Thread regarding American Electric Power Co. Inc. layoffs

All we need is "Make AEP Great Again" hats and we should be good to go.

Bill says he is justified in cracking the whip on employees because most of our opcos rank low in customer satisfaction. But I think the primary reason customers dislike AEP is because of our rates, which have been increasing rapidly and are some of the highest in the country. Anyone I talk to who has AEP service says their power bill is outrageous, some of them say their power bill is more than their mortgage.
As employees we have nothing to do with the rates, in fact whenever customers interact with employees they have nothing but good things to say about them. All of their frustration seems to be stemming from decisions LEADERSHIP has made. Not employees.
So maybe the pain should be directed at LEADERSHIP, not us. If you want to make cuts maybe you can start with your own bloated salaries and the die-hard determination to give huge payouts to the sacred "shareholders."

I dont think Bill is to blame for him being elected CEO of a company. After 2020 AEPs culture became toxic. Leadership took the company and went idologically political. It does not matter what side you are own, the politics like that should not have entered the work force. They forgot the purpose of the company. I also believe the company became a company that promoted/hired for quotas instead of merit. This started the downslide if engagement and talent started leaving. If you dint think this is true, when was the comment section on AEP removed.
Bills has no ties to the making of AEP. His vision for the company is strictly shareholder value. There is no long term plans for AEPs success. Therefore, no value for employees. It is hard to walk away from a carrerr after almost 20 years. I did it and now I can look back and see how messed up AEP was. Bill is there because of the leadership failures before him. I would susspect most of those failures were because of the board of directors.

“AEP is struggling to hire”. You all need to be posting your experiences there at AEP on Glassdoor. I see funny posts out on LinkedIn about AEP needing engineers and other talent to come work for them ( so they have fresh new hires to add to the cesspool) so they have more employees to be treated like and called parasites. A post by Bob Carrol sounds so convincing that if I didn’t know what is going on there at AEP I would think it sounds like a great place and then apply for one of those jobs then waste valuable years of employment there and then one day be invited to a teams meeting with fellow hard working employees to then get the “ you are no longer an employee here at AEP. Get out of here you no good parasites.” Yea. I think I’ll pass AEP.

Geee thanks Bill and AEP executives... I was saving alot working from home now I'm scattering to find a decent place close to the offices recommended for me. There goes half my income due to moving expenses. As well as high apartment prices. Home rent is sky high now. Definitely keeping my options open for whoever offers me a better deal

AEP is struggling to hire. Nobody wants to work in a narrisisitic conservative clown circus where the ringmaster's ego will not fit under the big top and everybody works for peanuts.

Do I get to keep these cadillac monitors they gave me to work from home?
Dual screen!

To the poster indicating AEP has not sold properties...AEP has gotten out of major leases in the Columbus area since Covid. Also, unless something has changed, one entire building in New Albany has been leased to Intel and is also listed for sale. I think across our territory we have shed physical properties where we could. This is why some groups are still remote. I am not even convinced anyone did the analysis needed to ensure everyone they are demanding RTO can even fit in the space we have left in Columbus area. Feels like Bill makes decisions based on his 1960s "Mad Men" hey day where he says something and then it just happens. I'll be curious how they are setting up all the office spaces now since everyone working from home pretty much set up their own home offices. When we left to WFH we piled all the equipment (monitors, phones etc.) into conference rooms and most of it was disposed of in some way. Good luck everyone returning.

Bill here -
Today is Employee Appreciation Day. I just want to let you all know that, even though you haven't been performing up to par lately and you have forced me to make some tough decisions for your own good, AEP still appreciates you.

It may be the companies are getting a lot of pressure from city governments to get people back into the office to get that precious income tax. Columbus collects over 40% of it's tax collections on non-residents. They want their pound of flesh and I'll bet the company is getting a break somewhere. Follow the money. Democrats in City Hall are not very ethical, remember the red light kick backs to the city from the Az company that ran it

"To be ruled over, one must submit to authority. To be ruled over by virtue-less authority is to be subjugated to the whims of a tyrannical potentate."

Jesus it is a job. You are not chained to a machine punching tin hats 18 hours a day. Take your snowflake ar-e and find another job that makes you happier. I sware some of you ate paint chips as a kid.

Maybe they were at a meeting somewhere like this.
https://www.businessroundtable.org/
Business Roundtable is an association of more than 200 chief executive officers (CEOs) of America’s leading companies, representing every sector of the U.S. economy.

Or just chillin' at The Capital Club.

IMO...RTO is not about collaboration or shareholders or all the work to attain perfect power. Look at Chase and the other entities suddenly forcing this issue all at the same time. It's about taxes, stimulating the economies around the offices, etc. The power players decided it was time.

I know they have access to see where our laptops and phones are at, but maybe they could use it more to make sure remote workers are where they're supposed to be and not at the beach "working". I'm sure there are a small percentage of abusers out there, and if you're someone that is abusing the remote work, then you should be worried about RTO. The vast majority of remote workers don't want to lose it and go above and beyond, often giving the company 50+ hours a week. I know I eat lunch and continue to work like it's nothing. That's 5 extra hours a week right there.

It's honestly a good deal for both sides, so long as they have some way to verify remote workers are actually at home and not skipping out to go run errands and such. My feeling is that if RTO happens across the board, I will have next to zero motivation to put in any additional hours past 40.

I view WFH as a perk/benefit, and I consider it a part of my pay. Going back to the office 5 days a week, is a loss of said perk, and the company will lose a part of my efforts. Pretty simple really.

previous comment wrote:

I'd even be cool with them GPS tracking the company provided cell phone during work hours.

Please note that location information from your phone and from your PC is already collected by the company. That doesn't mean people at the company are looking at where you are constantly or ever, but they can if they want to or need to. One reason for this happening is when location alerts go off, for a login from outside the USA.

To be ruled over, one must submit to authority. To be ruled over by virtue-less authority is to be subjugated to the whims of a tyrannical potentate.

Let's be honest, a lot of us probably spend less time working in office, surrounded by our peers. The opportunity for random conversations on non-work related things are through the roof compared to at home. I'd be willing to agree to some kind of video check in system twice a day, or something. Maybe you call an automated Teams number and it takes a 5 second video of you in your home office. If the system detects a new/different background image or something it sends a notification to your boss and they look at it to see if it's suspicious. I'd even be cool with them GPS tracking the company provided cell phone during work hours. There can be additional steps taken, if they're worried about people skipping out on their job, before RTO was decided. Just seems like there is some underlying or other reason for it, because I bet slacking off happens just as much in office.

The inferior presume to be the superior and therefor are superior at being inferior.

Maybe we should start acting more like them and put our wants before theirs. Are they not supposed to be setting the example, not us?

The only reason Bill and the shareholders are still here is because of the moral and ethical constraints we impose upon ourselves.

I for one was hybrid from 2008 on, two days a week. Filled out the telecommuting form, had my boss and the director sign it. No Columbus income tax all those years. Covid hit and still only paid 3 days to Columbus while working from home until Ohio finally passed a law to cut the cities from collecting taxes they were not entitled to. Jump to 2025, basically back to my old schedule for now, come June will be back in the office 5 days a week. At some point after the dust settles, figure I'll be back to 3 or 4 days in the office and 1 day at home. Do I like it, not really but it is what it is. The job pays the bills and my wife is a stay at home Mom so we do have that going for us. We take a vacation every 3rd year and 1 stay vacation and another just camping for a week at a state park. You can still have a life after work, you just have to work at it. I will say I turn my phone off as soon as I get home and my family gets 100% from me till Sunday at 10 pm. Do what is best for you but I'm staying and will work around the cr-p they throw at us

Want to know why RTO is happening and is inevitable for IT? Not responding to emails and TEAMS chats while your calendar is empty and your status says “last seen several hours ago.” You think you’re sticking to the man, but you’re ultimately sticking it to yourself and your coworkers. But that will teach them. If you don’t like your job or don’t want to perform your job duties, move on.

There’s a bootlicker or two here who never heard of Future of Work, which existed BEFORE the pandemic. It’s amazing the lengths some will go to dismiss other people.

Remote and hybrid work did not start during the pandemic at AEP. We’ve got a couple folks who have effectively been brainwashed by the current leadership team,

I highly suspect quiet firing. I think they know who they want out. Those individuals will be targeted with increased work, etc. etc. All designed to frustrate the person to make them leave on their own. I’m not falling for it. They can fire me.

Some of you are just scared to leave or something. There are jobs out there. Maybe change fields if you have to. Just be open to new things. Su-k it up and enjoy the ride or gtfo good grief.

Sheer delusion seems to be animating many of Bill's decisions.
He says we have not delivered adequate shareholder return compared to the overall market, but this ignores the different nature of the companies being compared and the type of speculation that has been going on. We aren't some tech company generating wild returns based on a looming AI bubble. We're a public utility, which are commonly used as "defensive investments." All we do as a company is hold assets. That's it. The purpose of buying AEP stock has never been to get wild returns, it's to protect investments in times of uncertainly. Would Bill really compare AEP stock performance to something like Nvidia? The 10-15% we have been providing to investors YoY is very reasonable.
Then there is Bill's "perfect power" concept, where even a light flicker counts as a failure. Bill wants 100% reliability, literally perfect performance, not even a flicker. It's the kind of vision some boardroom egghead would dream up, completely detached from reality.
Unattainable goals aren't inspiring Bill, they're demoralizing. Especially when they are accompanied by decisions that most employees view as punitive.

Bill is a fcking tyrant. He doesn’t give two shts about us. It’s all about the bottom line and the shareholders. We are going back to 5 days in the office because he really could not care less about work life balance. He literally has no life outside of work. No hobbies. He thinks we are overpaid and under performing.

Work from home is now a relic of the past pandemic era. Live with this fact. Your whining is patent pomposity, wrapped in the "working families" woke talk. Many should remember that MUCH of your work can be accomplished by an AI computer. You need to come to work for no other reason than to defend your job. AEP Shareholder.

What I can tell you is Bill feels like the company is underperforming. He feels this way based on shareholder returns. He thinks we should be providing the shareholders with a much greater return on investment. Also, he thinks our ICP amounts were not warranted based on shareholder returns. He thinks the previous leaderships were basically just cruising on autopilot and giving us ICP payouts that we didn't deserve. That's basically why he wants us in office. He thinks we haven't performed and that our performance is somehow reflected in shareholder returns.

5 days a week just feels spiteful.
I thought 3 days a week was more than enough "collaboration time" in the office.

RTO has laid bare that everything is secondary to the traditional corporate structure. Here’s my perspective.

Let’s say Bill somehow actually believes people need to be together 5 days a week to do their best work (I know, it’s absurd. Hypothetically speaking.)

If that’s truly the case, AEP isn’t willing to sacrifice one red penny on their bottom line for the betterment of working families. They will not embrace a work model that is significantly better for families, employee safety and your bottom line, if it costs the company a dime on the hypothetical bottom line. It’s a very sobering thought. We’re being asked to sacrifice an improved life for ourselves and our families, literally…for a company. I think it’s immoral.

It’s very unfortunate for working parents of young kids. Wfh days don’t feel like a total rat race. Rush in the morning to drop the kids off, rush in the evening to get them fed and bathed before bed. It’s honestly very depressing to go back to that every day.

I know this is the wrong take but back in 2022, everyone should have seen this coming. AEP was sitting on a ton of empty office space. If they sold off a bunch of it I would have a different take but they didn't. I'm surprised we didn't go back in 2023. Do I wish I could work from home for the next 12-14 years, yes I do. Did I expect to be able to wfh for the rest of my career, nope. I'm lucky, all my kids are grown, I do feel for everyone with kids but I remember paying $500 a week for babysitting on an income far less than what I'm making now so I feel your pain but only so much because I already had to do it. Cut out junk you don't need, save where you can and you'll get by until you can move to a new company.

Every employee needs to rush out and sell everything they own to please Bill and the shareholders. Sad thing is they still wouldn't be satisfied till our families sold our internal organs and they got that money too. I guess he and the shareholders need to learn to lower their expectations like everyone else, who suffers their abominable existence. Your wants won't ki-l you, but your needs will.

I'm in an all-hands meeting right now about what executive leadership is talking about and let me tell you, the fact that you want to work remote is the last thing on their mind.
It's all about austerity and shareholder expectations and how our ICP payouts were too high and how the company is failing.

I'm sorry but did they not think how much us Hybrids and Remote workers are going to be spending on new location, rent, gas and baby sitting/school for the kids when they are off for this Summer!? Love Bill threw in the "no compensation" for going back . I guess there goes my ICP. I wish AEP gave us more than 5 months of saving and preparing to get ready and head back...

Saw the end of the tunnel closing right when Icahn's guys came on board. Luckily, I was able to get out with the severance. After 3 days in office being badge swap monitored/enforced, then now 5 days in office starting in June, then future ICP metrics getting harder, then 0.88 ICP factor which is one of the lowest in the last 10-13 yrs, and lastly all the top talent leaving for better jobs, I can say with certainty, leaving was the best decision. Praying for you all, and hoping that you will stumble across an even better opportunity. AEP is not the place it used to be. The changes and turnover are just getting started.

AEP leadership loss its way before Bill. I left the company last year before he was hired. I left because I did not feel AEP was doing right by there employees. I saw many young inexperienced workers get promoted over the experienced employees. Most the times jobs were not even posted, just an announcent that the son or daughter of a hire up will be the new leader. Yoy did not even have a chance. I thought it was just me, but many more have left since. In my opinion AEP was being mismanaged and this missmanagement caught the eye of certain investors like Ichan. AEP did not keep its promises to its employees and people promoted into leadership positions did or do nit have the experience. This has fallen back onto the customers. It was hard to leave and I went through some serious depression. However, i have increased my salary by 20K and been given the oppurtunities I was denied at AEP for decade and a half. Nothing is for certain in this world except change. There are oppurtunities out there you just have to be honest with yourswlf and realize AEP will never be the same again. Take a risk take a chance or stay. Its up to you.

Please take your psyops posts and go to an antifa page and post there. It has no bearing on the discussion here. Most people are interested in the possible effects that will hit the company in the short term, ie... RTO and ICP. Additional cuts are most likely done until we see real growth in GDP in our service area. Getting WVA to approve most of the rate request is the next battle. People are done with just blindly approving rate increases and every dollar is going to be a fight and I don't blame the states for the push back. I know my monthly bill has doubled in 5 years but my pay has not kept up. So to the person trying to do write his manifesto in posts, do it somewhere else.

Non-conformists threaten the establishment and the unearned, undeserved and vaingloriously comfortable lifestyle they have stolen for themselves through corruption, collusion and deception with a healthy dose of kissassery. The Founding Fathers empowered questioning and opposing abject and abominable immense wealth authoritarian tyranny. You can't defend your lavish lifestyle that customers and employees are forced to subsidize because you are incapable of honestly earning it for yourself.