I would love to hire people like you... people who are willing to take a paycut and small stock grants in order to fulfill my grand mission: to make myself as rich as possible.
Because usually if they offer this is because they want to get rid of you and your team.
And if they do, there's not much do there anymore.
So unless you're there solely for money, you won't stay there any longer and take the extra (assuming you feel you can find a better than gotten rid of job)
Yup, and if you want to play mind games with your employees, and pretend like it's not a monetary relationship, then the feeling is mutual. I provide enough real value that I can get an employer who respects me enough to be honest and up-front.
We aren't family. Both of us are going to break off the relationship if we see a better deal.
If you want me to stick around because I think the company will be better X years from now? Give me a significant amount of underwater options, and a position where I have a chance to move the share price.
However, more relevant to this situation? Who do you think is going to take the cash and leave? Probably the people who can most easily get new jobs.
Now, I'm the first to point out that your ability to get a job does not 100% correlate with your competency, but there is certainly some correlation. Your company is going to be dramatically worse off if the people who have other options leave. If you have to let people go? you want to get rid of your bottom performers, not the top performers.
>> Your company is going to be dramatically worse off if the people who have other options leave. If you have to let people go? you want to get rid of your bottom performers, not the top performers.
This is true, IFF your voluntary reduction process is indiscriminant in whom is approved. In the case of the Dell program, you have to "apply" for the voluntary layoff. In January they'll take all the applications and choose whom to let go. If they have no intention of reducing headcount in your group, you won't be accepted. If they do have intentions to reduce headcount in your group, but you're the best worker in the group, there's a strong chance they'll deny your application.
Is Dell a religion or a mere money making entity which works, rightly, to enrich a few owners / share holders?
Look, I like Dell. A supplier of choice for me. Always been good to do business with. I would recommend them in many cases. But come on, its a business, not a not for profit, humanitarian, charity. All this "mission", "believe" stuff is just fantasy BS to make people work harder to make the owner more money. The only question for an employee, in this regard, is: does it give me what I want or need right now? If so, then work, and work hard for your money. If not, then bugger off.
Then, the very idea that its OK for a business to be in it for the money, which is what a business is, yet that its wrong for an employee, is frankly hypocritical BS. Any one who falls for this business BS is a simpleton mug.
If you want people to actually care about the business, give them a cut of the action related to profit. Because profit is the only think that matters. No profit, no point.
> If you want people to actually care about the business, give them a cut of the action related to profit. Because profit is the only think that matters. No profit, no point.
That's one way to put it. Another way to put it would be that they are someone who understands their value and understands that their own personal identity and success in not tied into that of their employer, and that an employer who doesn't want to pay competitively won't have a mission worth believing in anyway.
Either way, of course, you can see why a company might want to get rid of that type of person.
Because it's a layoff. Even when done right, when the company lays off people in the bottom 25%, there's still just as much work and fewer hands to do it; If you aren't cut in the first round of layoffs, you will end up working much harder than you were working before the layoffs.
Usually, layoffs also imply that the company is in poor financial health. Companies in poor financial health tend to be stingy with raises and bonuses.
I would argue that because they are doing layoffs wrong, they are very likely going to endure even worse times; It implies they have unskilled management, and they've got to get along now without the employees who had other options who were encouraged (!) to jump ship before things got really bad.
Few things are quite as frustrating as putting in heroic hours only to watch that work be wasted because your management isn't very good.
If you thought you had to work more after the first round of layoffs, boy howdy; after round two, you might as well park your cot in the office. Worse, in round 2 and 3 the severance packages get smaller and smaller.
> If you thought you had to work more after the first round of layoffs, boy howdy; after round two, you might as well park your cot in the office. Worse, in round 2 and 3 the severance packages get smaller and smaller.
Because the people who are left are stupider and more desperate for a job.
>Because the people who are left are stupider and more desperate for a job.
No, it's because by round two and three the company doesn't have as much money and isn't as concerned by the bad press that comes from layoffs without severance. You could say that people /stay/ because they are desperate for a job.
My reading of rayiner's comment was that the severance packages were small because the employees were desperate and stupid.
I'm suggesting that the size of the severance package is divorced from the quality of employee. The severance package has to do with how much money the company has and how concerned it is with publicity.
I think you skipped the word 'are', in the phrase 'people who are left'.
Regardless, you both appear to agree that the layoffs who pass on the earlier, more attractive offers are likely to get the least attractive severance packages.
Edit: Not it appears that Rayiner agrees that he's wrong, which makes me wrong by proxy, which is confusing, since I can't find where you two are in any disagreement.
Actually in many cases the people laid off were doing work that didn't need to be done at all. Stuff that has to get done, stuff that's adding value... you keep the people who do that.
>Actually in many cases the people laid off were doing work that didn't need to be done at all. Stuff that has to get done, stuff that's adding value... you keep the people who do that.
Unless the company is getting out of a certain business and laying off an entire department? yeah, you are going to cut off some working hands. The best you can hope for is to mostly hit people in the bottom third or bottom quarter of performance; better resolution than that is largely impossible, even for good management.
If you are 100% useless? you get fired before the layoffs. Layoffs take those perceived to be low performers, but people who aren't so bad that you want to outright fire them.
Everyone exists on a productivity continuum; few people are zeros.
That, and evaluating productivity is hard. Really, really hard, so mistakes will be made, and even good management is occasionally going to accidentally lay off someone who is very productive. And usually you get layoffs because management wasn't good. Bad management is going to make a lot of mistakes and get rid of a lot of good people.
I mean, I'm working from my experience on the ops team; going from 8 folks to 5 folks on the pager rotation is rough. Going from 2 to 1 is terrifying.
In other words, the smart person who is not gonna stand for bullshit, and who is a professional that knows the end goal is creating value, not some BS "mission".
