Clowns. Direction lost. more layoffs. poison culture. the yearly survey that doesn't mean a thing.
I was laid off unexpecting Oct 3, nice end of day email from director saying be in a quite place - business. After working the previous night until 2 AM on another engineer firewall work. Just to join a teams call at 930 with HR. After 20 + years just to tell me position eliminated. I would be paid until end of Oct and get a severance and cobra pay. Total Shock, fear and stress set in quickly that morning. To find out my team but 3 people were laid off with no notice. We were busy so very surprising.
After a few days I found it a blessing. A company that strides to do more with less. Pile up the workload, work days nights, early morning and global on-call. Assign you other engineer jobs with no pay, no training. The only thing I wish I did different take FTO more often then I did, but I cared about the customers the clients and wanted to help with projects. Everything TU doesn't stand for today.
I was lucky enough to find a new job with energy company two months after my layoff. Only because I was looking for a new job due to burnout. Lucky enough I got to bank my entire severance and cobra pay - 33 weeks plus that low annual bonus in 2024.
Found out I was under paid, TU with those 2% annual raises if you were lucky. Some of you don't get anything.
Two months, found a better job better salary, no after hour changes, no on-call, got a 15% bonus this year. Was always use to 3% at TU and thought that was good. Got a 5%
Opened a new Roth IRA, High Yield savings, paid off debt and bought into a DVC with that total severance package.
So for those who been with the company and are over 40, you will get extra pay for age discrimination.