Thread regarding Open Text Corp. layoffs

@17c not sure, everything is manual here with an invisible hand disguised as automation.

@c2 None of this is done by IT. HR/Workday does it all. Yes, IT setup the systems to do it, but nobody in IT has the authority to revoke access.

Unringing a “Bell”. Once the sound has been made and the vibrations have traveled, you can't "take back" the noise. But where is the billion dollars saved?

https://blogs.opentext.com/how-opentext-will-save-1b-with-our-own-products/

@bw+1 Mark and most of the managers above are useless.

Wouldn’t be surprised if he disappears from the org chart

Before you know it, we’ll have more employees working on layoffs processes than anything else.

Journalist Madison McLauchlan at BetaKit here. If you have any info to share about the layoffs/restructuring, please reach out at @madisonmcla.12 on Signal. Sorry to hear this is happening.

Be PREPARED!
It’s generally best to avoid keeping personal content on work devices, but if you do, don’t wait for a trigger event, access can change at any time. Make sure any important personal files are backed up to your own accounts or storage.

It’s easy to become complacent, especially after being somewhere for a long time, so it’s worth taking a moment to get ahead of it.

@cg It's just one click of a button. They retire your device in Intune which removes all work stuff from your phone. They get a email from HR for everyone who is in process of being let go during their exit meeting and then have 15mins to action the email. They Disable and sign you out of your accounts. And retire all your devices. There is times HR will contact IT directly for more urgent users to disable. But lead time from HR to IT is about 30mins after HR processed the termination on their end before IT gets the email and once IT does their part can take up to an hour for it complete but usually faster.

When they let me go, the account info started IMMEDIATELY deleting off my company laptop, office, gone, teams, gone, emails, gone, all of my saved passwords to login to check my pay, etc, gone. Luckily I had a Samsung Galaxy, so all the work stuff was partitioned by Knox, but within 5 minutes my phone rebooted and completely removed the OT Knox partition (basically they did a remote device wipe, had there been no Knox, it would have reset my personal phone, but luckily just the partition got deleted). Anyway, the efficiency at which they can remove access is astounding.

None of it’s automated but we have to go through this every 6 months so it’s just muscle memory now.

We have perfected the layoff process, it’s the only place where we are efficient. And you can tell it’s a top priority. Employee and Customer Satisfaction is at the bottom of the totem pole. It’s all about keeping the stock price up to make sure the executives get their bonuses. Just like it was at Computer Associates, Silicon Graphics and Rackable Systems before they got acquired.

It's staggering how clueless many on my team here are. Sad for the new guys. If I were them I'd be wondering what I got myself into. They are still in go-getter mode.

The email from our bland functionary CEO wasn't exactly faith inspiring.

At this point, even if you aren't in the crosshairs (this time), assume you are. You should be harvesting anything you think you'll need from your laptop. Matter of fact, it's in your interest to sanitize it as much as you can, with a minimum of what you need to function.

This is a standard big-company-in-meltdown employee best practice.

This is standard stuff for an IT shop. I've been in companies where I was the guy ki-ling access while the doomed were on the carpet. He-l, at Lucent they made a big deal about you being able to use company resources, even office space, to find a job, but whacked your access to everything that day.

That said, it's hilarious that this is the one thing that group is good at. Their support - of both products and helpdesk is the worst I've seen anywhere. The helpdesk is useless. What makes it worse is the byzantine gauntlet it takes to get it. When you do, it su-ks.

This process is exactly why they spread the notifications out over several days. It's all planned well in advance. IT and other groups are on standby waiting for a confirmation email that the notification was made with the employee. Then they just push through what they already have set up in terms of terminating. The list of wfr employees is managed months and months and months before the notification. In fact, the next round is well, well underway.

The Help Desk and the leader Mark Schell are completely useless for day to day things. This must be the only thing they are good at!

It all depends on the HR handling your case. They’re afraid that one of you might go back to the computer and do something they don’t want you to do. Therefore, the simplest way is to have IT on standby online. By the time your call ends or before you return to your workstation, the command to log out the account has already been issued.

Always thought there had to be something her org was good at since they su-k at most things. Guess we found it.

Part of the process unfortunately, and really not difficult to manage or implement. What did you expect full access rights to remain?

Wait, you still had access for a bit after the call? Was planning to post my 'see ya' message as soon as I saw the appointment. Kinda expected to get connections whacked during the call. If I have ~10min, I can on a proper rant :)

Literally. Teams was gone within maybe 10 minutes of my call and whole computer went black exactly 47 minutes after my call. They wasted zero time. Insane.