Thread regarding Kroger Co. layoffs

@tc I'm so sorry to hear that. This has really showed Kroger's true colors.

With the new CEO in play, NOTHING is safe from cuts.

@10c org charts were a big nothingburger. Feels like deja vu

I used to hang out here a while back, but things went quiet until this viral thread showed up. Chiming in since I see a lot of newbies, and this site’s layout might be confusing for some. Hope it helps.

This site’s kinda like Reddit - almost as big. The only difference is that instead of subs the site has a bunch of forums for employees of different companies. As far as I know, none of these forums are affiliated with those companies leaderships, so it’s safe to say that folks can post whatever they want.
As long as it’s work-related and follows the site’s rules chances are it’ll stay up.

If you scroll through this Kroger forum you’ll find hundreds of other threads, not just this one - none of which exactly make the company look great.

Mods are around, though - frequent and quiet, deleting stuff that breaks the rules.

Someone recently summed up how rules and deletions work pretty well on another thread, so I’m just gonna paste it here:

• Mods/admins exist but stay silent
• Posts may be deleted for:
  • Personal names
  • Swearing, insults, politics, race/gender/identity attacks
  • Off-topic spam or trolling
• Threads or all posts from a user can be removed
• IPs and some VPNs are blocked (TOR often doesn’t work)
• Smaller VPN providers usually work
• Best practice: stick to layoff-related content and don’t post names

THIS THREAD IS BEING WATCHED!

Certain posts are missing. This response links to a post that is now gone:

https://www.thelayoff.com/post/@x1+1k3eddae2

@10c very much PR. Saying 20-25% of corporate staff doesn't sound so good to the masses

Were any our brands strategy managers or category managers cut?

@se Unvested RSUs are lost. I asked if we could have at least the 2026 vested amount and the answer was NO.

@r2 exactly! WTF!

Looks like org charts are starting to be communicated today. Hoping we can collectively share the scale of impact here (since the company won't)... I honestly don't know what to make of the "1000 employees" number in all of the media headlines. Was that formally communicated by Kroger? If not, how do they know?

@xe what positions, where did you see this?

@OP Kroger posted job openings for many of the Portland GO/GM positions that were "eliminated." Time for new, lower paid employees that won't question their overlords.

Reminder to the survivors:

As long as BCG has its tentacles in Kroger and Yael + Clendenen are in charge, your safety is never guaranteed. They have a total disregard for others’ well-being and will not hesitate to trample you. Both are MBAs with no real technical expertise.

They rely on consultants because they lack the ability to generate original ideas themselves.

They also spent a ton of budget on RFID for Fred Myer stores which will never carry over to others because they don't sell clothes generally in a grocery store then to see so many laid off in FM divison Portland. Sorry everyone.

As far as KTD instock goes...that's the internal app for associates in store on the zebras. I've seen those teams obliterated over last 6 months and.bring in interns to do senior work. I ended up helping get 4 month old PRs out for several because they laid off their only engineer offahore who was there for a month or because someone was brand new and offshore. The new engineers they are hiring have no experience. I think several teams are being retired and many others in maintenance. Without instock though the store has to revert to paper trails. It's mind boggling.

@s6 KTD has been doing this for over a decade. We even opened our own office in India at one point. It always fails... Someone cleans it up and then another "leader" with an MBA starts it up again.

@se I believe employment is required for the stock to vest so even if you got an award in July it won't vest till next July. Honestly this should also be part of severance.

Was laid off as well. No warning whatsoever. Remote US based Android Lead for a capability in InStock. They laid off my 2 devs in Feb. Our local QA as well. Our new QA works offshore and only 2 hrs each morning and are brand new so loss of institutional knowledge. What a clusterf. My severance ends end of Sep. So basically a month. Was with Kroger about 4 yrs and won many perf awards. Manager didnt even txt me or thank me.

Does anybody know what happens with unvested RSUs?

Good luck with your soon to be announced offshore replacements that get paid $8k a year. When 84.51 hired 152 offshore contractors from TechM they made a mistake. They've already fired 45 of them for literal incompetence and replaced them with someone else from India. As a result, TechM fired several layers of their own org because of how bad it's been. They also ran out of their own talent to fill these roles and have been trying to poach talent from other companies to make up for their inability to have competent talent. It's embarrassing. Good luck to everyone at Kroger who has to deal with this. Feel free to vent to anyone at 8451, they know what you're talking about.

@rc My team had their meetings today. Heard they won't get their actual severance amount until a separate meeting later in September. The model that was suggested was 2 years = 2 months of severance, with certain milestones of years getting more. But that could vary by department.

Does anyone have an update on severance they are planning to offer? I heard both side of the stories, no severance shall be offered or even if there is, it won’t be good and will cover the basic 1 month to cover warn notice rules. No bonus as well..

@qx Who are you and why are you burying the main thread?

I grouped our responses in this thread and created separate theme based threads on the main page /kroger /kroger www.thelayoff.com/kroger

• Previous Transformations and Layoffs - Post ID: @1k3pbjgzm0
• Culture & Morale - Post ID: @1k3pbgmt20
• Offshore Outsourcing and AI Concerns - Post ID: @1k3pb99cc0
• Return to Office (RTO) and Remote Worker Impact - Post ID: @1k3pb758s0
• Product and Tech Org - Post ID: @1k3pb3c2y0
• Leadership, Management & Culture Concerns - Post ID: @1k3pb20td0
• Severance Concerns - Post ID: @OP+1k3paxn8e

@pv There must be a bunch of product people watching this thread. While I've met a few gems from that team, they're utterly stymied by broken process, bloated egos and MGMT who's only concern is their own portfolio.

The rest of product is functionally useless, just another layer of management hot air that enables the single worse problem Kroger always had - not listening to its technical people.

Honesty, it's a relief I'm leaving this sh-t show.

@py my team received notice today that we needed to add some new contacts to our email chains, sure enough they are located in India.

@q5 The only roles they're filling are the ones in high demand, and they've been open for quite a long time because no one in the industry wants to work in a hybrid environment for a salary that is below market rate.

There will come a time where Kroger will have to let go of the whole RTO business if they want to be competitive again. It is a matter of when not if

@pp I got laid off from Kroger last year and was given severance. 1 month per year of year of service + cobra benefit + prorated bonus.

@q4 it’s not a super strict one. There’s still plenty of jobs being posted and backfilled.

I think it's funny people are trying to blame these layoffs on the failed merger. We've been in a hiring freeze for over 2 years, even before the merger announcement. Roles haven't been backfilled for just as long. Kroger continues to make record profits and they're doing just fine. Meanwhile, we all have to pick up the slack because they won't hire anyone

@pt very similar to transformation.
When I saw who they were keeping, and more specifically who they promoted, my first thought was, "good luck with that".
Kroger values people who say "Yes, Yael, great idea! We can do it on that timeline!" more than why other skill.

@q0 I have been too and POs were great. What we have now doesn’t work yet we just take survey and survey because they don’t like the answers they get.

@pt yep they did this last time with layoffs, they were announced right after associate insights survey were do.

It doesn't matter though, absolutely nothing has come out of those surveys. The #1 complaint is always compensation but they ignore it. I just give all positive reviews and move on so I'm not on a list

@pv so I've been around long before product teams were a thing. In addition to engineering, we were also the product managers and owners. We technical folk had a direct line to our downstream business partners and met with them on needs and upcoming changes etc. It was difficult but great for them to speak with actual engineers. Now those product folk speak on our behalf but don't know anything technical. It's a joke.

Same deal with scrum...I would say half the teams are developers using sprints while the other half are engineers using kanban...yet they try to force sprint planning methodologies on the engineering teams. We all just make stuff up, close out stories and recreate them to make numbers look good.

There's absolutely no way they can accurately measure productivity.

It's been a constant rocking boat the past few years. Sketchy merger and divestiture conquest that disrupted all of KTD for 2 solid years, blanket RTO mandates, merger failure (thank goodness), mysterious CEO "resignation", layoffs and more layoffs. All handled with such poor communication that I have to look to media outlets to find out what my company is actually doing. I used to say I liked Kroger for the stability. Funny.

I feel for all of those lost jobs today, best of luck. But honestly, I wish I was one of you. I'm ready to get off this boat. Hope you get the severance you're owed. See you at Publix.

My guess is a suspicious number of offshore contractors will be onboarded soon...

@pv exactly! It’s been the question for years. Product in other orgs has made sense, not at Kroger. it starts with the leaders…

@pp it was the same in 2020. I ran into someone at Kroger go figure that lost their job in 2020.. And they were getting paid every month for 15 months. They had 15 years service and even got 2 bonus checks.

@pt what does product even do? We have a 1 to 1 ratio of admin people and the people who actually do the work.

This announcement just one day after they encouraged all managers to have their associates complete the associate survey so they could be at 100%. Just weeks after being asked to vote to be the top 100 it companies to work for. Some of the VPs that survived are a joke and have caused this “product led” mess. Kroger execs listened to the wrong KTD leaders.

@pq folks, especially in KTD, do have a access to privileged information hence OP telling everyone 3 days ago about these layoffs coming