Just Another Day at the Office

I had gotten up early in the morning, as is my custom, to begin my day in the silence of the sleeping house. The cats had been fed, the windows were open to bring in the fresh dew-laden air, one laptop stood on its tray with the morning news while the other was set up downstairs as my remote office.

It was just another ordinary day, working from home.

After the regularly-scheduled telecon to India at nine, I drove up to the real office to check in with a few folks on the team. I took along the laptop, plugging it in at my desk and checking email again out of habit (and a deep-seated fear of being disconnected to the mothership).

There was one bizarre email from my team lead which was so wacky that I took it for a joke.

Rob
I have been let go. My last day will be July 28.


Had to be a joke, right? We hadn't heard any rumors about layoffs or anything. We have six more months to finish up this project! Ridiculous.

Then the phone rang.

It was the line manager.

The layoff was real.

My entire staff of full-time employees had been laid off. All three of them. Leaving me with six contractors. To finish the verification testing for a huge software project by the end of December. Without my lead engineer.

To say I was angry would be an understatement. I was furious. Especially when it was revealed to me the selection methodology which was used to determine eligibility for said layoff.

GE is laying off engineers who want to do engineering. Coders. Developers. Testers. People who like to get their hands dirty by playing with the hardware, people who exercise their creativity by exploring the world of software development. People who are doing the things they trained to do in college.

All those things can be done much cheaper in India or Malaysia or the Philippines, by kids just out of Technical School who are content to sit in cubes and pound out line after line of code, or sit in cramped labs running test after test on hardware which is built by the lowest bidder from a sweatshop factory.

GE is keeping engineers who want to be "leaders" - that is, those who are content to juggle schedules and budgets and "resources" (the euphemism for "people"). They are getting rid of engineers who just want to be engineers in an effort to reduce cost. Streamline. Fulfill the expectations of the stockholders, who just want to see their stocks go up and up and up.

Because GE wants to be a Tier 1 supplier. That is, they want to design complete avionics systems on paper, and subcontract out all the real work. So all the engineers who like to put hardware together and make it work, and all the engineers who like to write code, are going the way of the dodo.

For a short time, the local contractors will be swamped with work as they struggle to catch up to the sudden influx of demand for their services due to the shift of duties from full-time employees to temporaries. Indeed, we are recommending that our laid-off engineers immediately transition to contractors so that we can re-hire them (at twice the pay) to get the work done.

But inevitably all the work will shift out-of-country because American workers cannot compete with the salary disparity. It's nearly a ten-to-one ratio. Even though the level of experience is far less, it always comes down to the money.

Disregarding the fact that those remaining full-time employees in the States will be asked to take on even more work as they attempt to take on their new management duties as well as providing training and expertise and knowledge to their new, inexperienced teams.

It's a stupid plan.

--

One thing in particular infuriated me as I was on the telephone with the line manager. Practically the first words out of her mouth were, "Don't worry. You're safe." As if my only concern was my job, my position. As if I was a shuddering ball of worry terrified that I might get the axe. I almost lost control.

I hate it when people assume self-centeredness on my part.

Jobs come and jobs go, that's just part of the way life works. What's important is that the people doing the work understand the reasons and the seasons for these changes. When they know there is work to be done, and they know when the work is scheduled for completion, they can plan their lives accordingly. When they know that they are valued for their skills, and they have an understanding of the needs of the company, and they are made aware of the direction the company is going, they are empowered to make the choices which are right for them.

When the company comes out of left field and lays them off before projects are completed, without prior warning, for reasons that make no sense - "We need to cut costs, let's roll the dice to figure out which day to do it" - the company has lost sight of its real mission.

The company is not in business merely to make money for shareholders. The company is in business to meet the needs of people - and those needs include not only the products or services they provide, but the need for men and women to have gainful employment, to have a means to provide for their families, to have a future. After all, why do we build airplanes? To move people from place to place. To bring material from place to place, for people. Everything we do is for the benefit and convenience of people.

A business has a place in the community - in the country, in the world - to provide a benefit to people. When the leaders of the company puts their financial interests above that of the people who are the company, they have reneged on their responsibility to fully take into account all the aspects of leadership.

Of course, they will claim that they are making these decisions in order to remain competitive in the global marketplace. Hard to believe that excuse when you see the salaries those bigwigs are pulling down. And the bonuses. If they wanted to remain competitive, they would work hard to make sure that their people were successful, were being provided the tools they need to get their jobs done quickly and efficiently, were convinced that the company was looking out for them as well as the bottom line.

There have been so many stupid decisions lately. It will be difficult to convince anyone that the people at the top have any brains at all.

--

Nearly a hundred people. Eighty-three engineers. Hopefully some of them will be able to find positions with the contracting agencies. But some will not. Some will move on. In this economy, it will not be easy. It will impact the local economy, if the local economy can handle it. There will be fewer people shopping, few people paying taxes, which will roll right through the local economy and result in other companies laying off their people. There will be houses up for sale which will not sell, resulting in foreclosures. There will be disruption of families, neighborhoods, churches, organizations.

We can only wait and see what will happen.