Conference 7.286::digital

    >Does Digital knowingly discriminate against....
    
    I don't think that Digital knowingly does anything at the moment.
                               ^^^^^^^^^

    
    
    	Just Remember...
    
    	The older workers make more money than the younger ones...higher
    savings per person.
    
    
    

    >     The older workers make more money than the younger ones...higher
    > savings per person.
    
    This older person is paying for two sons at university, 
    one daughter at school trying to be the height of fashion and
    a mortgage on a house of near-zero equity.
    
    Consequences:
    - precious little savings;
    - a major daily drain of disposable salary;
    - the prospect of "actually you're rather older than the person 
      we're looking for to fill this post".

I don't believe that Digital in Europe has any real equality policy apart
from some nice sentences. The result is, that there is bound to be
unofficial discrimination against several personnel groups for one reason or
another. The treatment of employees is totally dependent on the attitudes of
local management , age, sex etc. included. And that is dependent on how
local management feels, that they can best keep their status in the next 
round of re-org. Perhaps that is a valid reason nowadays. Giving support to
people in diversity issues doesn't bring any points, probably vice versa.

--Ritva

>    This older person is paying for two sons at university, 
>    one daughter at school trying to be the height of fashion and
>    a mortgage on a house of near-zero equity.
    
>    Consequences:
>    - precious little savings;
>    - a major daily drain of disposable salary;
>    - the prospect of "actually you're rather older than the person 
>      we're looking for to fill this post".


     Apart from the last point, that are all causes of the choices YOU made.

	Heather	

    
    
    	rep. last
    
    
    		The state of the company is not a personal issue,
    		it's a business issue. At least it is in DEC's mind.
    
    		It's not comfortable for anyone. Young or old(er).

    
>	Does Digital knowingly discriminates against older workers?

    In the US this would be against the law and I would never accuse
    Digital of violating the law in a Notes conference.

    I do believe that the company is more interested in hiring new
    people then in re-training long term employees. I dispute the notion
    that re-training isn't cost effective. I know that I've picked up
    3 major programming languages (not counting several assembly languages) 
    and something like 7-8 different operating systems in the 18 years since 
    I got out of college.

    It does look like the company would just as soon TFSO or drive away
    people so that they can hire new, cheap, already trained people in
    new areas. The training cost can't be it because agency fees are
    probably higher then training costs would be. The only savings is in
    salary. However, I believe, that there is a big down side in throwing
    away the loyalty that many long term employees had.

    Someone talked about the choices that older employees made that make
    it particularly hard for them to be out of work or looking for a new
    job. For many, the choices were made with the belief that Digital
    would continue to care for the employee the way the employee has
    cared for Digital. The myth of loyalty being a two way street has,
    unfortunately, faded to where it's been completely forgotten. I think
    this is bad but apparently the company does not agree.

    			Alfred

    First, I do not believe that Digital would knowingly discriminate.
    
    Anybody ever hear of Pete Drucker? Pete is a business author
    that created a stir in the mid-80's by saying that business
    should:
    
    1. Fire older workers and replace them with younger workers.
    
    Why did he say this?
    
    Older workers make more money then new employees. New employees
    will work harder for less money. Older workers may have 10 years
    experience but many times it is actually 1 years experience for
    10 years.
    
    			-Jim-

    Could it be that, if the statement in the first note is true, that
    older employees may be hit harder because there are more of them here 
    at work??  For example, I was hired 5 years ago and then there was 
    a freeze on outside employment.  I know that the doors have opened to
    the outside on occassion, however there hasn't been any mass hiring
    that I know of, therefore, not as many of the younger folks to lay off.
    Just a thought.
    
    Renee

re: .0  

	Were did those numbers comes from????

    Maybe I need to re-read the base note but, it looked like only 7 people 
    were TFSO'd out of the 140 or so.  If only 7 were TFSO'd over and under 
    40, where is the rest?
    
    

    Seeing that no information is known that back the statistics (and we
    know how good statistics can be) I don't know how a conclustion can be
    made.  Guesses can be made... but unless you know a lot of details
    behind those 'black and white' statistics I don't know how much you can
    read into this.
    
    I hope and believe that Digital does not discriminate against anyone. 
    Unfortunately I think a lot of people are TSFOed more from being in the
    wrong place at the wrong time versus skill set.  Politics and
    connections are also big factors.
    
    As a reply a few back stated... maybe with the hiring 'freeze' over the
    past few years the only 'younger' people to make it in are the one with
    skill sets that are needed.  The areas that are changing rapidly (i.e.
    manufacturing) may have a higher age average than some of the other
    areas.  
    
    I think there is a Mark Twain quite re: statistics but I won't quote it
    to be corrected later.  :-)
    
    

    US labor laws help protect US laborers against discrimination.
    The US Labor Department recently fined Digital for immigration
    violations (see 1/11/94 Globe article).  You make your own conclusion.

Don't say it ain't so ---

  Within the past 18 months Digital was fined and required to implement a 
  recovery plan for violations of various U.S. Government EEOC hiring, firing 
  practices at a large midwestern U.S. facility.

  

    
    If we cannot change with the times, we will be doomed by them
    
    
    

    Just a little reality check:
    
    In 1992 when Digital offeered the early retirement program, they
    released the breakdown of employees by ages.  It was part of Digital's
    requirements for EEOC.
    
    As of Feb. 1992 Digital U.S. had 33,717 ages 19-39 and 27,093 ages
    40-84.  Of the age group 40-84 approximately 7,000 age 49 and above
    were eligible for early retirement.  Approx. 3,500 took the retirement.
    reducing the 40-84 age group to approx. 23,500.  So a little less than
    two years ago, the under 40 group was larger than the over 40 group.
    
     
    

    
    Re .16:
    
        
    >As of Feb. 1992 Digital U.S. had 33,717 ages 19-39 and 27,093 ages
    >40-84.  Of the age group 40-84 approximately 7,000 age 49 and above
    >were eligible for early retirement.  Approx. 3,500 took the retirement.
    >reducing the 40-84 age group to approx. 23,500.  So a little less than
    >two years ago, the under 40 group was larger than the over 40 group.
    
       I think the numbers are incorrect, unless we have less people at
    DIGITAL than we were told.
       33,717
      +27,093
    _________
       60,810
    
    	I think we had about 105,000 employees around that time frame, not
    60,810.  I could be wrong though... :-)
    
    Jim Morton

    Remember Digital has approx. 30,000 people that are non-US. 
    So the numbers of approx. 60,000 people may be realistic. The annual 
    report from Digital can provide an accurate count. [l

    
    Possibly!  I took it as DIGITAL in total.  If that was what was meant,
    then please accept my apology.  I've been known to make missnakes.
    
    Just looked at it again, and yes it was about the US only.  So much for
    speed reading. :-)
    
    Jim Morton

Re .7

>    I do believe that the company is more interested in hiring new
>    people then in re-training long term employees.

This means hiring managers and groups within Digital find it more attractive
to hire new people who they perceive already have the skills they need
than to re-train long term employees.  The notion that there is some
centrally orchestrated plan to phase out long term employees is not
credible.

> I dispute the notion that re-training isn't cost effective.

Re-training may be cost effective, but that's not the controlling factor.
The issue is why don't hiring managers and groups perceive re-training
long term employees as more attractive?

Some possibilities:

1) They are under pressure to deliver quickly and want people with
   the needed skills right away.

2) They question why these long term employees haven't figured out
   what is needed and developed the necessary skills already.

It may seem harsh that long term employees who have worked hard
at doing what they were told are now being told their skills are
no longer needed.  But it may be true.  I suspect just following orders
or doing what you are told is not enough any more.  You have to figure
out what is needed and make sure you are adding real value.

- Peter

    Skate to the Puck.. Or don't play the game.
    
    LAST YEAR:
    
    I tested/Passed to become WNT certified.
    
    I took a C and OSF/1 course after 10 years of VMS experiance
    (GAG! Unix is Primitive OS but I'm not here to start a war just
     talking from the point of view of someone who's used VMS, MSDOS,
     and WNT.  I don't know what the fuss is really about: 
     "THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHS" - There I said it.)
    
    Spent late nights and weekends playing/programming with PCs, 
    The Internet, UUCP, NEWS and E-mail.
    
    
    
    THIS YEAR:
    
    I plan on Visual Basic/C/C++ 
    
    Windows for Workgroups
    
    LAN X.400 X.500 and E-mail
    
    More Internet/Information Superhywy stuff
    (Mosaic, Lynx, WWW)
    
    
    
    If Digital doen't train me I'll learn it on my own, If Digital Doesn't
    give me the equipment to learn with I'll buy it on my own, If Digital
    doesn't allow me the resources to learn all I need to know to be both 
    priceless on the street and to any Digital Cost Center 
    
    -- I'll find another Job that will.
    
    
    I put it to every single employee working for Digital.  Are you skating
    to the Puck or where it's been?  No One can skate for you.
    
    A hockey game isn't much like the computer industry, but like any 
    team members we're responsible to know where we should be on the 
    ice at any time -- It's what we're paid for and it keeps us in the 
    game.
    
    Those who haven't a clue or can't handle the game get benched 
    and replaced by those who do.

    
    
    The only problem I see, is that Digital doesn't TFSO a person on what
    they know or don't know.  It is based on redundancy of your CURRENT JOB.
    It has to do with your last 2 or 3 PA's.  It has nothing to do with HOW
    MUCH A PERSON HAS KEPT UP WITH THE INDUSTRY...
    
    As for keeping up; it'll help with finding a new job.
    
    Jim Morton

Training is not all, what is needed to be an expert. You also need
opportunities to use your new knowledge. C++ course doesn't qualify you
to a job, which requires 2-3-5 years of programming experience with C.

That's why personnel development is a joint effort of management and
an individual.

--Ritva

Agreed, personnel development is a joint effort.  But there are still
hard questions we need to ask together.

>    The only problem I see, is that Digital doesn't TFSO a person on what
>    they know or don't know.  It is based on redundancy of your CURRENT JOB.

Why are employees doing redundant jobs instead of seeing what is
really needed and doing that instead?

  - They don't see what is really needed.
  - Nobody is willing to support them or pay for what is needed,
    and they are unable to initiate it on their own.
  - The industrial revolution with all its "labor saving" technology
    has succeeded, there's isn't that much that needs to be done anymore.
  - The stories we tell ourselves or the system of incentives we have
    established encourage people to do things that aren't really needed.
    [We are betting the company on Alpha, so we now have several
     groups building Alpha PCs under different guises.]
  - Managment is insisting employees spend every working moment doing
    jobs that aren't really needed instead of something more
    valuable to the organization.

> Training is not all, what is needed to be an expert. You also need
> opportunities to use your new knowledge.

  We are in the information age.  You have trained yourself with skills
  and information the organization desparately needs to be successful
  but there is no opportunity to use it.  How can this be?

  - Nobody you can interract with perceives the need for what
      you are offering.
  - You are unable to articulate your initiative in a compelling way.
  - It isn't really what is needed at this time.
      [I suspect this covers technical skills like C++]

I don't know the answers.  My hope is that we can discover answers
together through dialog.

My question is:  What is really needed on the planet at this time,
and what can we do to help?

- Peter

    It's all well and good to say that it's up to the employee to keep up
    with the times, however, when I have to sit down and write up a
    development plan for the coming year, I need some input from my manager
    on where the group is heading. Trying to be proactive and
    non-redundant, I want to schedule training that will benefit both the
    group and me. But when I ask my manager where we're going to be in six
    months or a year, he has no idea. When I ask what training I should
    take, I was told C++. I then asked if we had any projects coming up
    that needed C++ and was told no, but it could be useful to know. (BTW,
    this is not my current manager.) So, with this kind of meaningful
    information, it's not easy to stay current or non-redundant. But thanks
    to this notesfile, I know what skills I should have to be marketable.

>                  <<< Note 2910.23 by IDEFIX::65296::siren >>>
>                       -< Training + experience needed >-

>Training is not all, what is needed to be an expert. You also need
>opportunities to use your new knowledge. C++ course doesn't qualify you
>to a job, which requires 2-3-5 years of programming experience with C.

    
    It might be one year of experiance 10 times if you go home and 
    watch TV all night.  Some of us learn and play on our second shift.
    If you knew nothing else and took C you might not be qualified for
    anything.  If you already knew and programmed in fortran, pascal, 
    did development and managaged projects, that C course might make 
    your next job a little easier.  
    
    Training and Experiance is cumulative for some, diffusing for
    others only you know your true strenghts and weaknesses.
    
    Training is a jump start to using tools, experiance is aquired 
    after that -- but you have to keep moving forward and learning
    or everything stops.
    
>That's why personnel development is a joint effort of management and
>an individual.
    
    Nonsense  You are responsible for keeping yourself marketable,
    techically relevent and mainstream.  
    
    What ever happened to indivdual responsiblity?   Digital or any
    company isn't here to be our parents and tell us everything to
    do for a happy life and career.

    It's like this:  
    
    My boss tells me he needs someone to go on a COBOL assignment
    I tell him I don't do COBOL (well) Another resource is found.
    
    If I say no to too many assignments and I'm not busy, I become 
    a candidate for unemployment.
    
    Replace COBOL with any technical expertise and multiply by the
    delivery and support folks.  When We do what the customer wants
    and get paid for it -- We get to keep our jobs, get raises, 
    and are generally well thought of...
    
    When our skills are out of sync we don't stay busy,  folks 
    wonder what we are doing to earn our pay.   And we should 
    be asking ourselves the same questions.
    
    

    I have to agree with John here.  If you are waiting for an assignment
    that requires new skills in order to get trained, then you are dead
    last in the race.  If your manager suggests training, and you do not
    follow his lead, then he will take the hint..., and you gave it to him.
    
    Mark

	The scene : 

	A natily dressed Ceo sits at his desk reading the
	day's financial papers. In walks his secretary.

	Mr Balmer, It's Mr jones from the EEO on line one

	I thought I told you to tell him I'm out of town.

	I did boss, but he insists on talking to you - say's his
	office's are swamped with complaint's from ex-Digital 
	employee's.

	Those old timer's just don't give up - What do they want
	from us, Their skills don't fit anymore - it's that simple,
	were running a business here, not a retirement home. I've
	been listening to this whining since I took over, Hey they
	didn't have to go and learn OSF , everybody knew it would
	never fly. If they'd have used their heads they would have
	gone into TFSO work - hey, look at me I knew that the next
	great technowlegy at Digital would be layoffs , and that's why
	I'm here and they're Not.
	 

	I need that list of old timer's for the next round of
	reductions.

	Welll , er..., I've been meaning to talk to you about that Mr
	Balmer, the list is getting pretty thin what with all the 
	previous layoffs?

	How thin James? 

	There's only one name left on it Mr Balmer,... Your's. 

	 

    >>Nonsense  You are responsible for keeping yourself marketable,
    >>techically relevent and mainstream.  
    
    >>What ever happened to indivdual responsiblity?   Digital or any
    >>company isn't here to be our parents and tell us everything to
    >>do for a happy life and career.

Could this be one of Digital's problems. The prevailing attitude seems
to be that everybody goes and does things by themselves. No co-ordination
needed, no common goals, no guidance from management. I would call that
anarchy.

I DO keep responsibility of my own development, which does not take it
away from my manager. Interests of the company require development, even
personal one, to be a common effort. I'm now a consultant but I have worked
as a manager. In that role, I saw it to be very positive, if my people
focused even their private training to efforts, which would benefit our
goals. My people also used to ask, what I see to be important. I tried to
give a view of both company's interests and their private interests based on
what their career expectation were. That's part of what managers are for.
Company, where that doesn't happen is not worth very much.

PS.
The people, which I mentioned above are now a group of excellent
specialists, who have skills, which are needed now and also in foreseeable
future inside or out of Digital. Not, because of my advice, but because
there was a combination of their own activity (most important), support 
from the company and challenging work.

--Ritva

    
    I've been told that the reason one business goes outside for all 
    hires is not lack of current/cutting edge jobs skills on the part
    of internal candidates - but rather the fact that outside hires
    come with "no organizational memory".
    
    This translates to : 
    
    "They don't know who the screw�-ers and the screw-ees are yet
    so we might be able to use them for a while, since they won't see
    it coming......"
    
    R

    re: .27 
    
    I'm not sure if you're talking about my reply but I'll assume you are.
    I wasn't waiting for an assignment to get trained, I was trying to
    ascertain what direction our business was headed to be trained ahead of
    time so that when we got there, I would be ready and the startup time
    would be minimized. As a matter of fact, that conversation occurred a
    year and a half ago and we still haven't had any need of C++ and from
    our projected work, we won't for at least the next 8 months. 
    
    I was pointing out that for the whole time I've been employed here,
    I've heard that it's the individual's responsibility to plan their
    career and that's fine, but the ground-level troops need at least
    rudimentary direction from the upper levels.

    I'll throw my two cents into this conversation.  First, commenting on
    .0, I would state that the statistics are bogus at best.  Four years
    ago, Digital was a wonderful place to work.  It had ~130K employees. 
    Now it will be down to 80K by the end of this quarter.  I'd say you
    need to increase your sample.
    
    About staying current, etc.  Everybody better wake up.  Each employee
    is now a *weekly* contractor.  Actually, it's always been this way. 
    Digital pays me for a week's work, I agree to show up for a week.  I
    see *nothing* else in writing in my employee agreement.  This is why I
    would *strongly* suggest:
    
    	Stay current - what is marketable? This applies both inside and
    	outside of Digital.
    
    	Never assume the corporation has loyalty to its employees.
    
    	Never develop a sense of loyaly to the corporation.  Perhaps to
    	co-workers, but not to the corporation.  You are running a
    	business.  You sell your services to the company.  For the company
    	to expect loyalty after screwing so many hard working, dedicated
    	people is the height of hypocrisy.
    
    Shopping, always shopping.

    re: -1
    
    
    <-------  And this truth will set you free.
    
    

I think the reason it's so hard sometimes to get direction from the
upper levels is the "upper levels" don't know.  We really don't know
how to be a 13 Billion dollar company any more.  If we did, we wouldn't
be having these problems.

Maybe Digital is just us.  We have to figure it out together, 
or it isn't going to work.

It's much easier to blame "them", but if you do, you are giving away
your power.

- Peter

    RE .32
    Your comments about viewing yourself as a contracter are right on.
    To survive today, you need to view yourself as a business, and you
    are basically selling your services. Regarding the future and what
    will be needed by employers for skill sets, I really believe that
    management will not know the answer until they get there. Our
    business is very much short term, due to technology and competition.
    In fact, people are now talking about modularized code and software
    as a commodity. So nobody is ever really safe, and everyone needs to
    constantly be in training. So we should all try and give a weeks work
    for a weeks pay, hang in there and keep trying. Change will be constant
    and if we can positvely affect that change, then that is good too.
    For the things we cannot control, we shouldn't worry about them. When
    we have done all that we can do in these things, there's really no
    sense in worrying, because it will only age us and won't change a
    thing. Beyond that, we can only live one day at a time and trust in a 
    higher power. 

        It's Friday, and I feel like being eloquent (right, sure).  Regarding
    my comments about weekly contracting:

    Let's face it, the 30 years for one company phenomena is gone.  My Dad
    graduated from college, hired into IBM, and died at IBM.  No disrespect
    intended.  It was a mutual arrangement.  I started working for a
    manufacturing corporation, went to two defense contractors (where
    everybody *knew* what would happen if business went bad), and now I
    work at Digital.  Do I expect to retire at Digital?  Nope.  Why? 
    Because the company will make a business decision sooner or later which
    will affect my employment.

    Call your Senators and Representatives about portable pensions.  Need I
    elaborate why?

    I had an interesting conversation yesterday with a former manager
    (previous defense contractor).  They are *very* hard up at the moment
    for skilled GUI developers in Motif.  Seems their guru just went to a
    small startup - and I mean guru - this guy was amazing.  His project
    management was very upset as well as other management that he would
    make this decision.  I listened with interest, because I did not burn
    my bridges when I left (I also happen to love Motif development, can
    you say 'mail a resume'?), and I wanted to see what the status was.

    Today I'm thinking about this conversation.  How on earth can an
    employer become upset when an employee make a 'business decision' and
    takes his skills elsewhere?  How can an employer become upset when an
    employee treats the corporation exactly like the corporation treats the
    employee?

    Management better wake up.  I've seen too many names with vast years of
    experience post their TFSO notices.  Management needs to decide when
    enough is enough, decide where they want to go (even if it's wrong),
    and move in that direction.  We're surely bleeding standing still.
    
    
    Charlie

 	Well, well, this is an interesting string, isn't it?  Let's explore
	this a bit more.  I want to ask a hypothetical question. (It's
	a snowy Saturday and I'm in the office, where they're testing the
	*annoying* alarm system.  What better time and place to engage
	in hypothetical questions?)

	If we are weekly contractors who are doing nothing more than
	selling our services -- trading time for money -- then are
	we not in competition with one another for continued employment?
	That is, if we are in a layoff environment, and if Digital
	can only afford, say, n technical writers (my job), yet we
	have n*2 technical writers employed here, than am I not competing 
	with my colleagues for employment? If I am nothing more than a 
        weekly contractor, then I need to make myself more valuable than 
    	my teammates to stay employed, yes?  That's the way it works if
	you view yourself as a business: the people who do what you
	do are the *competition*, like it or not. The person sitting
	next to me, the guy I drink a beer with after work, has the 
    	potential of taking food out of my family's mouth -- or of 
    	robbing us of our healthcare.

	Since we are told that the coin of the realm in the 1990s is
	knowledge (that is, you get paid for what you know and for your
	marketable skills), it would beehove me to gather as much of that 
	substance (knowledge) as possible -- right?  Ok, makes sense. But 
	it's not quite that simple, is it? Because not only do I have to 
    	learn as much as possible in an absolute sense, but it is imperative 
    	that I also learn and retain *more* than the person sitting next to 
    	me -- I need to know more in a relative sense as well if I am to avoid 
    	the next layoff. OK, let's accept that for a minute.

	But management is also telling us to work as a team. That
	the only way out of this mess is to pull together. That makes 
    	sense too. It implies, however, that it is my responsibility to help 
    	educate my colleagues (if I know something they don't, I have a 
    	responsibility to share it) and vice versa.  

	Disconnect, folks. Big disconnect.

	My question for management is this: which is it?  If I help educate
	my colleagues, then my value to the corporation goes down -- if
    	the schema is in fact that we are weekly contractors. Since more 
    	people now know what I know, my value decreases -- simple supply
        and demand (unless of course, I hustle to learn even more new
    	stuff -- but then I'm faced with the same conundrum). Yet if I 
    	don't help my colleagues, I'm obviously not being a team player.

	Now let me say (non-hypothethically) that I happen to believe we 
	*should* be educating one another; that, in fact, is the *only* 
	way out of our mess. But management needs to be very careful that 
	the metrics they espouse reflect the end result they are attempting 
	to achieve. Don't give me messages (implied or otherwise) that 
	suggest the only thing between me and the door is what I know, 
	compared to what my colleagues know, because that metric is 
	anathema to what you need to achieve.  Be careful what you ask
    	for, because you might get it.

	Glenn
                                             

Digital management is many people who don't always speak with the same
voice.  Never the less, the message from the top seems clear to me.

  People who are effective at working together with others
  are far more valuable than those with specific technical skills.

I remember a short saying from a graduate level software project
management course that has always stuck with me.

  If you ever have anyone who is indespensible,
  get rid of him as fast as you can.

- Peter

    
    re: my .37
    
    Of course, there is a simple way to avoid the hypthetical situation
    I described. That is, don't give those messages to people. Tell them
    they are valuable; offer them retraining options; don't pull
    tuition benefits; don't eliminate the internal training budget 
    every year in Q3; don't give the impression that you'd rather hire
    younger, tougher people and throw onto the streets those who have
    given you loyalty.  When you do that, you can *also* give us
    this hard message: "We are willing to retrain you. Here is some
    money to accomplish that. What we (Digital) expect in return
    is for you to make the time to take advantage of that training.
    And, dammit, we expect you to work as team player.  Otherwise,
    please find employment elsewhere."
    
    Just say it. Clearly. Tell us what you expect from us, and tell
    us what we can expect from the Company in return. What could
    be easier?
    
    Glenn                          

    re: .38
    
    sort of like "it's not WHAT you know but WHO you know"
    
    
    and that's the exact mentality in today's employees that brings
    companies like digital down....
    
    wake up people...we are the company....
    
    we are the ones who can make the difference, but not if
    we're always whining instead of doing...

    	I have known several indispensible people who have left
    DEC over the last couple of years. Those who were TFSO'd have
    mainly been quite happy to come back as external contractors
    with higher salary but lower job security. Those who left because
    they were pissed off by DEC refuse to come back as contractors.
    
    	Indispensible is as in one person I know. Shortly after he had been
    TFSO'd a large bank said to DEC "He was the only competent person you
    had. Either you employ him or we do. We would prefer you employ him
    since then he has better access to the latest information". And the
    customer is always right ;-)

re: .37

>        If we are weekly contractors who are doing nothing more than
>       selling our services -- trading time for money -- then are
>        we not in competition with one another for continued employment?

If 50% of you are going to be cut then are you not all in competition with each
other whether you are all contractors or not? 


>                                                The person sitting
>        next to me, the guy I drink a beer with after work, has the
>        potential of taking food out of my family's mouth -- or of
>        robbing us of our healthcare.

This is all true already isn't it?

re: .37 - aka 'share your knowledge, lower your value'

You paint a bleak but very true picture.  

But you didn't go far enough.  You describe accurately the process of protecting
your job by protecting what you know.  But you didn't go into protecting your
job by attacking those who can take your job away.  Some people have learned
to be proactive.

There are people who survive by making others look bad, by taking the credit
for what others have done, by making systems which are unsupportable by others
(i.e. by intentionally making themselves indispensable), and sometimes even by
sabotage.  I.e. some people survive by making others fail.

These survivors become vampires, sucking the life out of their co-workers, and
out of the corporation.

But do we blame them for surviving 'at any cost' or do we blame the system
for driving them to it?

And more importantly, how do we fix it?  How do we downsize and keep people
focused on doing a good job instead of keeping their paycheck?  By keeping
managers that understand the difference between productive employees
and destructive employees.

But the managers are just as busy protecting their jobs as the people they
manage, and they can be driven to the same destructive tactics.

The death spiral continues.  Downsizing has been poorly managed. Sometimes it
feels like things are getting better.  Some groups are doing better than
others.  Some groups are so busy that they forget about salary continuation and
just get the job done, and amazingly enough some of those groups not only
survive, they prosper.  Similarly, some groups are so overworked that they
continue to suffer until they bleed to death.

I don't know the answer, I only know that as a company, we are still badly
broken.  I still like what I do, I still like most of the people I do it
with, I still feel productive, but I'm not proud of the company I work for.

I don't know that this company ever had a workable plan.  I know we don't
have one now.  Maybe the plan has always been 'make money during the good
times and try and survive during the bad'.

I know I don't feel comfortable living in survival mode, and I'm not sure
that what survives will be worth keeping if we stay in survival mode too
long.

Does anyone remember the Donner party?

	Joe

Of course there are people with valuable knowledge and skills
we should try to keep.

There are also people who try to control information to protect
their own importance.  These are the people we should show a new
way or show to the door.

Ultimately, working together effectively requires doing that which
is mutually beneficial and strengthens the relationship rather than
exploiting and moving on.

In my experience, the Karma Police usually catch up with people
who try to exploit and move on.  It just takes time.  Work for
what you want with others who will support you.  Try to ignore
the rest.

- Peter

    We're throwing the baby out with the bathwater!