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Verizon is Offering Buyout Packages To as Many as 44,000 Management Employees; Some IT Employees Will Be Transferred To Indian Outsourcing Firm Infosys [Update] (bloomberg.com)

Posted by msmash on from the breaking-news dept.

Verizon Communications is offering buyout packages to as many as 44,000 management employees as part of a cost-cutting drive, potentially eliminating more than a fourth of its workforce. From a report: The offer, which excludes executives in sales or crucial company roles, is part of a four-year, $10 billion cost-reduction program that Chairman Lowell McAdam put in place last year. A Verizon spokesman declined to say how many of the 44,000 managers are expected to take the offer and leave the company. Update: The Wall Street Journal adds: Verizon notified many information technology employees that they were being transferred to Indian outsourcing giant Infosys as part of a $700 million outsourcing agreement. The pool of employees who either received the severance offer or are affected by the Infosys deal amounts to about 30% of the 153,100 employees that Verizon had globally at the end of June. "Strategically we are going to invest more in transforming the business versus running the business," materials detailing the outsourcing agreement said. As part of that pact, Verizon is transferring about 2,500 employees in the U.S. and overseas to Infosys. Those employees aren't eligible for severance payments and won't receive their 2018 bonus if they are offered a job at Infosys and don't accept it, according to materials given to the employees.

26 of 128 comments (clear)

  1. What. Da. Fuq by HarrySquatter · · Score: 4, Funny

    44,000 managers? Da fuq?!!

    1. Re:What. Da. Fuq by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

      Even more Da Fuq:
      44,000 manages "which excludes executives in sales or crucial company roles."

      That's SERIOUS WAT DA FUQ levels there. 44,000 managers that aren't considered crucial. How did you get there?

    2. Re:What. Da. Fuq by hawguy · · Score: 4, Informative

      44,000 managers? Da fuq?!!

      They only have 160,000 employees, so 1 out of every 4 employees is a manager? No wonder they want to lay them off.

    3. Re:What. Da. Fuq by Desler · · Score: 2

      Maybe this explains why Verizon constantly is raising prices for worse service? Gotta pay the managers somehow?

    4. Re:What. Da. Fuq by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 3, Informative

      Maybe the forklift driver in their warehouse is a "multilevel logistics manager". Title inflation. I did a gig for a bank once and you couldn't throw a keyboard across the room without hitting a "VP of something", but most of those weren't even what you'd consider a manager of anything.

      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
    5. Re:What. Da. Fuq by SoonerSkeene · · Score: 2

      At one point Microsoft had more than 100,000 middle managers and tens of thousands of "VP" positions. It's what happens when you have a shitload of money apparently.

    6. Re:What. Da. Fuq by hawguy · · Score: 5, Interesting

      They aren't "managers". They are "management employees." Basically, at Verizon any non-exempt, non-union employee at Verizon is considered management.

      Source: took my package 4 years ago.

      Calling a "non-exempt non-union" employee without management responsibilities a "management employee" seems as misleading as selling an unlimited plan with limits.

    7. Re:What. Da. Fuq by PPH · · Score: 2

      Labeling people as managers just gets around overtime and other compensation rules.

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
    8. Re: What. Da. Fuq by alvinrod · · Score: 2

      I think banks do it to make the customers feel more important. If you're sitting down the with VP of blah blah, you probably feel a lot more important as a customer than if you're talking to a manager, or worse yet a lowly clerk. It doesn't matter that in reality it's probably the same person (or one of the wunch) no matter what title they have.

    9. Re:What. Da. Fuq by commodore64_love · · Score: 3

      I refuse to be promoted to a manager. I make enough money as an engineer doing design or testing, and (2) managers always look so stressed out. I don't need that.

      Looks like I need to add a 3rd reason: Engineers keep their jobs; middle managers get laid off. (Even at JCPenney I saw this happen, when the $60,000 managers were laid off..... and then replaced with $30,000 salespeople/supervisors.)

      --
      "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
    10. Re:What. Da. Fuq by jellomizer · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Almost everyone in Sales gets a Manager/VP... Or some sort of title. It makes customers who are dealing with them feel like they are dealing with someone important.
      Also to note Verizon is a Union shop and most unions do not cover people in management. So They probably give a lot of poor schlubs manager titles and salaries to avoid the union.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    11. Re:What. Da. Fuq by Lost+Race · · Score: 4, Funny

      They had so many CxO positions that they had to move to a CxyzO system.

    12. Re:What. Da. Fuq by tlhIngan · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You don't have to call people "managers" for that, in California at least. Here, if you're classified "salaried/exempt", the company is exempt from paying you for overtime even though you're not a manager in title or in fact. Interestingly, you still get paid by the hour if you put in fewer than 40 hours per week.

      It's probably not for salary/exempt people specifically, but more for non-union people. Unions are funny things, and for the most part, if you have a company, there will be both workers in the union and workers not in the union. The people not in the union (excluded and generally prohibited from joining the union) are management. So if you're classified as a "manager" you can't join the union, even if you're doing exactly the same thing the union guy is doing. (It also means if the union goes on strike, as management, you cover their duties as manager).

      That's how it generally goes - they may have classed the non-union employees as managers to keep them from getting ideas and joining the union

    13. Re:What. Da. Fuq by Eravnrekaree · · Score: 4, Insightful

      you are certainly not immune to the H1B program or whatever they call it wherever you are from. Companies are using H1B program to lay off American engineers to be replaced with cheap Indian labor , or the offshoring trick alternatively. This is why you should demand the program be abolished and that you need to realize that there is no "labor shortage", especially not with 50% of jobs set to be automated out of existance in the next few years. The labor shortage thing is a lie to justify laying off american workers.

  2. Government by p51d007 · · Score: 2

    About every time there is a government shutdown, they shut down "non essential" people. NON essential? Then why do we have them in the first place? 44k of "management" I guess means middle managers, along with their "staff"

    1. Re:Government by Cyberax · · Score: 2

      "Non essential" in the short term. You know, like fire code inspectors versus firefighters.

    2. Re:Government by jellomizer · · Score: 4, Funny

      Or hair dressers, TV producers, Management Consultants and Telephone sanitizers.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    3. Re:Government by evendiagram · · Score: 2

      The last person I heard complaining about "non essential" personnel was gentleman who ran a service industry business out of his home and was very, very angry that his fire extinguishers needed to be examined. Government waste and overreach by his definition. There's a large group of opinionated people who believe that it's more cost effective to only be reactive and not preventative.

    4. Re:Government by Headw1nd · · Score: 2

      "Essential" in the government sense means that the tasks they do are time sensitive. Can your job be put off until tomorrow? Then you are non essential. Someone at NOAA who monitors satellite readings for storms is essential, someone who chugs data and creates long term rainfall forecasts is not. Both are performing important functions, but one has a much shorter time horizon.

  3. How does a company eliminate by rsilvergun · · Score: 2

    That much while doing a major tech roll out in the form of 5g? This smacks of age discrimination...

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
    1. Re:How does a company eliminate by Desler · · Score: 2

      Gotta fund the exective bonuses somehow.

    2. Re:How does a company eliminate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Yes but not the way you think. I work for one of the big four telco's and everyone in a lvl3 or 4 Eng position is over the age of 40 half over 50 (yes I'm in Eng).
      You do not leave important things like mimo/massive mimo/DC's to a bunch of kids and no one wants to supervise them long enough get get them up to full self sufficiency.

      This is just normal business all the telco's do it every decade or so. Offer a buy-out during a re-org and if you don't hit your numbers then the dreaded layoff happens.

  4. fuck ... by Hugh+Jorgen · · Score: 3, Insightful

    InfoSys and the Indians. Takes three or four times for them to complete their work and get it done correctly. There is no savings if it takes them four attempts and they're paid a quarter of their US counterparts.

    1. Re:fuck ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I have this measured:

      My 55+ year old employee, who makes 4x what the offshore people do, produces the equivalent work with higher accuracy 5x faster than my offshore employees do.

      It's still going because the offshore guys aren't done with the first set of work while I'm on round 5 with the 55+ of giving him more. Since I'm still measuring the 5x is getting wider per day.

  5. re: H1B by King_TJ · · Score: 2

    Exactly! I find it rather sad that so many people are worried enough about Mexicans crossing over to the U.S. border illegally to "steal jobs", when most of the work they'd do is "cash under the table" stuff that nobody else wanted to do at affordable prices, or migrant labor that will just be automated with machinery, moving forward, if there aren't people like them desperate enough for money to come here and do it cheaper than the cost to automate.

    Meanwhile, they say very little about the H1B scam that steals real, "career quality" American jobs left and right -- often with labor that came here under false pretenses to begin with.

  6. Re: H1B by commodore64_love · · Score: 2

    Plenty of Americans who could do those jobs (of course they'd have to be paid minimum wage, which the Ag Megacorps don't want to do). My main concern with Central American immigrants is this:

    - I don't like people entering my home without permission. If they ASK first, then fine, let them in (unless they are potential criminals or terrorists). For these people to just bust down the door, and enter our homeland, is ridiculous. It's breaking-and-entering without permission.

    --
    "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall