So the official strategy for staff retention is to decimate the compensation package as we all stay because of our colleagues.
Which they keep laying off.
106 replies (most recent on top)
This is complete disaster for Jacob. When 90% of the workforce is dejected, nothing good will come of this. This shows his naïveté as well as his ELT. What a clusterfluck he got himself into.
Beating the competition is only something ADs and above should care about anymore as Jacob and the ETL have made abundantly clear in the last week. I bet you’re one of them @qb+1jn4803np. Go su-k Jacob’s di-k some more.
Those reading this thread should clock these types of disruptive suggestions are exactly what a competitor would say to take advantage of this situation to undermine Illumina as the competition.
Inciting staff to have 2h lunch breaks, workdays at the beach, create more work and bureaucracy, wtaf.
Yes, stop working overtime, yes stop working weekends, yes take your regular PTO allowance before the bs of FTO came in, yes decline excessive meetings…
But to actually filibuster meetings, take excessive time off, increase red tape, stop collaborating with colleagues; what!?
If you really believe this is a good path forward for you personally, get a fu--ing grip you lazy fu--ing cu-t, go make your money showing your smooth brain and limp di-k on OF instead of wasting my time at work.
Don’t forget about FTO. Take more and enjoy your time off. You don’t need to be in a hurry to finish assignments or help colleagues getting RSU’s with their tasks. Politely decline and say you are very busy for some reason. Don’t waste your time coming to the office if you can help it. Others had good suggestions- block your calendar and enjoy the beautiful weather!
@nq+1jn4803np
It was said in the exact uncharitable context you're imagining.
Will the last person leaving Illumina turn out the lights?
why always cut the working level staff, and take good care of AD, SD, and VP... few years ago they just offered 200k USD to VP ... and now they still get AEG when everything sc--wed up!
Hi ex-illumina here. I keep seeing references to "sleeping on it". Can somebody explain the context? Sounds pretty crazy if they actually said that in the all-hands after telling you that you lost RSUs
They now have gone and made AD or above the enemy of their colleagues.
They’ve gone and created resentment within the ranks. It is so fu--ing stupid.
It is one thing to get across the board pay cut, with a sense of camaraderie, quite another to only cut pay of those who need it the most.
Can’t help thinking ELT is right sizing the company for a sale rather than try to run a business.
Enjoy your RSU and STFU
The "Simple Sabotage Field Manual" was a guide created by the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II to help ordinary people in enemy-controlled territories subtly undermine organizations and institutions through low-effort, low-risk disruption. The tactics described are useful for employees who want to demonstrate the impact of a disengaged workforce when management removes equity incentives.
Key Points & Tactics from the Manual That Apply to Workplace Disengagement
- Slow Down Work and Reduce Productivity
Follow every rule and policy to the letter, even if it slows things down.
Ask unnecessary questions and demand written confirmations before proceeding.
Hold excessive meetings and prolong discussions without reaching a conclusion.
Introduce minor inefficiencies that accumulate over time (e.g., using slower processes, delaying approvals).
- Increase Bureaucracy and Procedural Bottlenecks
Insist on redundant paperwork and additional approvals before taking action.
Request clarifications for even the most minor details.
Argue over small points in official documentation and policy interpretation.
Delay decisions by endlessly deferring to higher-ups or committees.
- Reduce Communication and Coordination
Withhold useful information unless specifically asked.
Pass along messages incorrectly or with ambiguity to cause confusion.
Schedule meetings at inconvenient times and drag them out.
Avoid taking initiative—wait for explicit instructions before acting.
- Undermine Internal Systems and Workflows
Misfile important documents or subtly mislabel data to create small but cascading problems.
Overcomplicate simple tasks by suggesting "more thorough" approaches.
Introduce minor but frequent errors that require rework, delaying progress.
- Decrease Morale and Make Work More Frustrating for Management
Express skepticism about new initiatives, making them seem risky or ineffective.
Subtly highlight how previous company decisions have led to current problems.
Make it clear that since there’s no ownership stake anymore, there’s no reason to go above and beyond.
Take longer breaks and use every entitlement to the fullest (e.g., PTO, sick days, coffee breaks).
Strategic Framing: Making the Message Clear
Rather than outright rebellion, these methods illustrate the natural consequences of removing equity incentives:
No ownership = no motivation to optimize.
Employees will do exactly what’s required and nothing more.
Without alignment of interests, inefficiencies and bureaucratic drag increase naturally.
This isn’t necessarily about harming the company but about demonstrating, through passive resistance, what happens when employees lose their reason to invest extra effort. The goal is to make management reconsider how they structure incentives before productivity degradation becomes a long-term problem.
I showed my teammates this thread and we've started planning our daily 2 hour lunches and weekly trips to la jolla shores.
We're definitely gonna sleep on it though
Block your calendar and go out for coffee or go to the gym. Relax and go to the beach. Read a book or listen to a podcast. You don’t need to work so hard anymore. It doesn’t lead to anything. If anyone asks why your calendar is blocked, say it’s to focus without interruptions.
They want to do quiet layoffs with these moves to avoid paying out severance and unemployment so I’m going to quiet quit in response. If they don’t want me to have any equity stake in the company then I’m determined to show them what that really looks like when I stop giving a fu-k about the success of the company.
@k2+1jn4803np I hate the Musk administration with a passion but even I have to admit it’s not their fault for our current positioning. It started with FdS and has just snowballed from there. At least with FdS (not including Susan because she couldn’t guide a blind person through a 10 foot gap in a wall) it felt like there was a connection to the Illumina culture that started under Flatley. This admin doesn’t give two craps about the employees. Just making us window dressing for the imminent buyout.
My advice to anyone below AD- don’t work hard. Tell your boss you don’t have bandwidth. Get only the essentials done and nothing more. Put the pressure on AD and above. I don’t need to work hard so they can secure their RSU’s. Look at potential jobs and brush up on your CV. Use Illumina’s educational policy to get more education, on their dime. Take care of yourself. Decline meetings and block your calendar.
It’s not the fault of the administration. Jacob, being paid millions of dollars, and his minions need to manage market changes. He was never qualified to begin with. Most of his strategy is catering to the research market. That’s not where things are lucrative.
Just remember we wouldn’t have to make this decision if it wasn’t for the current US administration aka Donald Trump and his minions. He deserves the blame more than illumina leadership for where we are. Let’s not forget that!
Jacob doesn’t know what the is doing and he hires all his friends who equally do not know what they are doing. Bring back Flatley and MVO
@gs+1jn4803np What a sh-t comment. Do you even work for illumina? If you did, you would know most illumina employees care about the company and, more importantly, the scientific community that we support. What most are pi---d about is the massive mismanagement by leadership for the last five years that eroded the ability to trust that they’re making the right decisions for the future of the company.
Not surprising seeing how poorly run the company is. What blows my mind is how many employees simply don’t believe in what the company does and its mission.
Outside of Solexa, Illumina history of acquisition success is shockingly bad. You just scratched the surface.
I’m astounded by the sheer hubris of Illumina’s senior leadership team when it comes to their M&A strategy. Aside from Verinata (NIPT), can anyone name an acquisition that has truly delivered meaningful value? Consider BlueGnome, Advance Liquid Logic, Genologics, Helix, and Grail—exited for $150M only to be reacquired four years later for a staggering $7B. Since Flatley’s departure, leadership has been dominated by executives who seem more like aspirational tech entrepreneurs than seasoned operators with the expertise to scale a mid-cap company effectively.
Don’t believe their lies about paying top salaries in the industry! I left in 2019 and immediately got 20% at another company more for the same title and I wasn’t even top of band. I still get illumina recruiters reaching out to me from time to time and the pay is pathetic. I get paid more as a staff level elsewhere than what they’re offering ADs at illumina. Even Bio Rad pays more than illumina, let that sink in.
Typical MNC behaviour. When something goes wrong, fire the bottom people and keep the top because they supposedly did all the work and make all the great decisions that bring ILMN down from 500+ to <100
Seems clear to me, one class is viewed as expendable and in the current business and economic climate a low flight risk, and the other is not. So they are acting accordingly.
AEG was 20-30% on top of my base pay throughout various roles at illumina.
Old CEO made mistakes about Grail, but he took care of employees. This one is the bad. Very bad.
If they want to do 20% eligible for AEG how about 20% at each level including ELT/VP. They said it was unique contribution compared to peers after all. Spread the pain if the pain is necessary.
I loved getting lectured by Ms. Piggy that compensation doesn’t matter.
I'm relatively new at ILMN. Can someone comment on how big of a pay cut the loss of the equity grants represents? What is a typical size of a grant relative to base pay?
I’m absolutely disgusted by this so-called leadership and HR. They have no morals—shamelessly claiming our salary is still top of the market without any evidence, while telling us compensation doesn’t matter with greed in their eyes. We get nothing, while upper management secures their stock at these low prices, likely increasing their share even more. And who’s responsible for this mess? Who caused the Grail disaster and its billion-dollar loss? Who sold us a roadmap with zero innovation? Not us. The culture is toxic, the pay is awful, and innovation is nonexistent. This place is a complete disaster—I need to get out of this corporate nightmare.
“Guys this is a huge saving equivalent to 2x the 2023 RIF. "If Illumina were to reduce its stock-based compensation expenses from 8.6% to 2.5% of its annual revenue, the annual savings would be approximately $262.3 million…”
if they would have reduced stock based compensation to 0%, so nobody, including ELT, gets sh-t, nobody would be as pi---d as they are now. Nobody getting sh-t would signal the message of “we’re all in this together” but instead the 2.5% screams “I got mine, fu-k the rest of ya”
I've been on the fence about leaving for awhile now. They have an inability to make decisions stick and the constant layoffs are getting old. Now, if I leave within the year, at least I won't miss the 0 AEG (first 1/4 vests next year anyway)!
Morale is down. The culture su-ks. Many are aggressively looking to get out. ILMN is not what it used to be. I'm tired of the company meetings that gloss over everything, seems disingenuous. I'm tired of Corporate GREED. We are merely trying to survive in this economy (that Trump is turning upside down by the way) and this is the thanks we get? Sick to my stomach.
I really enjoyed the work we all do here but this is getting to be too much. They keep ladling out steaming bowls of vision like it's some kind of nutritious gruel, expecting us to subsist on it indefinitely. But vision doesn’t replace slashed compensation, and last I checked, enthusiasm doesn’t pay the bills. Being expected to work weekends while compensation shrinks and growth opportunities disappear just isn’t sustainable
Senior Management is so effing disconnected from the reality. Yes, I do like my co-workers, but we all have bills to pay. It is bullsh-t, when these folks with million dollar salary say "we are here for the work, pay is just secondary".
Let’s not forget, this cut in stock grants follows several years of limiting promotion cycles. We are allocated certain numbers of available promotions per department. That number has dwindled to the point that we rarely see opportunity to promote anyone. AND we are now hiring people at much lower salaries vs a few years ago. Illumina is attracting bottom of the barrel hires at this point - those desperate enough to accept low base pay, little opportunity for upward movement, and dwindling chances of stock grants. Our team is losing people quarterly because we can’t compensate folks, despite them absorbing 3+ roles each. They’re expected to work late and weekends for lower pay. We have a few high performers left, but ALL are looking for a way out. Meanwhile, we’re told that employees will stay for the culture and not pay…..yeah ok, your toxic culture can eat my @$$
Taking away AEGs are a great way to disconnect employees from caring about the bottom line and the stock price. This was a 20% pay decrease in case you were wondering. This change is permanent. It would have been smarter to taper this over time.
Why hasn’t anyone mentioned that most of the executives, including the two Js, sold stocks right before the Roche announcement?