Maybe you don't like the rad-shack guy you work with (and you've already been fired), so you send out a fake email to him with headers that look like it comes from rad-shack and the same body as yours. How's your (former) co-worker going to know he wasn't actually fired?
Email isn't reliable either. There's no guarantee that people read their email on a regular basis, and even if they did spam filters can filter out an email like this.
AccountKiller
...a guy from an African nation in the very next message promised to give me a new job if I help him with an international transaction.
Table-ized A.I.
As a former long-time employee at RS, let me just say this news comes as absolutely no surprise.
Their entire management structure is irrepairably flawed. Most of their top guys were promoted from store-level positions with absolutely no formal training on how to run a fortune 500 corporation. These 'executives' know only how to lead through threats, intimidation, and constant turnover.
In the 1980s and early 90s, they went from being one of the largest and most respected computer manufacturers (Tandy) to almost zero computer sales. In 1990, there was a RadioShack store in every neighborhood, yet they completely missed the boat on the Internet boom. In about 2000 they happened to be in the right place at the right time and lucked into the cell phone boom, hence their good stock performance during this time. They soon (within months) screwed that up and their stock fell to a third of its former value almost overnight.
Now they've been doing nothing new, with the exception of several scandals involving their former CEO, Dave Edmonson. I'd imaging their long term strategory at this point is simply circling the drain long enough for some conglomerate to buy their name at a firesale price for use in some branding strategy
Is this a news report or a trailer for a motion picture?
They asked you to a meeting. That is a reasonable, and professional course of action to take. People get laid off, sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for bad. The real problem with the article is not that some people were laid off, but that they were told by e-mail not to bother coming in anymore. HP at least gave you the courtesy of a face to face.
it happens only in America
Nope.
One time, I was 1 week into a 3-month posting in Europe, and I got an e-mail from Australia telling me my 3-month notice period started immediately. I had to work through it of course. I was paid out the 4 weeks of vacation I'd accumulated, but lost the hundreds of hours of time-off-in-lieu. I'd been with the firm 8 years.
Trying to find a new job when you're 10,000 miles away from home isn't easy. And of course the customer, who had paid $$$ for my services, was not pleased, they wanted me to stay longer and work on other stuff.
Yes, I should have taken the time off in lieu, but that would have been cheating the customer. There's such a thing as professional ethics.
I took the firm to industrial arbitration, won, but the legal fees ate up nearly all of the 3 months pay I got.
Zoe Brain - Rocket Scientist
The idea that your not even worth a face to face firing, would be devasating to most people. I don't see how it could be worse.
Who ever did the e-firing, didn't do there job. Or at least avoided the hard part of it. If you're going to fire some one. If you're going to tell them they aren't needed anymore. It would have been decent to tell them in person.
Anyone who thinks this is no big deal, was either never fired or didn't like the job they were fired from. You also can't assume the ones being fired don't care, or don't like there job. Everyone deserves to be fired by a person, no matter how much prior notice they were giving. You don't KNOW you are fired, until you are fired.
Those endorsing this problaly want to use it in the future, because they don't have the cojones to fire someone in person.
"Common decency" ... hmm, maybe exists in some 50s romantic B-movie comedies, but alas, welcome to the real world pal. That stuff never existed. Read your histories of work and industry through the ages. Watch a few Monty Python sketches if that's too boring (something about working in coal mines and getting up at 5am and being grateful for it: Victorian decency didn't have a problem with sending 5 year olds down mines and up chimneys after all). That's why unions got going in the first place, to actually give the little guys some real power rather than having individuals just sitting at home feeling shocked after layoff at the wake up call that they weren't actually working for a paternalistic social enterprise.
If you don't like the word 'union' then pick another, but you need some sort of collective ability to organise and respond when the big guys put the pressure on. They screw around with your workmates, you all stop work and threaten to take the company down if they don't start behaving better. Drastic, sure, but the USA is *proud* of its free market hire em and fire em attitude, you aren't going to get some middle manager to change their way by asking them to remember the unwritten rules of Lord's cricket ground and the British Raj. They are watching over their shoulder as well...
The news in this is that we've reached that particular point in our society where a corporation doesn't even have to have the common decency to fire people in person.
What kind of phantasy world do you live in? Labor rights and relations have come a long way since the 19th centuries; companies didn't use to fire employees by E-mail, they used to work them to death and kill them.
You're confusing a company with a thinking, feeling person. Companies are like big, impersonal machines, and they have always been. Complaining about being fired by E-mail makes just about as much sense as taking the BSOD or a washing machine malfunction as a personal insult. The company doesn't want you anymore, so just move on. If people get fired too often in your opinion, then the solution is to fix the system (by working for more labor rights), not to whine about the form in which you get fired.
Congrats, you should be a manager, maybe even a board member or CEO, if your view of the world is that sociopathic.
Human interactions are not measured just in how many dollars they make for your (or their) bottom line. Sometimes you can take 5 minutes off your busy schedule just, you know, for the sake of making someone's day less shitty. Just because it's the humane thing to do. Someone has just been fired, and it won't kill you to just say a few soothing words and show (or fake) some compassion. Or just show that someone at least remembers their name, or that they worked there. Put a human/humane face on the whole deal, you know.
Yes, being fired is just normal and just part of how the economy works. It's not the end of the world. Etc. But it's still a stressful event in someone's life. It won't kill you to lower someone's stress a little.
It's also an awakening to the cruel reality that, for all the bullshit "we're all a big family" speeches, you're just a nameless disposable cog in the corporate machine. A cog that's served its purpose, produced all the profit that could be made, and now is disposed of when no longer profitable. All the "we're all a big family" idea not only flies out the window, but it turns out that it's never been true anyway. That's not how families work.
And that's not a cheerful thought. Humans aren't robots, and the millions of years of evolution have sorta hard-wired us to be social beings. Our brains are wired for person-to-person relations, not for a nameless-cog-to-faceless-entity existence. That's too why we build father figures in the sky (i.e., religion), or conspiracy theories with a few people responsible for all this or that, or anthropomorphise our computer/boat/gun/whatever. Because that's the kind of thing we're wired for, and the kind of thing we understand: _people_, not faceless machineries.
And the kind of email oozing an "you're one of the nameless drones we're discarding today" tone, like these people received, only serve to amplify that to the maximum impact possible. It's just twisting the knife in the wound. In the ammo arsenal of unpleasant human interactions, this is the dum-dum.
And if you're willing to advocate that just because the humane alternative is "just a total logistical nightmare"... well, as I was saying, you have some serious upper management potential.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Not at all. If I'm ever in the position where I need to fire somebody, I would definitely do so in person.
I know this is a huge deal for the people involved, and I'm not excusing Radio Shack's actions; I'm saying that there could have been far, far worse mistakes than the one they made.
I don't see anybody endorsing this course of action; I know I'm not. I just think this is not the worst possible outcome. Employees could have not been given any warning; they could have been fired without a severance package, instead of up to nine months of free pay; or they could have been escorted off the premises by security instead of a manager. Radio Shack's blunder seems mild compared to what others have done.
> On xx/xx/xxxx xx:xx The Employee <slave@thecompany> wrote:
>> On xx/xx/xxxx xx:xx The Management <lickmyboots@thecompany> wrote:
>> Knock, knock!
>>
> Who's there?
Not you anymore! Hahahahahaaaaa!
I have read all the 5-rated comments and seems to me that the consensus is American job culture sucks, Radio Shack sucks.
Due to my trollish habits, I am always inclined to say something in contrary.
At the last company I worked for, there were 3 waves of firing people. In all of them a top level manager talked to them, thanked them and explained to them why they are fired. That it has nothing to do with them, that it is related to the products performance which is very little to do with them. Of course, people were not happy anyway, and they rightfully should not be: well, they were fired, but there was an effort from the company to alleviate the pain.
The company I am talking about is not the best, and it has a bad reputation in the IT industry for their cold and mindless approach to people, so I assume the situation with graceful firing is better in other IT companies.
I have to admit though that people who were fired were seasoned professional programmers, many with PhD in physical, chemical and biological sciences.
Another important comment is that the waves were about 50-100 people. When the amount of people to be laid off is larger it becomes a logistic problem to fire them at once, in one take to minimize the effect on job. It might explain the "e-mail" twist of it, but in no way it explains the "no-thanks" angle. So yes, Radio Shack sucks.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
I didn't mind when I got fired from a dollar store, on the phone no less, and they didn't even have the balls to tell me I was fired, just that I didn't get any hours that week. I only didn't mind because I hated that job. . . and that I got a job a few months later that pays more than twice what my boss was making. I also got a good laugh when I learned 2 months later that ex-boss got fired for being a dipshit.
If it had been a decent job (even Radio Shed would have been a better job) I probably would have been a little more upset with that kind of firing. Had I been fired by a company form letter (which I normally filter to my delete folders anyway) it would have been much more embarassing when I showed up for my next shift not even having read the letter. . .
disclaimer: I've been known to store numbers in my ass for which to dig out when quantities are required.
I once worked for a company that was as chickenshit as this. One of the partners was diagnosed with cancer so he sold his holdings and went to Ireland to live whatever he had left. An ex-wife of his son had a job in the company and they wanted to get rid of her quietly so they sent a process server to the bungelow she was staying in on Maui with her final check and severance. She hired a lawyer in hawaii and filed suit there after renting a house that her lawyer found her for residency reasons. She sought 3 million in damages and the company had to deal with the whole thing,including depositions by all of the parties involved in the buyout, in hawaii which damn near broke the bastards. She never figured to win, she just wanted to see them jump through hoops. They eventually settled out of court with the usual NDA but I know it had to be a good chunk because she sent all the people she knew in the company a 250 dollar gift certificate for Walmart that christmas saying she knew the company wouldn't be able to afford the usual christmas turkeys that year.
While it is certainly wrong to e-fire someone, a company I once worked for did one worse. The company got bought out and the new owners started downsizing. I worked in IT, specifically, I was in charge of the user accounts for the network, email, etc. I would get a list of accounts to disable every so often, sometimes with a note saying it was urgent and they needed to be deleted NOW. So I deleted them. Within 10 minutes, my phone was ringing off the hook with people complaining that they couldn't get to their email. They had not been told that they were fired, and I had to let them in on the secret.
When I then started complaining to the asshats in management about that, they informed me that they had sent the people emails about their impending loss of a job. I later found out that this email was sent about 5 minutes before they told me to delete it, thus none of them had actually received the email.
I was later fired as well, though I was pretty happy about the situation since I got a sweet severence.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
:wq!
- Radio Shack Canada is no longer affiliated with Radio Shack USA
- Radio Shack Canada no longer exists
- Radio Shack Canada is now "Circuit City: The Source"
- They now carry more electronics components than they have in 5-10 years
At least there is some place local where I can buy SOME components again. I'm happy. Digikey is great, but you just can't run out and grab something you suddenly need when your main supplier is mail order.
I just wish they still carried those little Archer PCBs etched for a single ~14-pin DIP. I used my second-last one last weekend.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
How long until doctors just text-message the family: "The surgery seemed to be going well, but he didn't pull through. Sorry." Then the hospital can add a $2 charge for the text-message (yes that's ridiculously high for a text-message, but have you seen what they charge for an aspirin?)
Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it. --Mark Twain
Many years ago I was working as a system admin for one of the largest computer companies in the world. We were going thru some major downsizing. Our standard procedure was at the end of the day, we were shown a list of employees who were being let go, our computer operators would disable their accounts that evening. The employee would show up next morning and the person's manager/supervisor would then inform them of the bad news and would walk them to their desk and let them clean it out and escort them out the door.
Of course, the person's manager/supervisor would be too cowardly to show up on time on the day the employee was being let go. The employee would show up at say, 8:00 a.m on the boss would show up at 9:15-9:30 (deliberately late). When the employee couldn't log into their account, they would phone the system admin (me) and ask me to reset their password. I told them I couldn't do that (because their name had been on the termination list the previous day) and they were annoyed at me for refusing to do so. I asked them to talk to their manager (who wasn't there). After a while people had heard about this. The next time they couldn't log in, they would phone me and when I told them I couldn't enable their account, they would say "am I getting let go", and I would hear the "I just bought a house", "my wife is pregnant", etc. They shouldn't have to hear that they were being let go from me. It just shows you how cowardly the local manager of that person was.
Once we had people with the same first initial and last name (such as Carol Brown with login name of cbrown and Christine Brown with login name of crbrown). Lets say that Christine (crbrown) was being let go. The computer operators disabled cbrown (Carol's account) instead. Carol Brown thought that she was being let go when she couldn't log in.
Someone later told her "sorry for the incovenience".
My boss works two hours from my site. I had been with the company for 30 years. When it was time to let me know that I was history, my boss wanted to drive to where I work and tell me in person. My boss's boss didn't want to pay mileage so I got the info via phone.
What a company.
Companies are soulless and heartless. I am surprised more people don't go postal these days. Also, when people are let go, the workload doesn't go with them, its dumped on the poor suckers who remain behind.
Even if they do have what I need, it's usually hideously overpriced. I've given up on Radio Shack (or The Source or whatever it's called now) for my parts. As nice as it is to be able to get things from a brick-and-mortar (since I'm very impatient), I've found that using http://www.digikey.com/ is just better all-around.
I once worked for a small ISP that was bought by a big ISP. The big ISP layed us all off only to bring us back a few weeks later because they didn't know how the stuff worked. Then they moved us to their home office. I worked there for a few years. I got a girlfriend and we were going to get an appartment. I noticed the signs that they would be doing a layoff soon. So I approached my boss and told him I was going to sign a lease on a new appartment (with increased costs) tomarrow and I wanted to make sure my job was secure. He said it was secure and the layoff rumors were just rumers. Then he reminded me of our saturday morning meeting to cover policy changes. So I went home, signed my new lease, work up saturday morning and went to work for the meeting. When I got to the meeting we were told we were all being layed off and asked to sign a Non disclusure agreement to get our last paycheck. I walked up to my boss, put my fist though the wall directly next to his head and left. My paycheck came on time.
Being the product of a recent major layoff, I can definitely add some thoughts to this. Had my employer of 8 years taking the b*tch way out and sent me an email letting me know I was one of the unfortunates who was being let go, I more than likely would have been angry and beligerant about the whole affair. Sure, they had meetings discussing their intentions, but still, its demeaning to have a souless company further prove that point by issuing a sterile, cold email letting you know that your life has just been flushed down the toilet. And yes, the severance is a nice gesture, but I'm gonna tell you right now...I got 27-weeks worth of severance when I was let go and while it is a nice chunk of change...it bites you in the a$$ in the long run as you're taxed higher for the lump amount, leaving me with $12,000 of my $19,000 severance. While this isn't the worst thing to do to someone, it still would be demoralizing to know you were the recipient of a form email that took someone 3 minutes to type and no emotion whatsoever. At least with my layoff my boss was there and I watched the man break down in tears. No matter what the circumstances, someone being let go needs compassion and encouragement...sending a "get out" email doesn't do the trick.
I'd made a post earlier that I really didn't see the big deal of being let go by email. I actually thought it would be a bit easier in that you didn't have to sit there and feel uncomfortable in front of a person having to tell you in person. I just didn't get it, but, then I read your post and maybe I do. The part where you liken losing your job of 8 years to having your life 'flushed down the toilet'. Wow...I've just guessed I never associated my work/job with my life or self worth before as it seems you may do. I guess there are a good many of people out there that associate their job with their self worth or image. That's just foreign to me.
Don't get me wrong, I like my job...I'm often passionate about my interest in what I do, that happens to also earn me a living...a good one. But, it is just a job. Where I do it, and who for really isn't the biggest deal in my life. The second I leave work...I completely leave it (unless on call or something). I don't really think about it till I walk back in the door the next day. I don't have any loyalty really towards any company, because I feel in this age, they have none towards me. But, I've felt that for a long time. Currently, I'm in a semi-contract mode...W2 hourly employee for a contract company. Work is good, pay is good, benefits are good. I'm friends with the owner of the company and often have drinks with him. I'm a good employee and contribute to the company. But, if I got the ax tomorrow...and it could happen as that the area I'm in is New Orleans...well, I'd take a little hit on my pride, but, mostly just worry about getting the next gig.
But, losing my job, doesn't really mean I lost something that defines me. I work ONLY to make money...to enable me to buy and do things that make me happy. If I won the lottery tomorrow, trust me..I'd never work again, I'd do nothing but stuff that was fun.
I guess that explains a lot of the posts I read here...I was actually shocked that so many people described the firing process so emotionally...and took it so personally. I didn't realize that the job people hold defines them so much. And I think that is sad.
A job should be nothing more than a means to supporting your lifestyle. Sure...hopefully you can enjoy your work, but, really...does it matter who you do it for? Your job should not be YOU.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
It makes a big difference to hear it in person, I think.
When I was laid off by Unisys back in 1992 after working for them for almost five years, it helped cushion the blow to see how hard my manager (who is the one who told me) was taking it all. He was told from above to let three of our four-person programming team go that same day - our side of the Airline Center ended up laying off 20% of the staff all told - and it really shook him up, even though we all knew for months that it was coming.
When I was laid off by Northwest Airlines in January 2002 after eight years, hearing the news from my director also helped, since he was obviously not happy that the layoff was occurring, and again that helped a little to cushion the blow (and I needed it that time, since that was a layoff I *didn't* see coming since I'd survived the mass layoffs after September 11th. We thought they were done).
An e-mail message telling you you've been let go is impersonal as hell. I'd really be angry about something like that. Hearing it in person shows a little bit of class on the part of the organization, at least IMO.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Some of us aren't like that. I chose to work for Northwest Airlines, for example, because I had a few years of previous exposure to the airline industry and I wanted to work as a programmer FOR A MAJOR AIRLINE. Period. And while I worked there, I wasn't just a programmer, applications, one each. I was an applications programmer in the heart of their flight operations group. If my code failed, the airline didn't fly. Literally. And it felt good to feel like the stuff I was doing was a critical part of the actual operation.
Northwest was a company I felt very strongly about. I loved working there, and I'm still proud to know that I have something like 100,000 lines of code still running in their WorldFlight production system and handling a large percentage of their ACARS and surface weather traffic, as well as doing various other things. But it hurt me quite a bit personally when I was laid off because I'd invested over a decade of time (between contractor time and employee time) in that system, and I was really proud to be part of that particular group.
It hurt to leave, but I'm glad I was there. I do like where I am now, and I'm proud of what I do, but it's not the same.
I want to create software that actually MEANS something. I like working on projects that will have a real impact on some aspect of the company, and I sometimes put a lot of time and emotional energy into the designs I create.
Coding is a means to an end, certainly, but for me it's also an end in itself. The problem solving and design aspects are satisfying IN THEMSELVES for me, and I'm actually quite proud of some of the things that I've been able to accomplish so far in my short 18-year career as a programmer.
When I was at NWA, I would still be working there even if I had won the lottery. Why? Because that was a working and technical environment that I very much enjoyed being a part of, and solving problems in that context was a fun activity in its own right. I *WANTED* to go to work every day.
I believe that programming is art at a certain level, and I believe there is nothing wrong with an artist feeling some form of emotion over the works he creates.
If you don't get the kind of satisfaction that I do after coming up with a particularly elegant fix for a problem or a particularly efficient design, then I feel sorry for you because I think you are missing out on one of the really neat things about being a programmer. Our profession is to weave webs of logic and structure out of nothing! I think the whole virtual world of computing is an amazing thing, even magical in a way.
I agree that your job should not be you, but I don't have a problem with people who are willing to put some of their heart and soul into their work. It's one of the things which differentiates good software from great software, I think. For some people, passion is important. I was just going through the motions here, I'd be ready to find a different career. Instead, I'm doing what I love: writing software. I hope I'm able to do it for another 18 years, and hopefully until I retire...Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Does anyone know of any other countries where such childish, sensless, brutal, inhumane and counterproductive employee termination techniques are used? My former (U.S. based) company used voice mail on recent firees (They couldn't fire me, I quit way ahead of time! ;-). The U.S. division of my current company uses immediate firing within the U.S. but employees outside of the U.S. are generally given time to get things in order, finish what they were working on, use company resources in the job hunt and talk to collegues to help ease the transition. This technique works! I've never heard of a case of an employee going postal or sabatoging the company here.
So is it U.S. employees, U.S. managers or U.S. HR people who are being childish?