Principal Financial-Remote work
- Thread starter pfgemployee
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It is the testing side. Product verification and validation.
Not sure on what the company's name is. Did the same thing to CNH a couple of months ago
It was mostly middle management but know of several individual contributors that were let go Monday too. We had (have?) a guy on my team who's a LG 6 and I think he was let go but he's on vacation until next week so he probably doesn't know what he's walking back into.
My wife's cousin's husband is near retirement. I'm guessing he would gladly take a layoff and severance since he had a date for retirement already.
- Mar 27, 2006
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The hardest thing for me was resisting the urge to do things myself. For most of my career, I was a guy who got things done. Projects, problem resolution, etc, I was used to doing the actual implementations and configurations. But in management, it was hard for me, initially, to delegate those things, especially when it was something easy to do, and assigning the task to someone else actually took more time than if I had done it myself. I figured it out, eventually, but that urge to be hands on can be a tough one to resist.
I agree with that completely. So much entitlement - "I wanna work from home 4 days a week, even though my work product is nebulous". And not a lot of work ethic from what I can see. Me, me, me.
However, I also think companies, especially medium and big sized ones, in their effort to write new rules that are accommodating, fair, and still protect the company... are struggling MIGHTILY. Trying to get policy right without getting killed in social media, or allowing people to run roughshod, is tricky. And I think a lot of them are ham-handed about it. It reminds me of the move to diversity policies 10-20 years ago - they were trying to address something, but didn't really know how, and it often was done with a sledgehammer instead of a scalpel.
This is always the #1 thing in research on why people quit or stay - their immediate supervisor. And I think it's even more important now - even at big companies with 500 policies, the manager usually has a lot of leeway about how they handle things.
Managers are more important than ever. And generally, they are crap. I look at our small biz, and there are 3 of us I would call managers. Relative terms, I think we are about average. Absolute terms, I can admit we are lousy.
My son told me once about a "triangle of happiness" theory at your job. The three points of the triangle are the environment (mostly your manager, but also co-workers & culture), the type of work you actually do, and the pay/benefits.
Essentially, you can put up with 1 crappy thing, but not 2. If only 1 of the 3 is good, then you are going to leave. If 2 out of 3 are good, then you are probably happy enough, even though you still have something to gripe about. If you have all 3, count your blessings.
Of course, what constitutes crappy varies from person to person.
Apparently I need to find better recruiters! I really engaged them for the first time in my career about 6 months ago. I don’t have a great network in DSM since we just moved back in 2020 and I’ve been remote. I’ve connected with at least 3 recruiters and here was my experience:
1) Guy at a big firm told me he could get me something at a 40% pay cut. Said I was overpaid and the best he could do is get me a role 3 levels below where I’m at. I could accept that or accept the ****** job I’m in with higher pay.
2) Lady at a smaller firm got me an interview right away. She had a small company who could meet my salary expectations with a direct path to c-suite as well. We scheduled an interview at a coffee shop. They never showed. She apologized and I never heard from her again.
3) lady at a mid-size firm found a good match with a smaller firm. Overall a positive experience but wasn’t the right fit for me.
So far I haven’t been impressed with recruiters and I don’t think I’m being unreasonable.
1) Guy at a big firm told me he could get me something at a 40% pay cut. Said I was overpaid and the best he could do is get me a role 3 levels below where I’m at. I could accept that or accept the ****** job I’m in with higher pay.
2) Lady at a smaller firm got me an interview right away. She had a small company who could meet my salary expectations with a direct path to c-suite as well. We scheduled an interview at a coffee shop. They never showed. She apologized and I never heard from her again.
3) lady at a mid-size firm found a good match with a smaller firm. Overall a positive experience but wasn’t the right fit for me.
So far I haven’t been impressed with recruiters and I don’t think I’m being unreasonable.
PwC, Accenture, McKinsey in that group as well. You get a deck of recommendations for $750,000
In my industry everything changed in 2008.
There was a clear line. Which makes me not want to wade into management waters again.
That said you can kick me in the nuts for the right pay.
I always find it kind of funny when companies have to hire consultants to make decisions for them. I have a saying that you hire consultants to tell you what you already know, but unwilling to admit.
I also understand that consultants are great tools for executives to use as it gives them cover for the decisions they make, using company money, to save their own jobs.
I also understand that consultants are great tools for executives to use as it gives them cover for the decisions they make, using company money, to save their own jobs.
This times 1000.
"We looked at all our options, but realized that this was the only course of action"
Recruiting is a unique business. I work with a LOT of recruiters, and one of my good friends started his own firm and has been very successful. A lot of the big companies will hire literally anyone and throw them on the phones - the Northwestern Mutual business model. The benefit is scale: they have access to a ton of jobs.
I’d look for an established, privately owned firm with at least a handful of recruiters. These are the companies that tend have relationships with businesses/hiring managers, want to find you a good fit (so they can continue to work with you and the employer) and will go to bat for you if needed.
As with any straight sales job, it’s definitely a cesspool, but I also can’t imagine applying for a job without one at this point - it gets you past the first round of HR gatekeeping, which is sometimes the hardest (and stupidest) part of the process.
Speaking as someone who made hiring decisions within the past 5 years, my company prioritizes non-recruiter supplied candidates over those from recruiters in our hiring process. We also have the ability to pay more for non-recruiter sourced positions since there's no hefty up front fee for them. We typically have an all-in budget per hire, including any placement fees.
Not suggesting anyone not use a recruiter, just sharing our practices. We certainly still hire plenty of recruiter applicants as the direct applicant pool isn't typically all that deep, but there are advantages to both.
Consultants are also used in situations like this to prevent lawsuits. They are paying the consultants to come up with objective criteria and then applying that criteria across the board so nobody can say they were targeted for a specific reason. Generally this means the positions themselves are cut, not cutting a specific person for performance which sucks.
