How do we prepare for a sudden layoff?
We lose access to company sites and contacts. What should we save?
Any tips would be much appreciated.
15 replies (most recent on top)
Prepare and plan for 1+ year and keep your profile open for other fields of engineering such as defense, aerospace, medical etc
Tips : Prepare for 1 year - No F.-ing jobs.
@by More true than you know.
@as, a person after my own heart. Someone does things outside their 9-5 I see.
Download all your pay stubs
Make a copy of anything you want to keep. Resumes, old PRs, training history, etc.
I wrote a paper which I didn’t get chance to save and I would have liked to have had a copy of that
Also, anything personal like raises, benefit info, pictures, etc.
Basically anything that you want to keep or think you will need later.
Also, don’t take any of Ford’s property.
Save your money.
Keep records of your reviews - always treat yourself like you are a mercenary that provides value, and once you have exhausted that ability, you move on. Always have this mentality because people who don't, depend on loyalty and that will just bring tears for you. You are just a number to them on a balance sheet. You can treat them the same way, a place to exchange value, take as much as you can for what you do and move on when its time. Always, always, always be prepared to get shown the door and this cannot be said enough times. Discard all the talk about "family" because people who use that word in relation to a corporate behemoth like Ford are 1000 percent ready to feed you bull $hit. Keep in mind that at companies this big conformance matters more than performance. Performance matters but if you perform without conforming, you WILL be fired. 80 percent conformance and 20 percent performance and this is anywhere. I have to say though that out of the 3 automakers in the D, Ford does have one of the most dysfunctional and toxic. This might change but I did hear about it long before I started working there. Glad to be out and on to better things.
@by frustrating, yes, and great insight
@a5, That is incorrect. People conflate a lot of what Ford has started doing as being EV related, but much of it is drivetrain independent. That said, the EV market is much more willing to pay for all of our superfluous features. EV adopters really only care that they drive an electric at any cost, and now it’s obvious that market is small and saturated. Now we have to sell those features to the main market, that will be tough as cost now matters again,
Meet the new plan. Same as the old plan. Nero (JF) continues fiddling (racing) as Rome (Dearborn ) burns.
@OP. The first tip is do not wait until you are laid off. So while you are looking for your next job, save all that is important to you (and that varies with each one).
I usually forward certain emails to my personal account when I receive them. Usually all the awards, the congrats, the reviews, the praises, etc. If I receive it through another channel (chat, website), I take a screenshot, paste it in the email and forward to my personal email. I have been doing this for years.
Remember, FMC will not confirm your employment there to your future employer, nor a manager will give you a recommendation letter. So I took a screenshot of the SuperDuper CDS for my account, and have a couple of coworkers willing to write me a letter of recommendation.
I don't keep track of all the projects I work on, only the most importants. Usually they are already included in the reviews, but still, I have a "short list" done annually, and send it to my personal email.
I try to keep the people I work with as Linkedin contacts. That way, when someone is laid off, I can still contact them. I also have the phone numbers of the most closed people. All the websites you have "bookmarked" only work with your work account, so don't bother with those. If you have "pending business" with HR, or whatever, you'll receive some documentation, including some website or phone number. Be aware that those sites/numbers don't care about you, and you'll spend time navigating the red tape at Ford.
If you have patents, code, or something similar, you better keep track of it on your personal computer. Whatever you keep on your work PC is being backed up, including your personal stuff. So after saving all that is important to you, make sure to clean your personal stuff. Copy the personal pictures, videos and documents to another computer and delete those from your work PC. Do not delete your work stuff.
Now you are ready to be laid off, but hopefully you already got a better job someplace else.
Good luck!
As someone who went through it back in May, my advice is 1) keep an up to date copy of your resume outside of the Ford network, and 2) save/print your past performance reviews while you still can. I had ten years of exceptional PRs (got Top Achiever twice, which was hard to do in my department) saved in a folder on my Ford laptop. I kept my internal Ford resume up-to-date, but I thought I would retire there, so I didn’t bother to keep copies on my personal computer. When I woke up that morning last May and saw the 10-minute meeting with my boss’ boss on my calendar, it was already too late—my file transfer access was already cut off. Recreating the last 10 years of my work history from memory for my resume was miserable. Having direct quotes from previous bosses praising my work would have been nice to have, too.
Most of the people the company has hired over the last few years were specialized in EV technology - remember the laid off all the ICE engineers (you know, the backbone of our current plan). I'd imagine a lot of those peeps aren't super comfortable.
Why would there be layoffs, we are still making cars, just changing the drive train.