Let’s hear those stories of freedom and vacation plans.
The kinds of stories only a free person knows.
15 replies (most recent on top)
@Dnyh+1t7TO7lZ People like you are why companies like Cigna continue to get away with the terrible things you described. You are a good person and they took advantage of you. You worked on PTO meaning Cigna stole from you. As long as they have people like you who will work the Jo. Of more than one person, they won’t ever hire enough people to get the jobs done. Quiet quitting is a bad term for an important and good thing. It is doing exactly what you were hired to do for the amount of time you are hired and paid to do it…no donating extra time to a company that can afford more employees. You have been brainwashed into think that employment isn’t a transactional relationship and that being overworked and mistreated is a virtue. It is not. It is exploitation. Next company you work for…don’t let them cheat you. Draw boundaries. Do a good job, but nothing more.
I don't see many replies from others that were actually laid off, so I'll chime in with my experience. I would not have chosen to leave, but in retrospect, am glad that I was laid off and received severance, cobra, etc. The atmosphere has not been great lately, and I almost felt like they were trying to get people to quit.
I put a high value on personal responsibility, especially for myself, so I am not one to 'quiet quit', or to choose 'job security' over assisting coworkers. This may seem naive of me, but it is a conscious choice. I believe that if everyone behaved this way, the world would be a better place, and though I can't force others to take responsibility like this, I can at least be an example of that for others.
Unfortunately, because others choose to behave more selfishly, they are going to take advantage of people like me, intentionally or not. That is OK. I just have to make sure I am in a position where I can afford to be resilient to this. E.G., losing $18k in expected bonus is less expensive than the cost of a contemptuous mentality, and is a good way to learn where the company's weak links lie, and how to deal with that in the future.
Since a relatively recent change in management, it had become clear that moral behavior was not going to be as valued as it had been in the past, so it was time to move on anyway. There were some things about Cigna that I really liked, including frequent top-down communication, and management's openness to feedback. In fact, after my first few months as a contractor, I had several observations/suggestions/complaints which I raised; I wanted to give these while I still had an 'outsider' perspective. I fully expected that this would result in my contract being ended early, but that was OK, because I thought it could help the others that remained. Instead, it resulted in my being hired as an employee and being promoted to management, where I was empowered to make the changes I was suggesting, and though I preferred not to be in management, I took on the responsibility, respecting my management's ability to take what could have been viewed as negative feedback, and turn it into constructive feedback. The result was a high performing, highly satisfied team. I really . Needless to say, leaders like mine get promoted, but as long as they are representative of the company culture, and they were, then the new leaders are generally of comparable integrity. The problems arise when management from a different company are merged in and the cultures clash, causing some of the less competent members of management to go into 'Cover Your A-s (CYA)' mode and 'Sh-t Rolls Downhill (SRD)' mode. That's when 60/40 working managers like me become 95/5 firemen, with minimal time to maintain technical skills, so I stepped down from management. All was good for a bit, but the team's new new manager soon also decided to step down from management for similar reasons, leaving the team under the management of an already overworked manager with little time for the extra responsibility, leaving the team to deal with management issues that required approvals from a management chain that couldn't keep up, leaving needless blockers to progress at every step of every initiative. More hours (and therefore $$) than you can imagine were spent filling out paperwork, tracking approval progress, dealing with obvious delay tactics, soliciting escalations, re-applying for expired approval requests, etc. At one point, the official process for requesting approvals included immediate escalation because everyone was escalating, and anything not escalated would never make it to the front of the queue (see Micheal Scott's urgent memo system where 'Urgent D' indicates that you don't even have to worry about it). Suffice to say that very little was getting done even on the theoretically simplest of efforts.
I tried pointing out these issues, and suggesting solutions but the new management didn't have time to deal with constructive feedback; Most would probably have 'quiet quit' at that point, but I really did want to see success for the project and all those involved, so I ended up taking 'sick days' to give myself uninterrupted time to get some of the important technical work done that was suffering due to time spent on WebEx calls giving statuses on delayed/stalled/denied/resubmitted approvals. Another options was working through the night, but I found that I always ended up losing PTO days at the end of the year anyway, and the sleepless nights were beginning to take a toll. From January to June 20, 2024 alone, I took about a week of these working sick days.
Projects sometimes go through periods like this and then stabilize, but it became obvious that there was no plan to stabilize any of this, so I began searching for other opportunities, within Cigna. Luckily, Cigna decided to pull the rug out from underneath me and gave me 6 months severance, plus a month of non-working notice, as well as continuing their part of my health benefits contributions through Cobra. I have to say that I feel that this was generous of them and that this worked out well for me, at least so far. I plan to continue working because I enjoy the actual work, but even if I didn't, I have enough retirement savings to bring me through to age 96+ (according to most online calculators) .
I don't really have any hard feelings towards Cigna, I just feel like they have lost something that was really good for a while, at least in the Data and Engineering areas.
"Look for PIPs to become more common and for employees to be fired due to fow noncompliance."
Has HR and leadership actually been given a directive anyone knows of, or all speculation? Does seem like more people getting in trouble for nothing.
It appears that the company is shifting from layoffs with severance to forced attrition.
Look for PIPs to become more common and for employees to be fired due to fow noncompliance.
Overall it appears 6/20 was a smaller round, personally had not heard of anyone yet other than the higher ups leaving in the MA space. Anyone have insight on next date? Hoping we slow down on the layoffs as the busier half of the year rounds the corner.
Once again proves my point from a different thread that the rules don’t apply to managers, directors, and anyone band 5 or above. That is some seriously abusive toxic sh-t. “You should be grateful…” is how every toxic employer stars off their rebuttal to a legitimate question or grievance. Utter hypocrisy of “do as I say not as I do”. It is insulting to people who work retail. It is also very clear they have abandoned that Drive to 2025 goal. Can’t wait for the “Make you hurty for 2030” initiatives on the way. Fu-k this place straight to he-l.
Isn't one of the Drive to 2025 goals to be the employer of choice? Not just an employer of choice but THE employer of choice.
How has that been working out? What will they do to make up for lost ground?
They cited that Road to 2025 goal and then ade a very tone-deaf comment about how we are "fortunate to be somewhere that has a clear end goal in mind for all of our colleagues." They then made some very weird comment insinuating that we could be working retail, which is not only horrific for implying that "oh yeah nobody should ever work retail jobs because that is for plebes," but the amount of people who are well overqualified that work in these so-called "bad jobs" to just try and get by
What “wisdom” did they share?
We had a WebEx meeting where HR was there and our leads as well telling us we had to have cameras on, but of course manager, sups, and HR didn't have theirs on. When someone asked if they were going to turn theirs on our manager said "you should be honored HR is here giving us wisdom."
It is a quiet day today.
Technically, it is not that far off. #2 & #4 combined ...
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/slave
I’m sick of being scolded for not being a good enough slave
I agree with the heart of your post, but calling yourself a slave because of a paid job you can leave at will is a biggggg yikes, especially the day after Juneteenth
These organizations are so tone deaf to what is going on in our country and with our economy.
We are on the edge of a revolution. Let’s hope we can flip this thing upside down. I’m sick of being scolded for not being a good enough slave. Producing higher results than were ever expected from people who are my leaders.
It’s really rich coming from a supervisor in a non production role to tell their employee in a production role they’re not doing enough fast enough. The problem is those leaders were never held to the same standard and had more help. They can’t even explain or show you how to improve because they don’t know how and have never themselves done the work.
Huge disconnect.
I wasn’t laid off but I am on the final warning for violating FOW policy. But I was hired WAH and have an almost 90 minute 47 mile commute and 4 kids all in grade school or lower. I will be complying for now just so I don’t get fired but I will be leaving as soon as I can (my first interview is lined up for next week). Wish I could get laid off and collect severance in the meantime. Congrats to anyone who gets laid off and is in a situation where it won’t mess them up.