Verizon Announces 10,400 Employees Will Voluntarily Leave the Company (techcrunch.com) 80
Verizon today announced that 10,400 employees -- about 7 percent of its worldwide workforce -- are taking buyouts to leave the company. "This is part of an effort to trim the telecom giant's workforce ahead of its push toward 5G," reports TechCrunch. From the report: Verizon put this offer on the table in September with a goal to save $10 billion in cash by 2021. The offer, which included 60 weeks of salary bonus and benefits depending on length of service, applied to 44,000 employees across Verizon's business. "For those who were accepted, the coming weeks and months will be a transition. For the entire V Team, there will be opportunities to work differently as we prepare for the great things to come at Verizon," CEO Hans Vestberg said in a note to employees, CNBC reports.
#MAGA (Score:5, Insightful)
#MAGA
Re: #MAGA (Score:5, Funny)
No kidding.
Now if only we can put att out of everyone's misery...
Over a year pay to NOT work at AT&T sounds gre (Score:4, Interesting)
They offered employees up to 60 weeks of pay (more than a year) to *not* work for a shitty company and go get a different job instead, perhaps after taking a 9-month paid vacation. That sounds pretty great to me!
I wish my company would give me a bonus equal to a year of pay to get me to leave and go work for Raytheon or somebody else. I'd darn sure take that!
I'd probably take a 2-month break to vacation and do some things around the house, then get a job and chunk 10 months pay into savings. That savings would be my "fuck you money". If the boss turns out to be an ass at the new job, I can comfortably say "fuck you" and take another two-month vacation before looking for where I want to work next.
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It's basically the same as the idiots who dismiss global warming because they've had a slightly colder winter in their part of the world.
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Standards are "a level of quality or attainment". Are you stating we've set the bar too high?
Do the math. The research necessary to formulate opinions on important decisions has recently doubled from 140 line items to 280.... given the amount of additional research necessary to be current, who the frack can time-afford to keep up with that increased information flow.
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This used to be euphemised as a lay-off. Now they call it a buyout?
Seriously...
Re: Jobs Jobs Jobs (Score:1)
First they are euphemized, then they'll be euthanized.
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They don't have to buy them out. My employer can fire us all tomorrow an not pay us anything more than the money they owe us for Monday and Tuesday. Sixty weeks severance is pretty nice.
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Makes a lot of sense in today's legal world
Fired = discrimination lawsuit
Laid off = likely some sort of lawsuit
Buyout = no lawsuit
Voluntary buyout = can't claim discrimination because you chose to, not the company.
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This. You actually have to sign a deal agreeing there will be no lawsuit, public commentary, or unemployment claim.
Verizon lays off so many people there unemployment rates would have to be insane by point without these agreements. Also, they aren't giving everyone sixty weeks. It might have changed but a couple years ago there is a formula and it requires several years to qualify.
Most importantly, when they do these things it isn't voluntary. Your choice is to be gone with the agreement or be gone without t
I'm not understanding (Score:2, Interesting)
What does a reduction in force have to do with the deployment of 5G?
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They are going to be making significant capital expenditures. In order to do so without impacting cash flow, they're getting rid of payroll expenses.
Re:I'm not understanding (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I'm not understanding (Score:4, Funny)
How much can it cost to have the marketing team slap "5" stickers over the 4 in the marketing materials?
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Verizon missed out on the government grants and tax breaks?
/. off the mark - it's balance sheet clean-up (Score:4, Interesting)
Verizon has ~$1 billion of bonds due next year and more coming due the next few years.
Verizon is very unlikely to refinance the debt at anywhere the coupon payment / interest rate the existing bonds have.
They're BBB rated and one cut above junk status and, being unable to refinance the bonds for near investment grade rates will push them into junk status and make all of their future borrowing costs higher.
Most of large corporate America is in the same situation with large debt issuances over the last few years a quite low rates used to buy back stock.
Now, many of the same companies are on the verge of not being able to refinance debt at anywhere near investment grade rates.
Rates for risk free US treasury are 3% for 5 years and more for 10 years. Corporation with less than stellar balance sheets - *cough* lots of the mega corporations - are facing a large pressure to clean up balance sheets by cutting costs and avoiding the 1 downgrade to junk status. Hence the near inverted yield curve.
Company makes big moves
Check the balance sheet
Check if the debt is trading well above the company's S&P debt rating (Finra market data has this)
Check if the company has a large amount of debt maturing in the next year or three
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Newer tech usually requires more staff during the adjustment and learning curve for it. A nearby message suggested 5G itself may lead to staff-reducing automation and factoring. Perhaps in the longer run, but in the shorter term it likely will require babysitting and tuning. They should wait until such efficiency &
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They are going to be making significant capital expenditures. In order to do so without impacting cash flow, they're getting rid of payroll expenses.
They should just fire all the men.
I hear women do the same work for 70% of the pay. Imagine the cost savings of an entirely female IT department!
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"maybe the building of the new 5G network back-end leads to significant level of automation"
Other than introducing more SDN to what's already there, what else could there be left to automate? Mobile service provisioning is almost totally automatic as it is. The only company I can see that makes more pure profit relative to effort/capital put in is software companies.
I highly doubt there's CCIEs sitting in their data centers banging out switch and router configs by hand.
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What does a reduction in force have to do with the deployment of 5G?
It's a typical TechCrunch article...
long on hyperbolic statements and extremely short on (or even missing) facts.
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Its sad fact that a lot of employees just are not excited about changing gears to speak. A lot of the blame gets placed on management being unwilling train and develop talent but its not the whole of the story. For a lot of folks who mostly come into work and do the same things each day and are happy about it change is seen as threat. They might not be good at the new stuff, they might not pick it up as fast as their peers etc. These fears become a self fulfilling prophecy, because they are resentful ab
Losing the Top 7% (Score:5, Interesting)
The people taking the buyout are either people close to retirement who have lots of experience, or they're people who are good enough that they are confident they'll easily find another job. The net result is that while they're losing 7% of their workforce, they're likely losing 20% of their experience and 20% of their productivity.
Re:Losing the Top 7% (Score:4, Insightful)
I remember reading something about this...The Dead Sea Effect maybe? From what I've seen, anyone who's able to find other work or doesn't really need the job takes the buyout. Then the company gets stuck with the people who stay behind, who are not going to find anything equal to or better than what they have, or are just so institutionalized that they can't go anywhere else. Then morale goes in the toilet, more people are laid off, and productivity gets worse each subsequent round.
(And yes, employee institutionalization is a thing. For those of you young enough to not have experienced it, companies used to hang onto employees forever, train them, and heavily invest in them so that it's a big loss if they leave. Huge employers like IBM, GE, AT&T, etc. basically had a completely internal labor market/talent pool because there was a belief in promoting from within. Former IBMers I've worked with tell me that the pay and opportunities used to be good enough that people wouldn't leave. Big contrast with today's 3-month contracts.)
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I feel it could be the other direction as well though, with the smart ones able to realize the value of having a job, and the idiots just wanting a short term payout.
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Shhh! They didn't teach that at MBA school!
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And they know that. It is still better than firing 10K then on top of that 2K of truly top employees (who is better the one who is not scared to leave without anything or the one who needs a five year safety net?)
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That's sort of true, but not entirely right.
The offers usually target the regimented, scripted jobs. Those people are easy to replace.
Since the buyout increases based on length of employment, it's more appealing to older workers. Especially those who qualify for retirement benefits. They'll flush a lot of older people voluntarily, with zero risk of age discrimination suits.
A lot of important jobs aren't union, and thus not likely eligible for this offer. Those people could be laid off easily without a buyou
"Voluntarily" Leaving, Right! (Score:5, Informative)
Of course they are leaving voluntarily. Because if they don't meet their number of 10400 people voluntarily, it will change to involuntarily. This is a common big company buyout of employees. The company will emphasise the first offer will be the best and if they don't hit there number there will be another offer but not nearly as good. So as an employee you have to ask yourself if you're in danger or not, and is it worth the money or not.
Either way, Verizon will make their number, and if they get a few extra then bonuses to execs all around!
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Seriously, you wouldn't take a year of being paid to not work -- or doubling your pay if you take another job? As a liberal pro-worker socialist, I can't comprehend how anyone can think Verizon is evil for this. They should be applauded for choosing to reduce their workforce by showering buckets of money on employees instead of by layoffs.
Good Deal, If You're Ready (Score:2)
A large aerospace company I used to work for did this a couple of times back in the 1980s and 1990s. They offered 2 weeks of pay for every year of service, plus company-paid health insurance for some lengthy period I don't remember. The people who took the offers were almost exclusively long-term employees who were just about ready for retirement. Turned out to be great deals for them.
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n g o and bingo was his name-o
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Sounds familiar.
Push toward 5G
I'm just trying to figure out how moving to 5G (upgrading equipment, etc.) is going to need fewer employees than Verizon needs to maintain the existing infrastructure. If it's anything like our aerospace buddy, some managers have gone off on the side to offer contracting services to the old company. They will pick up the 'retired' employees and put them on the job to do the 5G upgrades. Profits for the new contracting firms, more money for the employees that get out. And Vestberg will have t
Does it make sense? (Score:2)
sounds good, what's the catch? (Score:1)
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Exactly. Pull the emergency cord and eject before the ending the company wants is engineered for you. I guarantee they're not happy about paying those huge severance packages and are only doing it to stop people from suing and getting them out the door sooner.
The digital transformation crew strikes again (Score:3)
I wonder who Verizon's latest crop of management consultants is. I've been seeing a ton of stories along these lines, almost exclusively at old-line companies. I think the execs are being told, "Listen, if we fire all the experienced people and replace them with college grads, our digital transformation will accelerate to unheard-of levels, AND you'll save a ton of money on salary!"
I'm well aware that large companies collect a lot of dead wood (or at least wood that isn't super-productive anymore.) But, as I've said I've seen this over and over again during the run-up of what I'll coin Dotcom Bubble 2.0. IBM is firing anyone in the US and Europe who isn't deemed hip enough to jump on the cloud/mobile/social/AIMLBlockchain/cognitive train. I saw a few months ago that AT&T is doing the same thing. HP/HPE/DXC dumped something like 60,000 people over the last couple of years during their spin-merge. It's almost like they're daring any attorney who might bring an age discrimination lawsuit to just try it and see how they're crushed. Even Microsoft, who was famous for never having to lay people off started doing so in the last few years...and they're not exactly hurting for money.
One thing I wonder is how many people being fired are from the "old school" days when a job with the phone company amounted to permanent employment. I'm assuming that's why they're giving them up to 60 months' salary and benefits...to discourage wrongful termination suits. All I know is this...I'm 43 and work very hard to stay current...and I'm sure that won't save me when the company I'm working for decides to fire me when I'm 55 and still years away from being able to access my retirement money.
CNN is spinning this as a good thing (Score:2)
There is a reason for that (Score:3)
GregMmm's post hit it squarely on the head.
Folks ,who can, are leaving voluntarily because if they don't, they're candidates to be let go during the next round of layoffs.
We see the same song and dance about twice a year. First and last quarters usually.
They are actively canvassing folks twice a year to see who is interested in leaving. Anyone who doesn't take the hint is tossed
into the magic sorting machine to find out who get's the short straw on the next draw.
Lots of " re-organizations " moving folks around which dissolves some groups, but inflates others ( by combining groups ) which
gives HR all they need to cut folks loose. ( They have too many employees doing job X )
Hell, they even started dangling the lump sum carrot in front of management.
Previously, management had to take the annuity and did not have the lump sum option. Now, in an effort to cut as many folks
as they can, the lump sum option is now a reality.
Many folks are waiting around for some magical " package " like the days of old where folks got a few years of service tacked on,
a pension bump and a decent amount of exit cash. ( Which is why we have so many folks with 30, 40 and even 50+ years of service
still working ) They haven't figured out that if the company were to offer it again, so many would take it, the company would have to turn
around and go on a hiring spree. Thus, no package.
My best guess as to why is due to the stupid amounts of debt the company took on with its latest assimilation . . . .er. . . acquisition.
What the company doesn't realize is this: All the folks they want to push out the door are the ones with all the expertise. :|
By the time they get done with layoffs, they'll just end up having to hire them back as contractors to keep things running
We're already starting to see hints of this.
"Contact the database administrator for access" :|
"We can't, they retired."
"What about the alt-administrator ?"
"They retired too. . . "
"Is there anyone maintaining that database at all ?"
"Nope, they all retired."
wonder how many are H1B (Score:1)
None (Score:2)
The reason Verizon offered severance was to eliminate the possibility of lawsuits and/or because the managers didn't want to decide who to fire. The H1Bs are going to be fired because their visas expired, and there are no decisions. Hence, no reason to give them anything.
At least they didn't just "eliminate positions" (Score:1)
the way smaller companies get away with. Ageism (fundamentally a salary reset for a position) is much harder to prove when there's not a group large enough to establish a pattern.
Verizon did this in a decent way to those employees. No beef here.
More stick than carrot (Score:1)
Let me translate that for you... (Score:2)
Verizon is a money grubbing ball of fuck you and I'm retiring pretty soon, so fuck you, fuck you and you're all fired. I don't give a shit about creating jobs or even keeping the employees I have. Yummy down on this paltry chunk of cash I'm breaking off for you in trade for your resignation, you worthless piece of peasant shit. I'll be heading home to bang my trophy wife inside my third five million dollar house now.