huge portion of contractors in IT just got laid off. I'm with TEKsystems, but not sure if it affected other agencies as well. Everyone was blind sided including the contracting house themselves. not sure what this means for full timers, but it was a pretty big wave from what I've heard.
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2hyd Don’t assume that engineers didn’t document.
I worked in one group where a LL6 deleted all the detailed documentation that a GSR8 and a technical LL6 wrote. Why? Because she was jealous of their skills and success.
A year after she physically deleted the documentation she went on a smear campaign claiming that the GSR8 and technical LL6 were sneaky, hid information from others and never documented anything.
Yah it is messed up but she managed to fool a lot of people. The GSR8 and technical LL6 both work at GM now.
In other cases LL5 and LL6 instruct teams not to share existing information with interfacing teams. Why? Because they are in competition with their leaders for the next promotion.
@1wpy+1hyP2qns The "old dinosaurs" should have put systems in place to effectively launch vehicles instead of keeping that knowledge in their head. It is ridiculous the number of groups I've interfaced with that depend on LL6 guidance instead of setting up robust documents/processes.
It’s a mixed bag of blame. We have a purchased service who was brought in 2015 @ $200 per hour. The initial reason was to train Ford employees on how to administer a newly purchased software product. Here it is 2022 and the purchased service is still at Ford, the only difference is higher hourly rate. How can it be that in 7 years the Ford employees are unable to administer the software product themselves, given that it is their only task at Ford? The product manuals can be read front to back in less than a week. Have any Ford employees read them? Nope. Instead of being trained the Ford employees have spent 7 years delegating all the work to the purchased service. SMH. In this case, the Ford LL6 is to blame. He should fire his entire team and bring in people who want to be trained and want to work.
1ybx it’s not the managements fault it’s finance or who ever is minding the budget. Keep approving POs and they stay. I don’t think it’s the PS fault it’s managements fault if they are not being productive. Some people with no degree have all the common sense in the world to do all the tasks asked of them for the others they may need some coaching but most can do the job.
@v1yd - there was a process put in place in my deptartment back in 2018 to convert a limited amount of non-degreed people to direct. Very limited, maybe half a dozen a year tops. Generally though Ford has a long history of being happy hiring productivity black-holes with a degree rather than convert productive agency heads lacking a degree. Typical of the company to want to check off boxes rather than actually work toward solutions.
Ford does require a bachelors degree for employment. An LL6 in the department wanted to convert two contractors to employees. HR and leadership said no as they had only high school degrees. To “stick-it to the man” the LL6 proceeded to convert all the other contractors to employees even though they were not people he thought should be hired. Ford ended up with 9 poor quality employees that now are milking the system until they are given a big enough incentive to leave. The LL6 himself retired on the job until he took a package @ 70.
The group to this day is populated with poor quality employees and relies on contractors to do the actual work. Magnificent legacy of an LL6 “sticking-it-to-the-man”, and LL5 looking the other way while he did so.
In my department contractors were brought in because none of the blue-stripes could or would do the work. Pre SRD the technical LL6 were spending one day a week training newbie GSRs and gave the older GSR8s a daily swift kick in the ru-p. Post SRD the newbie GSRs have floundered around with no direction and inadequate skills; older GSRs are ‘delegating work’ to contractors. The contractors were too busy to train newbies, and why would they train their replacements? Now the contractors are gone, who will do the work? Established habits of GSRs are hard to break.
To the poster thinking all contractors should convert to blue-stripe. Not all contractors want to deal with Ford politics; not all contractors have a 4 yr degree.
Not to worry, like clockwork another hiring spree will occur
Other agencies affected as well besides TEK systems. I was laid off on Friday with several other team members. All of us had work and lots to do. So now we leave all of our projects undone and for other team members to pick up. There is a hiring freeze in my department. They could not replace those who voluntarily left so there is no ability to convert to full time. It's not always the agency's fault.
@1wpk: Pushing out the "old dinosaurs" who knew how to engineer, validate, and launch vehicles and replacing them with clueless newbs is what put Ford in its current position of having the most recalls, worst quality, and bumpiest launches in the industry. I hope that Ford will learn from the Smart Redesign and keep the smart people on the payroll regardless of their age in the next salaried staff reduction.
Purchase Service employees will be let go soon. There are thousands of purchase service employees who are getting paid high salary for doing high school or intern level work. These employees has been under low profile and HR has no head count information, so they have been milking the company money like there is no tomorrow. Ford LL6 has been paying them with project money, so no one knows they exist.
The ship is sinking and Ford needs to offload as many none value added employees asap. Ford can let go 10% of the workforce and the company will operate just fine. This is one of the 10 things that will help the company with cost reduction and become more profitable again. Those with over 27 years with the company should be let go with 6 months pay, this will reduce pension cost and provide opportunity to bring in new talent. Old dinasaurs must retire.
I’m gonna take it as a leap that we really don’t need contractors if we want to win in this competitive environment. Contract houses have made it impossible to convert people and contract workers that don’t convert tend to get complacent until they find a direct hire job elsewhere. TEK Systems is one of the worst for this not allowing Ford people to take any direct positions because they want to milk Ford. Hopefully we got wise and will stop relying on hoards of mediocre people at the expense of higher paid better direct hires. We need to start relying on quality people over high quantity of people.
Just because the signs were there to see doesn't mean they were noticed or that it clicked. No worries though, this will be sweeping across the US and globe so plenty of time to notice on the next one.
I also heard that this was pretty wide expansive in scope although essentially only agency heads from what I've gathered so far. If Ford no longer appears to care for it's relationship with various contracting houses I'd take that as a sign that the top levels have committed to relocation nearly all of the operations to another locale where there are different players, or that the company is leaning it's overhead before shopping itself out to "certain competitors" (IE VW).
If Ford did not give the contracting house a heads up that is a bad sign. Ford has in the past given the contracting house advance warning, because after all Ford relied on the contracting houses to recruit and provide a goodly portion of the work force. If that practice has stopped then it means Ford no longer cares about its relationship with the contracting house. So if this is true you have to ask yourself why that is? Could be incompetence and hubris on Ford side; could be Ford has a plan B (outsourcing / offshoring). Could be that particular contracting house is being removed from preferred vendor list. Too many unknowns.
Blindsided? C'mon. Stock price down 48% YTD. No change from a SHINY OBJECT/EV sales strategy? No significant change in wheelhouse Executives. Think of a layoff as a blessing if you have TALENT and INITIATIVE. Those that can leave Ford can. Those who are inept, have no choice but to remain. While managing Ford takes a titanic effort, it does not mean there have to be "Titanic" results. Pun intended! No, it's not Russia, Russia, Russia.