I'm just wondering, because from where I'm standing whoever made the choice only used a list to pick from instead of making sure to include merit in decision making.
We lost some of our best people! Where's the logic in that? Why wouldn't you take into consideration somebody's years with the company, experience and knowledge? Why just randomly pick names?
@UmxI1YQ-4lmq Sorry if you were affected.
Don't worry @UmxI1YQ-4gzx, if you work hard and get enough merit raise, it can happen to you too. Enjoy your nice severance bonus in 3 years.
F5 had a lot of dead wood, but it was also well-paid dead wood. This was the right thing to do.
Our VP actually shared some internal slides with us, and what other posters say is basically correct. Company is too top-heavy. Execs brought-in outside consultants which compared distribution of mgmt, senior talent, and junior talent, showing F5 is way out of wack. Also our HR spend is way high in general. Plan is probably to keep hiring junior and laying-off senior. Also if you are less than senior, do not expect that promotion in the next two years (but at least you probably wont be laid off unless you are dead wood).
I've heard a rumour going around that it was all done by HR on a dollars/performance ratio, mostly getting rid off older highly paid seniors (if you've been here 15 years and are making 160,000, you better be doing more than the level 2 sitting down the hall).
See https://features.propublica.org/ibm/ibm-age-discrimination-american-workers/
This was pretty clearly a layoff by an HR generated spreadsheet - while some low performers were hit - what really drove this was a this was a triangulation of business alignment (are you working on the next thing or the old thing), pay grade (are you the highest paid in your title and team/function), and performance (if you are the highest paid, are you the highest performing based on the crap in workday).
This is pretty obvious if you look at the lists going around of who got hit, and given direct and even next-level managers didn't know about the layoff or have any input, and given some of the teams who lost senior people are still actively hiring junior people.