Do you think anyone even proposed the idea of pay cuts instead of mass firings?
Lots of new executives that can afford to take a temporary salary reduction. I would have been okay with that. Other companies I know have done 20% cuts across the board with executives taking a bit higher, to avoid firings.
Even if the cuts wouldn’t have been enough to save everyone, it could have likely saved a lot of jobs.
They lay-off people to hire execs. Go back and look at it over the last year every time
Startup/small biz culture is different. It's more personal and mission-oriented. People who work at startups tend to be more personally invested in the success of business itself and those who work around them. In that case, taking a paycut to keep the business solvent and retain your co-workers may be more palatable.
In an enterprise environment like Intrado, it's every man for himself. Sure, you have teams where people know you and are invested in you. However, people aren't going to line up to make personal sacrifices to help the business' bottom line or to retain employees they've never met in other departments/locations that they've never seen or been to. Just not part of the enterprise culture.
I personally know of 2 companies (startups less than 200 emps) that have decided to do the 20% thing. Personally I wouldn't like it, but I would accept that verses making my life harder by cutting the number of teammates I have and keeping the same workload.
Maybe this only works (well) with smaller companies, and maybe it is still bad accounting. It's definitely a company culture thing that West does not have. For the two companies and the employees I know there, this has been a team building and solidarity type event.
While taking away pay from the execs who make these decisions regarding layoffs sounds good, it's not good accounting.
First, while execs are well-paid (some may say overpaid), what they earn is a relative drop in the bucket compared to overall company payroll. Even if you took away all pay for the execs, it wouldn't significantly impact the company's bottom line (at least, not enough to stave off layoffs).
Secondly, an across-the-board paycut isn't any more palatable than targeted layoffs. While layoffs s—, they (generally) have the effect of only really upsetting the people who are being let go. With an across-the-board paycut, EVERYONE is upset and angry. Seriously, how many people would sign up for a 20% paycut to save someone else's job? I know it's harsh, but it's the truth.
Cutting their own salaries doesnt help them get this new money from the Federal government. But I do agree they should reduce the large overhead.
That’s a excellent idea. Hope our CEO isn’t that greedy. He doesn’t care about his employees
I know in my division there’s a lot product & project managers that make way more than they deserve. The software engineers make but loads too.
Do we really need a CTO and a CIO and a bunch of VPs under them?
Have you seen the amount of money these cheap jerks pay people? Starting about $16 an hour.