Thread regarding Dell Inc. layoffs

@a2 it really comes down to money the manager is just the messenger. The marginalized tenured employee who devoted much of his or her life to the company 15 years and up is just WFR'd because they can hire 2-3 college level workers what they were paying that ISR4 they don't care about core competency or talent because that is for AE to deal with.

@OP
Ive seen the following get cut:
1.) Highest job grade and base salary for role, regardless of age or experience.
2.) In rare cases, highest performers (because they cost in variable pay). This is the most ridiculous reason to let a person go.
3.) Difficult to manage. Those who bring complaints regularly, but don’t bring solutions.
4.) Those who just don’t care anymore. ‘Signed off’.

Dell definitely targets older workers and high earners every layoff. I was 54 and top of my pay grade. Put on PIP for some odd reason. Got through PIP but knew I'd be on the next big layoff. I was able to stay employed there until I retired- at 55 the following year - then rage quit. Worst company I ever worked for and was there 8 years too long. So that's the pattern you look for. Starts with a PIP. Funny I never got in trouble with HR in my 35 years working for other IT companies. They do and your performance or likeability is not the reason.

@pe You are an id--t. Just because someone is a top performer doesn't mean they are good for the team or easy to get along with...

Yeah sure, they might be the top performer but imagine if they were gone and replaced with someone easier to get along with? Guess what would happen? The ENTIRE team will do better!

@jp you have no ability to lead.
You are talking as if actions are in black and white.
People dont " simply" make other's life harder, yet perfome as #1.. this is classic team mgmt problem and rewarding good behavior issues.

Irony is - you claim to have experience of great leadership.. yet are ignorant of basic 101 principle of leadership.
You are claiming as if YOUR opinion/conclusion about a person's character is the absolute truth.. thereby painting a person as completely BAD or unemployable.
You forget that your conclusion is always biased by your own life (in) experiences.
So you , the mgmt - should be fired

@jz can’t PIP/fire someone if they have green KPIs.

@js Nobody gaf about KPI's.

@jf Dude, you couldn't be more wrong if you tried to be... Some employees/team members quite literally CAN and DO make YOUR job 10x harder than it needs to be. It is not a managers job to "fix" or "help" the difficult to work with employees, though. It's one thing if they are lacking in areas that can be improved upon or, coached to be better but, you can't "fix" a difficult person.

A few years ago we were needing an expert in a particular field for a massive migration, so we hired one. On paper/resume he fit the bill. He sounded great in the interview also so, we brought him on - as a contractor. Smart dude but far from "expert" and had the mindset of "my way or the highway." Could talk the talk all day long but couldn't walk the walk. NOBODY liked him. Even other teams would ask us "whats with this dude?"

He was the definition of a narcissist. Wouldn't take suggestions or advice, wouldn't listen to anybody and if anyone disagreed with him, he'd throw a fit. He refused to use email or Skype - back then we were on Skype - and always wanted to do a "quick call" but those were always 30+ minute calls lol. Everyone dreaded his "Quick call" message.

Problem was that there wasn't a GOOD reason to fire him so we were stuck. Well, xmas time comes around and he decided to take 2 weeks off, which was never approved... Contractors don't have the luxury to take time off like that - at least not 2 weeks anyways.. Manager took the opportunity and fired him because manager was notified of this 2 week "PTO" AS the dude was ON vacation already LOL. Realistically, it was xmas time and it was slow as heck but, manager was waiting for a time to fire him. We still joke about this clown 3 years later.

A few months later we hire a new contractor for the same job - his replacement - and he is not only an expert but is one of the most well liked people in the department. When he came in and looked at what the other dude did, he was shocked at how poorly done it was. He said that it looked like he just googled "how to's" on everything and went with it.

There was no "fixing" this dude. He was as narcissistic as you can get and he was not about to take direction from anybody.

When you are interviewed for a position, you are being evaluated on two things. The first being (obviously) that you are qualified and know wtf you are talking about... The other is one that a LOT of people don't realize though. You ARE being evaluated on your personality and if you would be a good fit for the team. As in, you will mesh well with them and get along with them. AKA likeability, basically.

You can be a top expert in xyz but if your personality isn't going to fit with the rest of the group, you might be passed up because nobody wants a fkn doosh who's hard to work with on their team...

@jr just like bellow. You can have green KPIs and still be bad at your job.

There can be people who are your #1 performer but make everyone around them miserable.
If they impact team output, then they still need to go. Regardless of age or tenure.

@jp There's been several top performers from my team that got layed off. The only way to make sense of it is to acknowledge that they were targeted for being over 50 years old and/or have been with the company for 15+ years.

@jf Sometimes the reason work is missing is because one or more members of the team are making everyone else's jobs harder. Oftentimes the solution is to remove problematic team members, much like cutting off a gangrenous limb to ensure a person survives instead of dying a slow death.

@jf Tell me you’ve never managed without telling me you’ve never managed.

Not everything is straight forward. Not everyone is good at working as a team.
Not everyone is fireable.

WFR’s for the large part have fixed long lasting issues. I’m yet to see a WFR choice that didn’t make sense.

@cj LOL!! Since when did Dell give two sh-ts about doing anything illegal, namely discrimination?

@cj That's why they sprinkle some younger folks in here and there to keep themselves from being sued. 3 years ago my group of teams in support was around 180 people ranging in age from 22 to 76, but most fell intobthe 45+ range. The 76 year old guy retired and a handful of folks left voluntarily, but most were either layed off, forced to take early retirements, or PIPed out. We're now at around 33 people and at 44 I am the oldest in the group by 9 years. I'll let anyone reading this draw their own conclusions.

I’m a manager who has previously had a WFR quota.

In my experience (other departments may be different), the instruction came down that we had to lose x2 heads. I had the freedom to choose who and why. Nothing to do with age, nothing to do with cost.

I’m very close to my team. I knew who was making the other team members lives harder. Those are who I chose.

Moral as a whole has improved since those choices in my case.

Not everyone is PIPable. People can be bad at their job and still hit KPIs.

In my experience talking to other managers, they use this as an opportunity to fix the team, not save cost.

@a2 - HR gave you criteria, as a manager, to target people over 50 for WFR? If that's the case, it's incredibly illegal.

ISR's are stackranked throughout the quarter/half with heavy weighting on low performance, years of service, and Dell initiatives.

theres no hard and set way of doing it which is why people get mixed answers on this.

when huge cuts take place in a dept - mgrs have less direct say.
when location strategy is a concern - mgrs have less direct say.
when its the normal cuts - mgrs have direct say in who is on the list.
if the mgr is also on a list or doesnt have enough respect for whatever reason - it may be an exception and they dont get direct say.

think about it a bit like pay review time. your mgr doesnt have total control of anything, but they do effectively rank their people and the people with the worst rank get put on the list.

My boss was very candid about it and said they basically give you a target salary number that you need to hit for your group. In other words, they don’t tell you who to fire, but you need to eliminate positions until you hit their number.

Layoffs are definitely not random, however my boss has very candidly told us that roughly 50% of his recommendations for who on his team should be let go ate ignored. Furthermore whoever is actually deciding who stays and who goes is relatively clueless. We recently lost a multi billion dollar government contract because dell axed almost everyone involved with it. Dell us also vulnerable to being fined for not living up to its end of the deal too.

I was a 11 year veteran of Dell via EMC. I was making over 150, 60 years old and didn't even use Dell's health insurance. I was probably cheaper than most. Others in my group made more than me, but were younger by a few years. I got the axe. I wasn't on the best terms with my manager that was laid off a few months before me so I think he got revenge post-mortum. He left a list behind.

Age discrimination is very real, but also usually those close to retirement are the first to put their hands up

Ex-Manager here.

Dell works the same way as any other company. When company decides they need to layoff xyz amount of people, they do research and then decide which orgs are least important and/or can be reduced. Typically it's a who is costing us the most money or, costing us money and doing the least.

Once they figure out which orgs need to be reduced, they inform HR and HR is then told to tell certain managers that their team is being "hit" and to provide names, but with a "checklist" type graph.

HR gives them some criteria sheet that states who should be most "eligble" for layoff. Age, Years of service, salary, performance, likeability. Manager then ranks each direct on a numbered scale and submits that.

Something similar to

AGE..... "above 50..." - Check
Years at Dell... "More than 15" - Check
Salary... "over 150" - Check
Performance.... "love em" hate em" - medium check
Guess who's getting let go on that list?
etc...

Layoffs are NOT random. Managers absolutly involved in whom is laid off. Yes, they will always say that they had "no say" in it but they do and did.