Talking to the Wolfe Research, he “went on to acknowledge the company needs to make drastic changes to compete and win against rivals including Tesla.”
“We have too many people. We have too much investment. We have too much complexity.”
So, what are his plans to deal with the “too many people” part of our problems?
Girls and boys…Farley is going on a hiring spree. Get ready.
We don't have too many people. We have too many of the lazy, lame, deadwood, etc, etc. A pity when we go through the next SRD only to see them survive with the rats and the roaches.
Farley is right, we have too many people, I can think of two right at the top of the ticket.
With two well known common practices:
(1) LL5 & plus determine the product contents and the processes to produce the products
(2) LL6/GSR execute programs with defined contents and processes
Due to the program complexities and tedious processes, lots of work are needed but truly non-value added. These deficiencies reflect in the program costs and product reliability in the past many and many years. When cost issue comes, HC issue follows, which is the only certain thing in addition to poor products. While the show for cost reduction can last for years, product reliability is just a favor of the week or month.
With the recent 135% vs 54%, it is clear that the company is happy with (1) and unhappy about (2). If you are a LL6/GSR, you can anticipate what comes next.
Goodness sakes @2xft+1fscOvUc
We all get that Ford is not a meritocracy. The days of everyone working together to produce safe quality vehicles is long gone. But dude the skin color and gender of your coworkers has nothing to do with it.
The problem is the engineers aren’t allowed to make the critical decisions. Note how things dramatically improved when Mulally (an engineer) was in charge. Mulally came from Boeing which was known for listening to its employees and putting quality first. The merger with McDonnell Douglas destroyed Boeing as McDonnell Douglas management team got all the top management slots and the engineers were no longer respected or listened to, instead the MBAs were in charge and dancing to Wall Streets tune.
Instead of focusing on the core business Ford employees are fighting over scraps and stepping on each other’s throats to try to empty the company feed trough before their coworkers get their fair share. All colors are equal opportunity pigs at the trough. ITEK was filled with a brown army whose job was seemingly to walk laps and fill all the conference rooms with ‘critical’ meetings which were really social clubs. Then there were the cadre of Ford employees doing their Lawrence Tech MBA school work in the office 8-noon and then taking classes noon-5.
I think the angry racist guy below never heard of the saying 'everything woke turns to sh hit".
Learn it. Live it.
Man, I would love to get a buyout. I've been hoping for one for years, but every time they offer one, my department is exempt.
@2xft+1fscOvUc. Cool post. Ford certainly needs such well thought out contributions as yours. Glad you took a break from TikTok.
@1nrq+1fscOvUc Agree the incompetents will never be shown the door.
The entire LL5 and LL3 should be removed from Ford, then all the long term incompetents should be ushered out.
Sad fact is each resource action at Ford always ends up creating more management positions.
People point out the long term incompetent and yell reductions. Problem is the long term incompetent are protected friends and family that WILL NEVER be shown the door. Rather, mgt will continue to select those they view as dangerous to their career. Then, they have to hire 2-3 to pick up the work. Wash, rinse, repeat. Thing never change as Ford ever nears circling the toilet. The only way things will change is if there is a massive cull of the LL5 +. This if course will never happen. They will just continue to pick the bones of the unprotected class which gets smaller and smaller. It's time Farley looks in the mirror and is honest about what he knows is going on and be the historic person to stand up and say no more to all the protected groups.
We have loads of people with 30x1 years of experience but very few employees with 1x30 years of experience. In other words we have many employees who still have entry level skills after collecting a Ford paycheck for 30 years because they never bothered to learn anything new.
We have a woman in our group who is a GSR8 in a critical technical IT role. She is in the position simply because she was friends with the LL6 at the time. The LL6 brought her into the team as a favor because she was on a PIP and about to be terminated. This woman is beyond incompetent, she literally cannot be trusted to do any task. She has been in the role 23 years now. She has done nothing but coordinate team lunches and Birthday parties in the past 23 years. In those 23 years she was promoted from a GSR5 to GSR8. The LL6 who brought her into the group retired 3 years ago, yet she is still in our group. The current LL6 has been trying to give her to other groups but no group will take her as everyone knows if they bring her into their group they will have to hire someone else to do her job. The current LL6 shared that the previous LL6 gave her 20 years of glowing reviews so he is nervous about being accused of harassing her if he puts her on a PIP.
You might be thinking she is an anomaly, but these types of people are everywhere at Ford. They will be kept in layoffs, because they are on the friends and family plan.
We have too many people because you lay off your experienced people, and then hire 3x the number inexperienced people at near 6 figures, THEN you continue to hire thousands in Mexico and India. Clearly our execs failed basic math. So, you going to keep doing the same thing ..all the while watching your quality bottom out, complexity skyrocket because your new people have no clue what they are doing. Oh, and watch your volume slide. Yea, your tiny MachE volume won't save the company. Can't possibly recoup investment, and with the continued repair costs further digging the ho-e deeper.
Don't disagree with you in principle, but the outcome of an SRD for Ford is very far from certain- poor track record. It's one thing to execute one but quite another to execute one effectively - opposite ends of the spectrum. The real tragedy in it all is that most of us reading this will survive it only to be sacked with more work and having to rely on a bigger percentage of deadwood because they got rid of the wrong people. They'll cut too few people while excluding bloated skill teams, only to immediately start the rumor mill on the next one and hire a bazillion more FCG's who they love so much. Set your watch by it.
How many posts have we read stoking the layoff rumor mill? If Farey is saying it publicly, than it is a fait accompli, but I'm not sure if it's better to be a part of it or to survive it. Maybe they offer one more generous voluntary, but my money is on an SRD. They can't keep threatening these without moving on one sooner or later, and lawsuits are meaningless to them with that much cash- cost of doing business.
Yeah. Let's start at the top! Why do we have more directors & VPs than GM? GM is 3x our size and we have more VPs.
So, you say we have too many salaried Workes in NA. But you staff Mexico, India, and Brazil. Well good luck with that one.
JF is a JOKE. Clueless and BORING. His body language does not even believe what he spews out of his mouth.
I think we can all agree that too many employees is a leading cause for terrible quality and bad new product launches. Farley is right here. We need to cut resources so that our quality improves and recalls become a thing of the past.
Yeah, I agree - buyouts aren't likely this year. Their pattern in general for big number skill team level reductions (for years they have been making lower level reductions every year) seems to be one year offer buyouts, next year offer involuntariness. They did this in 2007/2008, 2010/2011, 2018/2019, and buyout last year.
Thing I am wondering if they are going to do what they did in 2008 and 2019 and go through all skill team areas, or is it going to be more targeted to the non Ford + areas? In other words, is it going to be a real reorganization, or just more trying to survive by cuts to just save money. Even SRD wasn't a real reorg, which is why we "still have too many people" - though seems odd GM still has more people than Ford, and is just doing fine.
Either way, even if there were going to offer another round of buyouts, the involuntary separation package (last time i checked on Life@Ford site) was better.....and last time my group/area was not even included, so there is that. Gotta be honest, little worried as I am a 4th quartile long term GSRer; don't want to really retire as I've still a couple years out from the magic 30 year mark but that might be what I end up having to do , as separation package only provides health care for 9 months, while retirement does until 62....
Well, IMHO, we have at least two salary employees too many: Bill Ford and Jim Farley.
@fbs+1fscOvUc Buyouts? That was last year. I mean , I hope we have some this year, but I am concerned there will be a lot of involuntary layoffs very soon. Why would Farley say that publicly (yes, I know he was trying to keep the stock price up) if something was not already in the works?
Oh well, another jumpy ride ahead for the GSRs.
Beginning of the end of the 'salary employee', time to just use contract labor. Cheaper, burden of healthcare and pension pushed outside to be contractor's problem. cost savings in the 30% range. And you can keep those that perform and cut those who don't. Also will discover the middle management layer who spend all day moving power point slides around and forwarding email after adding there name, will be gone. I feel sorry for them, because they think they are "working", when in fact more is said than done. These skills are not required in the 21 century. The power point presentation magic where committees of middle managers fight for inclusion of their teams slides to showcase how great they are will be gone. This can easily be automated now with AI.
Another round of buyouts....when?
Yes I read that yesterday. I think that's the part you are not supposed to say out loud. Not even as a head game.
So because we have too many people, are we planning to layoff NA personnel and hire 3 times more in India? Maybe, and I know this is a novel idea at FMC, we should get rid of all the dead weight, including management, starting with our "beloved" Bill Ford and his car car CEO Jim Farley. Then we hire the best of the best in NA, and we pay them excellent salaries, and we actually listen to what these engineers are saying, and we DO what the technical people actually recommend.
Once, I worked at a company that retained the best talent and was "understaffed" compared to similar companies, because talented people worked faster and better. When the founder CEO passed away, the first order of the new CEO was outsourcing to India and claiming his bonus for "savings". Yet, a few years down the road, the company started to reverse that policy because they lost business, customers and even people from inside the company, that grew tired dealing with the cheap incompetent Indian workforce.
Don't get me wrong. There is talent in India, even when talented Indian tend to migrate to Europe and NA. It is just that the outsourcing is done to the cheapest bidding company, usually we get FCGs, seat warmers or worse.
Ford does have way too many salary people, compared to our peers. What is Farley going to do about it? He’s going to have to get rid of lots of people. The real question is when does he do this? He’s told the analysts it needs to be done. Get ready!