I came across a random blog by Erik Van Slyke today while skimming the www.wordpress.com website. I was actually looking into the story about the 2 hour outage they had (which seems to have been routing based and nothing much they could have done about it, their systems were fine, the paths into and out from them were knacked).
The blog post Erik had written was about layoffs, or as we know them in the UK, redundancies. I have been fortunate in my life so far to have never been made redundant from a company, or been out of work for any period of time. But, I had always been a little confused as to why companies let people go (unless they were really small companies and keeping someone on meant going bust and closing shop !).
Erik recounts a story whereby an exec level team have a meeting and annouce that the company is doing ok, but to kepp 100% of their bonuses, they need to reduce headcount by 5% !! Sack people doing their jobs perfectly well in order to futher line their pockets.
Are these people wrong ? Are they simply ambitious ? Are they just greedy ?
I wonder if I ever got to that level of corporate structure and was asked to do the same to protect my own bonus and those of other staff if I could go along with it ? Can’t really see it myself, I tend to have apathy towards those less fortunate than myself. I even feel guilty every time I pass a homeless person that I have a job, a home and a reasonably regular life.
I have to say I found the article both enlightening and depressing, especially in the current situation with so many people out of work everywhere. I will now worry that, no matter the quality and volume of work I produce for any given employer, I could be axed through no fault of my own at any time just so someone higher up the corporate ladder can have a swimming pool installed at their home.
