What I still do not get, if these layoffs were truly about efficiency, and not about maximizing profits as I repeatedly heard, is why so many people were forced to take demotions, lower role salary grades, and even lower salaries just to stay with The Firm. If we VSPd and ISPd this many people solely for efficiency purposes and not for profit maximization and the salaries of GPs, certainly the people that survived would have an increase in their salaries as a reward beyond being thankful they kept their employment. No one has ever been worth a $20M salary, and certainly not now during these financially difficult times.
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@1gx I agree. The changes in my area are basically on paper only. I have a new leader, who I have been told is essentially there for hr purposes. My old leader is still in the same role but has no direct reports. They are still leading the work done by my team. I still have the same number of layers above me and I’m no closer to a leader with actual influence in the org. Not that it really matters. I’ve been checked out while I job hunt for the last 6 months anyway. At the end of the day I’m just glad I’m still getting paid until I find something else.
@1fx Definitely does not feel like they did much with layers. The organizational chart updated 9/5 is 76 pages long!!
Saying this was about spans and layers is also a total scam. They added layers to our org and did literally nothing to address where the true inefficiencies are. The people they kept vs. those let go or demoted is also crazy, meaning they kept many terrible people while letting the good ones go. I hope they enjoy reaping the rewards of these terrible decisions.
@e3 I was fired and I think I am pretty good at what I do. At the end of the day I made a fatal error. I developed three organizations with leadership and business succession and in two years time, they don’t need me. I am proud of that. It is efficient and people development driven. Instead of tossing me out say wow, how do we duplicate that strategy?!? All my people are safe, only promotions in my review, I can sleep tonight. (Until the mortgage payment comes due)
@b5 the original $ savings target was ~ $280 M. They can’t pull together coherent strategy and do math! Embarrassing!
If they cared about profit they would get rid of lazy FAs who don’t bring in any business instead of firing hard working associates.
@b6 A broken clock is right twice a day.
I see many useless and incompetent L4/L5s made it through unscathed. Perhaps some TLs deserved demotions but any gain was more than offset by projecting higher ups that don’t understand the work and only care about preserving their excessive comp. Getting rid of just 25-50% of the middle management deadweight could have saved 2-3 IC/TLs from demotions and ISPs.
ER didn’t eject the middle manager parasites which would have at least helped address the bureaucratic bloat between ICs and the top of the org chart and thus did not achieve its stated purpose and was a complete failure. In reality, ER’s purpose in retrospect was always to reduce overhead by selectively firing/VSPing higher paid tenured associates and cutting pay or firing associates in areas where the firm over hired post-Covid.
Anything you hear from management that this was about efficiency, spans/layers, improving product time-to-market or whatever else are crafted to misdirect all of us from the truth that this was always about reducing costs and maximizing profit.
Some, cannot speak for all, who got demoted sorely needed it.
Go look at the JonesLink page for ER. They changed the talking points to this being about freeing up $500 million for new technology. The company rewrite history without you even knowing.
Because it is not. HC knew they needed to cut people several years go. They struggled because didn’t want to be the bad guy to be counter to what Ted Jones had established. That we do not do layoffs and if you worked hard you have a place here. They spent several years sputtering to make this transition. Finally PP said we do this now. It is always about the money. They try to distract you with a whole bunch of y’all’s and be nice comments. Human centered or not they will send Antone out to the pastures and move on.