Nothing says “ask me anything” like the “organizer has disabled new discussions, and responses” and chat has been turned off by the “organizer for everyone”
Sounds like the long-term plan is to completely get rid of professional services
25 replies (most recent on top)
@OP I'm in TechDev and transitioning. 2 Town Halls Tuesday a.m. - first to announce employees would be transitioning to "specialized" partners to streamline operation models. It lasted 8 minutes, no questions allowed and concluded by saying if you were transitioning, you would receive a second invite. That town hall was 2 hours later and another 8 minute meeting with no questions allowed that basically said we would have the same roles & responsibilities and salary and that Cognizant would reach out for an intro town hall Wednesday a.m. and then send the offer letter. Tuesday @ 6:30 FIS sent me a separation letter and I got an invite to the Cognizant Town Hall for Wed a.m. That had the President of the Americas, a SVP from Fintech, the head of HR and some other lady who maybe the HR lead for the transition. Again no questions allowed and not much useful information, it was all canned to be "welcome, glad your joining us, and other standard BS". Offer letter came at 9:45 and basically contained my new title, my salary (it was the same) and start date of 4/13, with a deadline to return if accepting by 3/31 at 5 pm. Other than that no new information. Then got an invite at 11:57 for a 12 noon meeting for a 45-minute offer and benefit session. Enough people missed it (I was 30 minutes late and only caught part of Q&A) they are scheduling another one for Monday. But half my group did not even receive an invite to it. It's like they are making it up as they go. They offered a link to ask Cognizant questions and setup a 1-on-1 with HR, but 30 hours on now and I've heard nothing back. I guess when you shock 1k+ employees and provide very few details there is going to be a lot of questions! I think they figured we would just accept the offer and then figure everything out later. My director did not know anything about it until Monday night. So very covert as well. And then follow that up with layoffs. Better not send out any employee satisfaction surveys for a while !
@an There is no group for those whose last day is June 30th as those individuals were told by their managers in a team meeting. Then the director or VP set up one on ones for yesterday afternoon or today to officially give them their notice. Those of us moving to Cognizant are keeping our FIS emails and were told to keep our email signature. Wouldn't want the banks we support knowing hundreds or thousands of people were laid off.
@an can you relay full name of distribution groups?
@ah I am in PS. I wasn’t given any options. I was told my last day would be 6/30/26 but could be extended depending on their business needs. I would receive my severance info within 24 hours and needed to stay for the duration to receive my severance benefits.
You can look at outlook details for distribution groups. As far as I have seen there are 6 groups and a couple of others with the 24.3 and 23.3 name in it. I have not seen the deletion group or know the name of it. But it is there somewhere, just named differently. There you can see the all.rb. which are badged and the all.rt which are staying. If anyone has the name for the terminations, that would be helpful to know.
I have been at FIS for a little bit and everyone I worked with has been kind, helpful, and focused on the supposed mission. based on the recent town halls I’ve thought things were going well. I’m totally shocked by the events of this past week. Today’s AMA certainly didn’t help.
@ad 1000 people were given 90 days, another 1000 people were moved to Cognizant with rumors there could be further reorgs. after 90 days.
@ad Everyone under my director was either moved to Cognizant (I'd guess 30%) or told June 30th is their last day at FIS and their last 90 or so days will be spent doing current projects and training offshore replacements.
@af I am so sorry. I can’t believe what this company has become over the last couple years.
What org were you in? What options were given to you if any?
Also completely avoided answering clearly the question on if this will happen again, which means it will!
@ad I was let go yesterday along with many others so, no, not everyone was given an opportunity to stay.
@ad Are you sure I know people who were
People were not let go yesterday. They were allowed to transition to a partner. Keeping same pay or less (Which do you think it was). There is a third group. The outright termination group. When that one hits, it will be the group that was let go.
@a7 Must have been different Q&A calls, my call had Randy Guy and Satvik Sharma talking about how it's good we offload to consulting companies to knowledge share to our vendors instead of to the org.
@a4 they basically said they’re going to retain us as long as we are profitable for them. Financials are their only concern they mentioned.
@a6 this was a meeting for those who did not get let go yesterday. Sounds like it was a bigger joke than the call that was held yesterday morning.
@a4
There's not a word worth recapping. It was 30 minutes of total nonsense. You didn't miss anything.
@a6 this was the Retained employee AMA. It was not at all encouraging.
@a6
That was for the survivors.
Led by the same Koushik guy, and a bunch of others
@OP What meeting was this? I only had an 830 ET cognizant introduction Town Hall which didn't say anything about taking questions.
And they even have the nerve to talk about respect and dignity! It makes me feel sick!
@OP unfortunately I had to miss. Anyone have a recap?
@a2 absolutely scripted AMA. What a farce.
@OP The whole thing was carefully stage managed. No hardball questions allowed.
@OP completely performative session. Perhaps the disabling any new discussion was driven by the tenor of the questions submitted? Such as, hey, a--holes, where are all of my colleagues who support and help us do our work every day to earn your huge bonuses?