Thread regarding Optum layoffs

What they need to do is take a sword and cut the grades above 28 deeply. They are so over stacked at the higher levels. No other companies have those massive headcount’s at those higher levels. I’m not sure why they don’t see it and the other thing is they hire all their friends. It’s just sickening how many people are related in departments. Clean up you acts because you know they don’t get let go in these leveling talks!

They have been laying people off monthly for almost a decade. This is not about expansion nor contraction. This is about greed. Plain and simple. One of those billions they made last quarter would give every employee in the company $2,272. Think about it.

Optum when through a huge expansionary phase over the past decade. They gobbled up clinics, encouraged people to go to their employed PCPs, boosted patient risk scores, to get higher MA premiums, and have really kinda maxed out the growth in their business model.

Now they're in a contractionary phase. All those companies they absorbed now create redundancies in clinicians, technical people, and layers of bureaucracy at grade 29+. So they're shrinking staff, combining regional leadership, etc. The MA Value-Based Insurance Design Model is ending at the end of 2025 due to "substantial costs were driven in part by increased risk score growth and Part D expenditures and that no viable policy modifications could address these excess costs." So the model that we all built to capture higher premium payments is going away.

Personally, I think the contractionary phase is something that we just have to go through. I don't think they're targeting specific demographics of people like single mothers as the OP mentioned, but everyone is just gonna feel it, and it su-ks. Every job I get as an older millennial has felt like I've been sold all the benefits of working for a company, only to find out that they're terminating those benefits and the job security the year after I arrive.

I just wish there were a way to let us know when the cuts would be finished, something like the NBA trade deadline. Every time a RIF ends I get a bit of reprieve, but there's been so many that I'm always on pins and needles these days. I'm a big fan of natural attrition. If we had a better idea of the master plan, some employees might seek alternatives that are better for them, but would also benefit their coworkers by saving an FTE that doesn't need to be RIF'd. I have this sneaking suspicion that the current government is gonna muck everything up so bad that by the time Optum/UHG does RIF me, the job market will be lousy, the labor market will be full, and I'll have two weeks of severance that won't cover COBRA until I get my next job.

Planning? Now that is absolutely hilarious. The only planning done is how to keep their jobs. They use stupid corporate speak and try to hype people up to do the exact same job just under new leadership. Then the new leader has no idea what your area actually does so they make up some headcount that has nothing to do with the actual work and amt of people to do it. The cycle happens yearly and sometimes even more frequent. There is no more "efficiency gained", there is simply dollars retained. The dollars stay at the top so they can maintain their positioning. They will say how hard it was to make the decision to eliminate jobs, but the truth is, the only job that needs eliminating is their own. Then when they realize the work isn't getting done, bring in the contractors as surely it is just a temporary thing. The contractors don't know the subject matter, so it will take time to ramp up, by that time the regular workers have likely just taken on the extra work. Then it will appear they have too much staff as the contractor has no work to do. Solution? Get rid of employee, they cost more...Other solution includes offshoring work. Replace contractor with offshore. Eventually the entire area is offshore. What remains is the top leadership...Eventually, the leadership is also replaced by nearshore or offshore.