Does your immediate manager has a say, who to let go
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@fb Sounds like my team. We're low on people, no idea how we're going to make deadlines, and that we're hiring, tell our friends. Then Sept. 2 happened and now they're one person fewer out of a team of FOUR (deploying multiple OCI tenancies).
Perhaps the buh-bye list was compiled by demented AI?
@j4 I was definitely caught off-guard. I thought I had been invited to a boring meeting about restructuring, instead I got laid off.
My manager didn't even see it coming. He's struggling with all the work our team has already.
@h1 yeah this is just inaccurate
@j4 how do you know this?
VP, Directors, 2nd and 1st line managers had no say this time around it seems. Lists were handed out above that and they were told to execute them. Given it's hard to believe SVPs could do this without input from below, decisions on who to let go were likely made by some AI tool using a combination of inputs and data about employees. Unfortunately that meant many with significant contributions and excellent ratings were let go because some attribute of the AI screening was weighted more heavily against perhaps RSUs, zoom attendance, meeting work load, code pushes, jira tickets worked etc. AI isn't perfect. The sad part is that most times employees have a sense they might be laid off because well you kinda know or not if you're not needed. This time around it seems people were totally caught off guard.
No, lower managers provide candidates only for regular trim. For mass layoffs like this one, they have zero input.
OF COURSE your direct manager knows! Upper management dictates the number of people to RIF, and lower-level managers and dotted-line managers provide "candidates" to be let go. Keep in mind that in order to skirt legal issues for age discrimination, there has to be a mix of old and new employees to be axed. And you can bet that managers will keep their pet employees no matter what.
Managers always like to say that they "didn't know" or that they were "in the dark" about who was put on RIF lists, but I guarantee that they're lying thru their teeth.
@ac no. my entire team (and myself) consistently received high ratings and were on an under resourced team that had high ROI. I was even told that this wasn’t about performance and that none of it makes any sense.
No. I didn’t know my team was being cut. My manager and his manager were also in the dark. All the way up to SVP were unaware.
They have several views to pick from in the db
- salary too much for given return (I.e slackers)
- poor individual performance
- poor team or product performance (budget and OCI)
- very dependent on the RSUs that are vesting in Sept ( always demanding RSUs or pay increases)
New one added yesterday
- creating public HR slack channels
The only ways out are
- direct descendant of Larry
- large contributions to the orange taco
- your sleeping with the boss
Your immediate manager has zero impact. He/she just gets a list. I doubt the manager one or two levels up has any impact as well. Maybe none of them.
I suspect this all is an Ai hallucination. That they feed location, salary, RSU, level, ratings, attendance in Zoom meetings etc into Ai and let Ai decide. And Ai does what Ai does, if it doesn't know it just guesses.
I know, this can't be. But as no one seems to be able to find a pattern how they select who to fire, who knows....
There must be some criteria like salary,RSU, rating etc?
Is there an understanding of precisely when managers were informed who would be cut?
@OP Having been through this before as a manager at O, had zero input. Only given a list of calls to make. It’s an awful experience. Managers are usually just a vessel to deliver news.
Sounds like no. According to the slack channel, it seemed that the managers were being told who was on the cut list. So it sounds like it’s being handled at a higher level. Also sounds like some skip-level managers need to notify their skips plus their managers in between. But the messages in slack channel were vague.