How do they layoff older guys? They just cannot say you are fired because you are old or because you have a high pay grade
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All Intel has perfected the firing.. with no justification nor escalation possible give your employee SL4 and he will be fired in the next cycle. BK said as much in the employee webcast last week. SL4 is a sign of low performance and will will continue these actions in the future. It was made very clear to all. So no PIP, CAP, years of agony of low pay... you don't like someone, give them a SL4 and bye bye..
This is redux of the summer 2015 layoffs, when Intel said the layoffs were merit-based, by using the stock levels, and it just happened to be a coincidence that the ages of the laid off workers skewed older (google it, there's a ton of data on this). BUT, by the EEOC this alone is not illegal (since Intel is claiming another reason for the layoffs instead of age). What MIGHT be illegal, however, is the tendency for older workers to get lower stock levels (despite being successful) in the first place. Somebody needs to pull the data and compare the age breakdown of Successful + L4/L5 stock. If that is a skewed distribution, then it certainly sounds like clear-cut age discrimination.
Honeywell follows a similar method as described for QCOM although to a higher degree of "staged" reviews, no raises for years, no stock, plus the eternal chase of work and the famous "charge number" to charge your working hours. In most cases you have to search for work on your own inside the company, which is not an easy task given that your overhead can be several hundred thousand $$.
Purely terror on a daily basis, not knowing if you will have a job next week, not next year as I read for Intel. On top of this the best jobs, the ones demanding skills and advanced degrees, which represent more than 60% of all advertised jobs are posted for India, Czech rep., etc., leaving the trivial ones for the US. Left and feel much happier. It looks like Intel is much more generous, at least you don't leave broke. In any case the engineering profession is in a horrible state and something must happen with our ...."professional organizations", which do not even discuss the subject.....
I don't know how that works in Intel, but this is how Qualcomm has been getting rid of its older employees:
One method to accomplish this is to "to work the employee out". They give the employee an assignment that is impossible to complete and make him work hard and fruitlessly until the he gets exhausted and leaves on his own. If this method doesn't work, then they "PIP him out". This is accomplished by artificially lowering his performance grade and putting him on PIP (Performance Improvement Plan). Then they give him an assignment that is impossible to complete in the given time, or is outside of his area of specialization, or has dependency on another group to deliver. This gives HR the justification to terminate the employee and if it comes to a lawsuit, they would claim that it was performance-based and they gave the employee a chance to improve, but that he did not "perform". To PIP an employee out, they will first encourage him to either resign on his own or go on PIP. HR would threaten that if employee doesn’t agree to either choice, they would terminate him for insubordination. If he resigns, HR will be happy because they wouldn’t have to pay him any severance payment, he could not make any legal claim against Qualcomm, would not be eligible for unemployment benefits because he has "voluntarily resigned", and his health insurance will cease at the end of the month. If the employee decides to go on PIP, he gives them a chance to fabricate more bogus evidence against him in the manner which I described. The PIP paperwork includes a clause in which the employee signs away and waives his rights of any claims against the company if he "fails" the PIP and company fires him subsequently. Then they will terminate the employee at the end of PIP and will use the fabricated evidence in case he brings a lawsuit. HR will even be happier in this case because they wouldn’t have to pay the employee any severance payment, he could not make any legal claims, would not be eligible for unemployment benefits because he has been "fired", his health insurance will cease at the end of the month, and Qualcomm could extract another month of intense work from the doomed employee which thinks if he worked harder he would survive.
Yep.. SSL4/5 means lay this person off . We dont want you
I have a feeling that those who got SSL4 last year were already marked as 'layoff this person' if there is a layoff in the future.
First group, out of school after a PH.D would be 28-35 years old, plus 10+ years services, that would bring them to ~40+ years old with kids in middle or high school.
Second group with master degree came in with grade 5, around age 24, will get average 6 years to get grade 7, do again put them around 30+ when they were grade 7, 10+ years, they joined 40+ group. Their age+services years are slightly better.
3rd group, undergraduate came with grade 3, they might get 7 to 10 years to get to grade 7, which put them in 30-32 age group, after 10 years they are 40+ too, so target SSL4 is just like target people who are 40+ years old and most of them are close to their 75 rules but with a few years short for 75 retirement rules. Layoff those people will save more money later on. But it is really cold blooded action, because those people basically spent their most productive years in their life.
SSL4 applies to grade 7 and above. That's filter #1. Then the offers for retirement and VSP all have a scale of "length of service" that is very generous for people with >10 years of service. It's all skewed towards the older employees.