Thread regarding Allstate Corp. layoffs

Were there more layoffs last week? I know about the ones atht the end of May, but I see the Drone's insights this week talking about people impacted by the "ongoing simplification". Also noticed that the puppet has changed his tune since his delusional townhall, a bit more sympathy from him in his more recent outpourings.

Lads don’t worry once you’re certified it’ll all make sense!

You know if the leadership truly believed in the “model” they’d offer voluntarily redundancy instead of chip chip chipping away. VR would get rid of the “dead weight” and non believers right? Surely it wouldn’t be the competent people taking it…?

"Who the he-l thought 1 week sprints are a good idea?"

Ironically on my team it has had the opposite effect as the stories have not been adjusted in any way to actually be able to be completed in 1 week, so they are all spilling.

Before it was realistic to get them done in 2 weeks, but now 'it's done when it's done' as 1 week is so silly.

The paired programming is a joke as well. I'm just ignoring it until they hold a g-n to my head. Complete waste of time. I don't want to be chained to someone else all day.

Who comes up with these ideas to put as many obstacles in front us as possible to distract us from doing our actual jobs?

Stephen is a company man. I don't blame him for taking the role as it's a step up in his own career but ultimately he isn't going to be able to save ANI. The only hope is that Zulfi and his bootlickers finally get shown up for the id--ts that they are and booted out first. From chatting to people in the office, morale is taking a pounding. Who the he-l thought 1 week sprints are a good idea?Teams will be burnt out in no time with the sustained pressure to constantly deliver. I get that approach at somewhere like Meta or Google as you get significant compensation for handing over your life for a while but not for the below NI tech wages that ANI pay out.

@vp+1jsej2dg2 I think his "warning" about adapting and "buying into the plan" were not really about the redundancies that have happened previously but more for what's going to happen in the future. I'm expecting changes to be announced soon that are going to be very unpopular: RTO or permanent on call responsibilities... stuff like that. Maybe they'll scrap the bonus? I'm expecting something big and negative and we'll be told to buy into the plan "for the sake of the business".

To be perfectly frank, I think we're being wound down to be moved to India anyway over the next few years. Either that or the Z & K "wonder team" will eventually get found out and leave before the house of cards comes crashing down.

The townhall last week was incredibly tone deaf IMO. He basically said that it was those who lost their jobs own fault they lost them because they didn’t adapt quick enough. How can that apply to those who went in the big redundancy of Oct 23? The model was barely underway at that time.

Also subsequent failures to adapt are leadership’s fault, as from where I sit they’ve no clue and are providing zero direction. “Figure it out yourself” seems to be the guidance for OBD it’s is a nebulous moving target not clearly defined, which is intentional.

The second worrisome thing was his reference to the survey. The amount of begging emails they sent out to get people to complete them. Then at the townhall they didn’t like the answers they got, Queen Bee Z wasn’t impressed and we should be giving them the answers they want to hear, ie “everything is great”.

It’s clearly the endgame for ANI but it’s being set up that ANI is gone because we ,the employees, failed to adapt to “product” not because it was Z’s plan all along. A salve to our leaders conscious “it wasn’t my fault, those intransigence employees just wouldn’t adapt”

@q8+1jsej2dg2, effectively he said su-k it up or fu-k off. Buy in to what senior management is doing or go somewhere else. It all sounded really rather ominous, if you ask me.

What did he say at the Town Hall out of interest? I never ring into them as they are usually send me into a coma.

@m5+1jsej2dg2 I’m guessing drone rhymes with someone, the outburst is likely last week’s ANI townhall. Which was quite something.

Who is the drone and what did they say in his outburst?

What prompted it?

Again with the shifting of subject. What people want is honestly from management. If ANI can no longer sustain x amount of employees then say that. Don’t pay off 19 people a quarter so you don’t have to do a public consultation. Don’t blame the people who lost their jobs for losing their jobs because they didn’t “believe” enough. It’s cowardly. I’d also point out that very talented individuals have been let go and the su-k ups like yourself remain.

Your sort will be left high and dry unable to fix the inevitable mess you’ve created and unable to get a job elsewhere because your skills are in kissing up and punching down, rather than any actually transferable ability.

@jm+1jsej2dg2 - at what point do you own your own career? The world, the company owes you nothing. The ‘entitlement culture’ is where the ‘rot’ begins and ends.

There seems to be a lot of corporate management shills determined to shift the topic away from the OP and onto “dead weight”.

As another poster rightly pointed out, a lot of dead weight at the ME/DPM level and a lot of the chaos is being caused by the endless reorganisations instigated by “leadership”. That’s a broader topic.

The rot in ANI set in with the current yes man leadership. It’s clear now the JH seen the direction of travel, wanted no part of it and jumped ship.

Think a lot of folk are tired of the victim blaming going on by current ANI leadership, and would appreciate a bit of honesty rather than someone losing their job because they didn’t believe enough in “product”. For example, how is that even applicable to all the PMO staff we lost? They weren’t “dead weight” and at least made sure that things were delivered.

This is probably going to get a million votes down, but here it goes anyway.

I am a former ANI'er, came through the graduate program and gained two promotions before I left. In my time, I worked with a few very talented people, most others were fine and got the job done, but a surprising amount of folks who contributed little or were outright incompetent. In my years, I only ever remember one person getting fired, and that was because they basically stopped turning up for work. Going through the motions was enough to keep you safe at ANI, at least as long as I was there up until a few years ago.

The problem is that today the real world is a lot more ruthless, and Allstate has finally "caught up" with that. A lot of companies are now using stack ranking and actively targeting what they see as the bottom x% of their employees and effectively firing them. An offer is made, an NDA is signed, and the employee is quietly shunted out the door. The large firm I am with in Belfast does this and I've heard of plenty of others doing the same. It's the new norm, despite what any HR person tells you.

The reality is that more than ever, we're all just numbers. India turns out 1M IT graduates every single year and as COVID showed, in many cases you no longer even need employees in a physical office anymore. The AI thing is a big threat as well. It's frightening how good it's gotten so fast. It's already at the stage where it has effectively replaced a grad who's doing a lot of the basic boilerplate type of work. I think in three years time, it's possible it will replace experienced people like me.

Isn’t that business though? Why are people so surprised?

I think a large part of the problem is that folk got too comfortable and simply got complacent. Figured they were safe in the knowledge that the ‘soft and cuddly’ Allstate would always be there for them. If you want that type of role, the civil service/ public sector are always hiring.

Pull your socks up people and get to work. Harsh but true.

ANI was expedient. We were a cheap alternative at some point, plus Big Blue saw some tax advantages if they moved to Europe, plus the image conscious company could get some good press.

Not anymore. The political winds and management composition have shifted to various 3rd world toilets where workers cost 1/4 of what we do. So it's good bye ANI, it was fun while it lasted, but Allstate will be going elsewhere to find workers who aren't as expensive, won't actually act on the 'challenge ideas' rhetoric because they have a 'yes man' culture and don't mind working 24/7 if they are so ordered.

And it's all the workers' fault. Kinda like blaming a ra-e victim for wearing provocative clothing-they were just asking for it. Such is the management mentality at Allstate.

There is 100% dead weight, there are "managing engineers" that don't know any programming languages but they kept their jobs while Allstate has let go actually talented engineers. The new re-org is an absolute disaster and that's being nice about it.

Welcome to the private sector people. If you can’t stand the heat and all of that

Hey @dx+1jsej2dg2, you consider your colleagues who lost their jobs ‘dead weight’? You must be a wonderful person to work with/for.

Hello local HR thought police... Where did the OP say that? They never mentioned dead weight whatsoever? However seeing that you did, HR person, there's plenty of "dead weight", a whole layer of it at Drone's level and at the new DPM/ME talking shop bullshtting askisser level.

The gall of Drone to put the blame of people losing their livelihoods on to them is an utter disgrace. It's the leadership's incompetence which caused the losses and to boost the shareprice they cut jobs. It'd be better if the Drone was actually honest. Instead you get that, frankly, delusional outburst last week that people lost their jobs because they didn't "believe" enough.

Think it might be time for ANI workers to sign up to a union so at least they'll have some representation when the inevitable comes for them. If 10% of folk sign up they have to recognise them. That's the law.

Are you seriously suggesting there is (or was) no ‘dead weight’ at ANI?