What's wrong with the big companies?!

[Dougal DeKree]

I have no idea if they're near you or not or if any of the jobs fit your skills or interests. It looks like our offices are Munchen, Frankfurt, and Dusseldorf for the most part.

Thanx for the link, I appreciate it. "Sadly" I don't belong to the programming caste. I am an engineer and although I am trained in calculations, I loathe programming in any way. Anyways, I will soon start to complete my new applications and be assured that I will contact Accenture. And if there is common interest, you, of course, are the one who has brought me to the idea

By the way, neither the city nor the country bothers me, I will work anywhere, as long as I can feed my family.

 

[Darrin Drader]

Corporations are soulless entities that would be neutral evil if they were given a D&D alignment. Dopn't trust them. If you want secure jobs, find something with the government. Sorry if this comes across as excessively negative, but corporate behavior over the past few years has convinced me that they need to be much better regulated, but since so many of them are international, regulation is increasingly difficult.

My advice - start looking for another job now and try to walk out right when they need you the most.

 

[Turanil]

Corporations are soulless entities that would be neutral evil if they were given a D&D alignment. Dopn't trust them. If you want secure jobs, find something with the government. Sorry if this comes across as excessively negative, but corporate behavior over the past few years has convinced me that they need to be much better regulated, but since so many of them are international, regulation is increasingly difficult.

My advice - start looking for another job now and try to walk out right when they need you the most.

Agreed 100%.

 

[Rel]

Dougal, I can't give you any insights to what your company is thinking or planning. But I did want to say that I'm sorry to hear that you're in a tough situation. I definately agree with others who say you should be keeping your eye out for other job opportunities.

But look on the bright side...at least you got rid of Frank!

 

[Numion]

Cost cutting is a tricky business. At work one guy does research on plant maintenance. He's a pretty well known name on the subject, which might not mean much. Anyway, he had a case where a power plants management had cut expenses 10% across the board, including maintenance.

The result was increased plant outage due to failures. The 10% saving in maintenance resulted in 5-10 times that amount in losses due to lost production in the following year.

Similarly cutting workforce will seem good at first, but the long term effects might be much more harmful, if too much people are laid out. It's a tricky thing to plan anything long term when everyones just interested in profits for the last quarter.

In my job we had a similar X% cheese slicer a few years back, each department had to lay of certain number of people. The stupid thing was, of course, that our department was doing positive result, and as a result our profits decreased. I work at a research facility, BTW, where the number of people working is the absolute limit for work done, since each billed hour has to be allocated to someone's daily quota.

 

[babomb]

For one the division they are going to cut most is not the one making negative numbers, it's just the more technical one, so I guess managers simply don't understand what it's good for.

That wouldn't surprise me at all. Rare is the manager who understands technology. They don't know much about the work that goes into it, so they don't realize how much cutting people will cripple the team. At least, that's my guess. I find many managers tend to be overly focused on the short term. So they'll cut maintenance personnel to save money. Then more stuff breaks and they wonder why.

I hope this isn't the case, but my prediction for your group is as follows:
1) They cut a sizable number of people, possibly including one guy who the only person who knows how to do his job.
2) They overwork the remaining employees, trying to get the same amount of production done.
3) They wonder why profits are down, probably congratulating themselves for cutting people or it would be even worse.
4) They hire an expensive consultant to figure out what's wrong.
5) If he's any good, the consultant recommends they hire more people. If he's not, he recommends they cut people or send them to some training.
6) The managers cut people regardless.
7) The next quarter's profits is even worse (at least partly because the consultant was charged to their budget). The group is dismantled and the employees are laid off or relocated.
8) The managers complain about "those lazy technology people". They think they know everything, but look how bad their quarterly profits were!

Bitter? I'm not bitter.

There are SOME good managers out there. Best of luck, dude.

 

[MonsterMash]

Best of luck Dougal, I spent a couple of years working for a large Israeli software supplier for telecomms companies before being made redundant. I'm not sure which of the UK telcos are hiring, generally BT is getting rid of staff on fixed line, but T-Mobile UK is currenly hiring, but the jobs I've seen have been software rather than engineering.

 

[Storminator]

<SNIP>

Sad thing is that my field of specialty isn't worth much in th US.

There's your issue right there. If the job can be done elsewhere for less, it will be. Are all/most of the job losses in Germany? German labor law is pretty unfriendly to multinational corporations trying to contain costs. And just imagine how much cheaper your work will be in India.

It's a dog eat dog world, and there ain't enough dog to go around.

PS

 

[Bront]

Generaly, successful companies are proactive in their staffing needs, cutting when they feel bloated, not nessessarily when it's pinching pennies. Also, it often happens when a company wants to sell (I was in a company that did that, cut 70 upper people, hired 20 new people with different titles to do the same job, and was sold 6 months later).

Now, cutting almost half their workforce seems odd, but sometimes you see redundancies and you try to head off a problem early.

A good example of bloated staff... Caterpiller had a strike, and eventualy they ordered management to the assembly floor, and managed to keep up production at the same levels, and had record proffits, to where when the strike broke, they only took back 1/3 of the striking workers. This happened in the early '90's I think

 

[DreadPirateMurphy]

Sigh. Companies are nothing other than collections of people. People can be stupid.

Reasons for laying off people:

- Management let their egos get the better of them, and so they hired more people than they can afford.
- Management is lazy, and cutting staff is an easy way to reduce expenses.
- Management failed to plan in advance for the obsolesence of a product or division.
- Management failed to anticipate changes in the competitive environment.

The difference between a good company and a bad company is that good companies try to take care of their employees, even during layoffs. Good companies have managers who admit when they've made mistakes -- sometimes even early enough that the impact can be minimized. Good companies think long term and don't make drastic changes in response to minor fluctuations in profitability or sales.