It appears that lots of the new graduates coast in school and somehow land a role at Ford post-graduation.
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There is extreme pressure to “take” friends and relatives. Yearly the LL5 would hand the LL6 a list of employees that were on the LL4’s list of must be “taken” by someone in his organization. Each LL5 was required to take a percentage of the employees on the list. You would try to find the least objectionable person on the list and volunteer to “take” that person. Your best bet was to “take” one that was both totally incompetent and a free loader. That way you could just let them do nothing and collect a paycheck. If you made the mistake of taking an ambitious dolt your life became heck, undoing messes the dolt routinely made - then your only good option was to look for promotional opportunities for the dolt in an area far away from yours.
I know people are thinking how bad could people on the list really be? A sampling of people on the “must take” list for highly technical software positions in the past: a former hair stylist, a former janitor, a former mechanic, a new hire with a literature degree, a former secretary. None of these had rudimentary IT skills. None of these had any IT aptitude or desire to learn. All were on the friends and family plan.
The LL feel they are entitled to the perk of getting friends and family a job.
I see a lot of legacy employees in the company. I also see that they are promoted rather easily and taken care of even if they do not deserve it. People in management take care of the relatives of other management. It's terrible to see it happen so frequently. Unfortunately, it goes back to who you know & not what you know. Performance is secondary at Ford. If you're in the click, you're taken care of no matter your performance. If you're related to someone in management, you have nothing to worry about. That's a terrible way for a company to operate.
This is typical of all automotive... the banana republic politics
Ford was literally a family company for over a century, so it's hard for the board and the highest levels of management to say otherwise. Most other large companies got rid of this kind of nepotism through the 90s and 00s, but American car companies sans Tesla remain stuck in the past with seniority a major drag on innovation and efficiency. Ford can't even penetrate China, the world's largest car market because its cars are not price competitive. The more Ford moves its workforce to lower cost locales like Eastern Europe, the better off it will be. People used to laugh at Japanese cars and Korean cars, and look where they are now. The Ford rank and file needs to realize that the company is fighting for survival instead of taking market share for granted. Fresh graduates know that the American economy is bollocks and are hungrier, while the entrenched older workforce is stuck in the no longer relevant glories of the past.
Like getting a seat on the Rivian Board after graduating and working at The Gap?
Yes...I have noticed that also. They are mostly the useless ones.