Lots of IT people cut in Columbus
2636 replies (most recent on top)
I don’t know why you all keep suggesting AEP is trying to break up, when the company has its best growth prospects in its entire history. This is a time to be investing.
I've never seen our experienced employees treated like they were toddlers before now. We were ALWAYS 'accountable'. The people I work with are some of the hardest-working humans I've ever met.
Whatever AEP got itself into with this out-of-touch, repressed, biased old man, I hope there is a way out for those who can find one. He acts like he's the smartest person on Earth. Nevermind his math doesn't work, and history tells us a man who knows everything can't learn.
And if ICP gets reduced, the one time payment means nothing. You are still at a net loss and in the office 5 days a week.
AEP will continue to be a fresh out training ground. Come get your first three years and then bail for 30% more and hybrid/remote.
Transmission planning offering some big sign-on bonuses now.
$5000 for an associate level engineer.
$20,000 for a grade 9.
I'm almost convinced the aim is to strip AEP for parts and sell the Opcos and Transmission off to multiple third parties. Why re-do Transmission this way, one reason is to make it more attractive for a buyer. Someone said Bill is a stop gap and the likelihood of a merger between AEP and FE is low because of the state of Ohio and geographic concentration. Well who said AEP Ohio had to go to FE, they could just more easily go to AES or Duke, or he-l even someone who doesn't border AEP territory. FE could easily take I&M, they border each other, and the state of Ohio doesn't get a say. This goes for all Opcos. Keep in mind we are dealing with Carl Icahn and associates, who knows what an 89 year old man's dying dreams are or whether they've fully taken into account the difficulty of liquidating AEP.
So apparently some teams had a very suspicious meeting today for most transmission and distribution. What went down? Things sound off
Americans Exploited for Profit, when did the name and purpose of our company change?
I had a good laugh when Bill sat up there at the front of the room and acted almost outraged at the idea that employees don't trust his intentions and the rumors that he doesn't want us to get ICPs.
Yes Bill, people tend to react negatively when you make completely unnecessary decisions that make their lives worse.
Carry a little precious specie in your pocket and when leadership walks past jingle it and watch them begin to salivate and tremble like a he---n addict looking for his next fix. Listen closely you can hear them murmuring Myyyy Preciousss, Myyyy Preciousss as they gnaw on their raw fish. Stories of old tell the eternal truth about pure evil.
Two months ago Bildo held a top 100 leadership meeting where he told everyone we were failing and didn't deserve a bonus. Now he wants us to believe he went to bat for us to make it easier to accomplish and he wants us all to receive a 200% bonus. Bildo got jokes!
One small Bildo fehr man, one giant Bildo fehr mankind
Going forward Bill Fehrman will be known as Bildo on this message board. Why? because it rhymes with di--o and he is an Icahn-ic Tool!
Also remember how Bill only gave a few months to watch our progress as Hybrid/remote. When he first came in he warned how it will go. Not even three weeks later he took all that back and sent that email, gave the new update we are returning and said he saw no progress in us. How are you going to judge with a few weeks and months in as CEO!? With all your organizating and traveling, no one's is going to progress because we are all stressed with changes!
ICP - Bill is feeling the pressure as he had to bring it up for discussion on the mandatory call yesterday. The problem is he was less than transparent about it. In fact, he outright lied. In 2024 the EPS guidance was $5.58 to $5.68 with a midpoint of $5.63. In 2024 that midpoint target allowed the employee to achieve a 100% ICP target. Actual EPS was $5.62. AEP missed the midpoint target hence our company ICP actual was somewhere around 93%. This was a 7% growth target. Fact - read it here https://www.aep.com/news/stories/view/10018/
2025 EPS target - AEP announces new long-term growth rate of 6% to 8% based off of 2025 operating earnings guidance of $5.75 to $5.95 per share. This places the 2025 midpoint for EPS at $5.85. Bill tried to tell you yesterday that they lowered the target to 3.9% so that all employees could get bonuses. Do you really think that AEP went to the street and told investors that we want our employees to get bonuses so we are lowering our guidance!!!! All lies, smoke and mirrors. Fact - read it here https://www.aep.com/news/stories/view/10018/ Fact - AEP 2024 EPS midpoint $5.62. Fact - AEP 2025 EPS midpoint is $5.85. Fact - $5.85 is bigger than $5.63. Fact - AEP DID NOT achieve target EPS midpoint in 2024. Fact - for employees to achieve a 50% ICP bonus payout for 2025 AEP will have to achieve the EPS midpoint of $5.85 which is $0.22 higher than the 2024 miss. Fact - for performing better you will achieve less ICP payout, working harder for less money. Fact - if AEP does not achieve the EPS midpoint there is zero employee bonus payout for 2025. Fact - this was clearly laid out in Bill's employee webcast on 2/13/25 on the slide titled "ICP Has To Be Earned."
AEP employees, you have taken a pay cut in bonus. You have taken a pay cut with RTO. You have taken a pay cut with inflation versus the measly merit increase you will receive in April.
But everything will be great going forward. We are going to hire 250 new employees!!! Unfortunately, we have nowhere to put them due to RTO. But we're working on that, a.k.a we have no plan. Fact - today candidates for open positions are turning down offers due to a poor compensation package. Fact - employees are leaving for better pay and hybrid/full remote opportunities. Bill was asked about compensation and what AEP is doing to keep current employees as well as attract new talent. Did you see how quickly he threw that hot potato over to the HR guy and Bob in the mandatory meeting? Fact - it's not that hard to adjust pay scales! Fact - there is no plan to adjust compensation! Remember, everything is about creating shareholder value and bonuses and pay increases don’t accomplish that!
Employees, you must educate yourself on the FACTs because you will not get them from Bill Ferman.
With all the turmoil this place has had, employees that have stayed through all of this mess should be trusted and rewarded. An earlier comment said more tenured employees should have remote/hybrid privileges. That sounds like a winning idea to me.
I’ve been doing my job for over a decade and I certainly don’t need more time at the dump that is 1RP to do it well. And none of my team does work that is collaborative in nature. I had this job down to a science after probably 2-3 years. I currently have no incentive to stick through more reorgs and constant change for the worse, and will leave asap to avoid RTO.
Agree with that last comment. They knew what they were getting when they hired her.
The board vets these candidates. They knew exactly what Therace was about when she was hired. Don’t just put all the blame on her. Blame Akins, the board, and Julie for hiring and keeping her.
The problem is, will they just go find a better outsourcer? Someone who can manage their budget better and keep IT costs low?
And thru the town the joyous news was spread
Ding-do-g, the witch is dead! Which old witch? The wicked witch
Ding-do-g, the wicked witch is dead
Wake up, you sleepy head, rub your eyes, get out of bed
Wake up, the wicked witch is dead!
I cannot stop smiling. Therace is leaving.
Next - all the people she brought in with her.
Bill seems to understand the outsourcing nightmare.
I’ve wondered if Theresa came in with a directive from the board and previous CEOs to do this level of cutting? Or if she came in with this plan and sold it really well and previous CEOs were just too unaware of what it was going to end up doing IT org?
Anyone wanna weigh in on that?
I for one am glad to see Therace gone. All of IT will feel the same I'm sure. She was an utter nightmare and it was long over due. The cronies should be next. They assisted in making this mess.
The jury is still out on whether Bill will turn this around, but yesterday was an excellent step in the right direction. And it was a shot across the Minnesota nepotism bunch.
As I start my day today at AEP - this is perhaps the best start to the day I've had in years. Many will agree I'm sure.
For now, thumbs up Bill. You earned a lot of love yesterday. Let's just keep it going in the right direction.
As for Therace. Karma is a B!%/&
Nearly 5 years to the day that Garth/Therace/Target started. Family time? My *ss! Hundreds of people cheering the news. What kind of life she has. Wreck a place. Be hated. Move on.
Risch is like the aliens who invade Earth in Independence Day. Traversing the galaxy destroying one planet at a time ( or companies I should say like Target and AEP) su-king resources from them leaving each in ruin. I wonder what her and her reptilian lackies are targeting next?
Well Bill some of us graduated college during the pandemic with just a laptop. A screen share and phone was all I needed. I also was hired and trained perfectly fine during the remote and hybrid transitions! Good luck with all these changes and making your loyal and hard working employees miserable in those small cubicles. Alot of those loyal workers are leaving or about to
Glad to see they scissored Therace off the leadership page.
Bill is a stop gap. Bob is interim. Hahaha. How about some more changes once the long term people step in? Fun stuff!
There’s no way the Ohio state commission would wave through a merger between FE and AEP. Way too much concentration .
What AEP is doing is simple: getting O&M (salaries) under control, fixing the balance sheet (pay down debt, soon to issue more equity), and win regulatory outcomes.
Bill is a stop gap to get these handled.
That search for external candidates for Transmission President sends a terrible message from a Transmission focused utility. It’s showing all the mid-level engineers and managers that there is a ceiling, and they’d best look elsewhere to advance.
Seems Carl Icahn had a role similar with the board of FirstEnergy for a couple years and getting them their current CEO shortly before getting his people on the Board of AEP in early 2024. Icahn divested and gave up his FirstEnergy board seats in December 2023. Maybe coincidence the way things have happened or maybe not
Saw on AEPNow that Therace is leaving the company. Is IT going back to the office? When and where?
THANK YOU to all who post good information here and maybe most especially for the comedic relief. Hearing the perspectives of others, both similar and different than mine, is helping me to cope with the non-stop changes...those that make sense and the many, many that do not. Sending support and good wishes to all.
Conspiracy Theory: Maybe the goal is to do some sort of merger of AEP and FirstEnergy. There are a lot of former AEP people at FE in Executive roles now, including the CEO. They are doing the same things Bill is doing if you look at FE on Glassdoor. Forced RTO, layoffs etc... There was this post from few weeks ago that stated "Many divisions and locations to be sold and many departments left to be eliminated or outsourced." Maybe it's nothing and all coincidence
Save money? Get rid of private flights and take home vehicles.
Never was it made more clear that someone has no idea what it's like to work in IT, especially now that we've been remote for so long as they continued whittling down staffing and have us just working like dogs, on before 7, often working until late into the night. (If that's not what's happening in your area, you're quite lucky.) Never have I had to struggle to hold a cell phone and balance a laptop working remote. Also, we're spread out across all our territories. Let's go to offices so we can dial in to calls all day?
“You don’t learn sitting at home” someone hates their home life.
Looks like all the org changes from the past year or so (separating t and d standards and combining all of project mgmt, const mgmt, siting, row etc under Juliet are being undone) shane lies is losing a significant amount of headcount from his org to transmission
“We need to hire hundreds of engineers” keep the hybrid work model and it won’t be so hard to keep the ones already here!
Get ready for even more metrics to track all your compliance failures! No room for human error. And the new graduate hires will be 100% perfect with no one to train them!
Antonio has been liquidated.
Bob "The Enforcer" Bradish named interim president of transmission.
Was a transmission President announced?
“You don’t learn sitting at home” - Bill Fehrman
Oh no wait until this guy hears about how half of us got our college degrees.