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PepsiCo Is Laying Off Corporate Employees As the Company Commits To 'Relentlessly Automating' (businessinsider.com)
PepsiCo is kicking off a four-year restructuring plan that is expected to cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars in severance pay. "This week, PepsiCo employees in offices including Plano, Texas, and the company's headquarters in Purchase, New York, were alerted that they are being laid off," reports Business Insider, citing two people directly impacted by the layoffs.
The latest job cuts come after CFO Hugh Johnston told CNBC that the company plans to lay off workers in positions that can be automated. CEO Ramon Laguarta said on Friday that PepsiCo is "relentlessly automating and merging the best of our optimized business models with the best new thinking and technologies." From a report: This week, PepsiCo employees in offices including Plano, Texas, and the company's headquarters in Purchase, New York, were alerted that they are being laid off, according to two people who were directly impacted by the layoffs. These two workers were granted anonymity in order to speak frankly without risking professional ramifications. At least some of the workers who were alerted about layoffs will continue to work at PepsiCo until late April as they train their replacements in the coming weeks, the two workers told Business Insider.
By PepsiCo's own estimates, the company's layoffs are expected to be a multimillion-dollar project in 2019. Last Friday, PepsiCo announced in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that it is expected to incur $2.5 billion in pretax restructuring costs through 2023, with 70% of charges linked to severance and other employee costs. The company is also planning to close factories, with an additional 15% tied to plant closures and "related actions." Roughly $800 million of the $2.5 billion is expected to impact 2019 results, in addition to the $138 million that was included in 2018 results, the company said in the SEC filing.
The latest job cuts come after CFO Hugh Johnston told CNBC that the company plans to lay off workers in positions that can be automated. CEO Ramon Laguarta said on Friday that PepsiCo is "relentlessly automating and merging the best of our optimized business models with the best new thinking and technologies." From a report: This week, PepsiCo employees in offices including Plano, Texas, and the company's headquarters in Purchase, New York, were alerted that they are being laid off, according to two people who were directly impacted by the layoffs. These two workers were granted anonymity in order to speak frankly without risking professional ramifications. At least some of the workers who were alerted about layoffs will continue to work at PepsiCo until late April as they train their replacements in the coming weeks, the two workers told Business Insider.
By PepsiCo's own estimates, the company's layoffs are expected to be a multimillion-dollar project in 2019. Last Friday, PepsiCo announced in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that it is expected to incur $2.5 billion in pretax restructuring costs through 2023, with 70% of charges linked to severance and other employee costs. The company is also planning to close factories, with an additional 15% tied to plant closures and "related actions." Roughly $800 million of the $2.5 billion is expected to impact 2019 results, in addition to the $138 million that was included in 2018 results, the company said in the SEC filing.
How much talent does it take to sell diabetes-inducing sugar water anyway? "Automation" is is another word for "contractors in India".
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I am a professional chess and Go player. Fortunately for me I am safe from automation.
The funny thing is they are. Humans haven't won at chess since Kasparov lost to Deep Blue, but Carlsen is making more than a million dollars a year as the world champion and is approaching $10 million in career earnings. You'd better be in the absolute elite though, it's like all sports the top athletes bring in way more than then second-best and being 100th best is worth almost nothing.
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Sounds like a method of getting rid of all the old people working there, then in a year or two will say they failed and hire young people. Sounds like a good plan to avoid all those pesky US regulations.
.... it's like all sports the top athletes bring in way more than then second-best and being 100th best is worth almost nothing.
A new rookie to the NFL can expect to make around $365,000 per year, which constantly rises by about $5,000 to $10,000 per year
The very first stat I looked up destroyed your argument so..... Well, unless you think $365K/year is almost nothing..
Shall I go for average salary of NBA or MLB?
You underrate the skills required by management. A good manager is nearly as rare as a good plumber. Both exist.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I think you underestimate how much mid-level busywork can get automated in most businesses. In my own organization, I can think of a good half-dozen people who are going to be missing half their workload once their managers decide to get on the automation train.
One person spends a good day a week doing data entry into one system of data we already have in another system. Then they spend another half day dealing with the data entry errors causing problems down the line. Even if we just get them access to the one system and a script to change the data format and upload it into the other system, we're chopping a day and a half of work down to about 15 minutes of work. (Ideally we'd just link the systems, but that's a bit bigger project.)
There are piles of things like this in every organization.
It's quite possible that there are a few visionary people now in management positions who know full-well the rot and waste of time within the organization, and who are going to try to slim it down. Depending on how thoughtful they are, this could be a massive cost savings with minimal impact to the day-to-day operations.
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They're automating a ton of back office work that used to be done by people. The jobs aren't going overseas. They don't exist anymore.
This is gonna be "interesting times" as more and more work is automated. It's the #1 buzzword at every tech place I know of. And it's happening faster than new jobs can be created.
Good thing millions of unemployed and unemployable people are never a problem for long term social stability.
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99.9% of wannabe football players never make it to the NFL. The vast majority earn nothing.
Here is a non political suggestion I wish I could see made reality. Make a serious part of education the understanding and interpretation of risk and probability. If people understood, beyond any doubt, that becoming a top tier star of any form was incredibly unlikely, and instead made realistic plans and _worked_ to achieve them, we would be so much better off. It would also make the average Joe far harder to manipulate.