Redundancy

[Timbuk2]

Well. Posting this at the end of a long and surreal friday.

After ten years and six months with the bank, I was let go on redundancy notice today.

The last 3 to 4 weeks have been a time of re-assessment in the Global Risk area I work in - a reshuffle with cost-cutting the primary aim. Banks need to do this to stay competitive, particularly so in the current climate, and my (ex) bank is amongst the most competitive and solvent in the current global market.

My role is no longer applicable, the work will be reallocated. I am amongst 5 or so others in 30 or 40 total being given redundancy in Global Risk.

I have survived two such exercises in the past few years of recession, where immediate colleagues have lost jobs, and the expectation this time round was that our team would remain intact. It seems otherwise.

I now have 14 weeks to either re-apply internally within the group, or find employment elsewhere.

Not angry, despite the fact that the cheap fucker who let me go today did so by video-conference. Business is business and I'm pragmatic enough to recognise how things are.

So. At 37 years of age it is time to re-evaluate and take stock. Yes, it's a time of clichés

I'm fairly drunk now, but am not downbeat. There are jobs out there, within banking and without.

Tomorrow is the start of a new day

[Wraith]

Sorry to hear about this, Timbuk, but glad to see that you seem to be taking it well. I'm sure you'll land on your feet.

Are you planning to re-apply internally, or look someplace else, or still deciding?

[Timbuk2]

Thanks Wraith.

My first reaction is to re-apply internally. I got my current role six months ago through the internal transfer process so am familiar with it.

There are masses of internal jobs available - there are growth areas in other parts of the bank - I learned yesterday that a whole new department is being created in Global Markets. And as a redundant job seeker I am given priority internally as the company would rather keep me on. Cynically, they'd rather not pay out a large redundancy to me if I did leave. The bank is good to work for, their employee benefits are wonderful, the pay competitive.

However, there are also plenty of jobs out there externally too. I will look elsewhere and apply. The plus side to moving on of course is that I get to take redundancy, which at this bank is known for being an excellent package, and with 10+ years under my belt there the payout will be significant.

Have over three months paid to sort myself out. More than enough time. And, what a pity, I'm not allowed to work during that time either due to the security risks of my interfering with live production data. My laptop was retained over the weekend so they can remove my access to all sensitive areas of the bank, and it will be returned to me on monday with little more than email and intranet access so I can't do much beyond apply for jobs. It's up to me how much time I am actually in the office - but it's likely to be about a day a week for handover reasons.

Sooo I intend to concentrate on getting fit, doing a bit of work fixing up my apartment as I'm shortly putting it up for rent and moving in with my girlfriend, and playing all the games and reading all the books I've been putting off due to being too busy at work.

Ho hum.

[Ominous Gamer]

Re-applying internally sounds like a version of RIF (reduction in force). My county has done everything possible to take care of their employees when RIF comes around, sounds like the same for your place, good luck with that if you decide to stay with them.


So, this 3 months, are you getting paid full wages during this time, and you're not to show up to work?
I'm making one simple demand, you post about how free you feel once you realize you're still in your PJs and its well into the afternoon.

[wiggin]

Good luck, Timbuk2! That's a tough break, but hopefully things will work out for the better.

[termite]

Bugger...

[Timbuk2]

Thanks fellas.

OG - yep 3 and a half months on full pay. And yep I'm not able to work. One day a week in the office is likely. Sooo ... pjs in the afternoon sounds probable

[Dreadnaught]

While I feel bad for you and anyone this happens to, correct me if I'm wrong I can't help but get the sense that you're sorta looking forward to this opportunity to kick back and bit and find a new job within the company. In which case this could be a great opportunity to re-orient things in your life.

[GGT]

Could have sworn you recently got a promotion, Tim.... You do sound upbeat about the future though, and moving in with your girl friend will save living expenses

[Ziggy Stardust]

Tim, I heard the same 5 months ago and it turned out all right for me.

I'm sure a strapping young lad as yourself will be back in action in no time.

[xaero1]

Hey buddy, sorry to hear the news but you sound rational enough not to be taking this personally or as any kind of insult against your abilities so that's the most important thing.

I was made redundant in October last year (quite surprisingly) after my ex boss offered me a full time position in California, 5000 miles away from friends and family, with only 10 days holiday each year. His rationale was to move the workforce over to the states despite the fact the sales I was doing in Europe were keeping the company afloat. However, I kept my chin up and started getting my CV out immediately. Cutting a long story short, I now have a better job in a better company with better benefits and a very large increase on my basic salary. I haven't looked back for a single minute!

So my advice to you is to update your CV, remind yourself why you're good at what you do, get some references on LinkedIn and start getting your CV around. Applying for other roles within the bank could be good but don't discount other options - the grass might be far greener.

Best of luck mate

[Dreadnaught]

Ten whole vacation days? Not bad.

[Timbuk2]

While I feel bad for you and anyone this happens to, correct me if I'm wrong I can't help but get the sense that you're sorta looking forward to this opportunity to kick back and bit and find a new job within the company. In which case this could be a great opportunity to re-orient things in your life.

Well I was still in the process of re-orienting myself in this position - have only been in the job six months after doing IT for 15 years of my life, 10 of them at this bank.

But yes, I guess it will be a time to re-re-orient myself.

Could have sworn you recently got a promotion, Tim.... You do sound upbeat about the future though, and moving in with your girl friend will save living expenses

Yep indeed - as I jus mentioned above - only took this position 6 months ago.

Tim, I heard the same 5 months ago and it turned out all right for me.

I'm sure a strapping young lad as yourself will be back in action in no time.

Aye I remember mate. Felt for you at the time. Good things came out of it though eh - you got the right job.

Hey buddy, sorry to hear the news but you sound rational enough not to be taking this personally or as any kind of insult against your abilities so that's the most important thing.

I was made redundant in October last year (quite surprisingly) after my ex boss offered me a full time position in California, 5000 miles away from friends and family, with only 10 days holiday each year. His rationale was to move the workforce over to the states despite the fact the sales I was doing in Europe were keeping the company afloat. However, I kept my chin up and started getting my CV out immediately. Cutting a long story short, I now have a better job in a better company with better benefits and a very large increase on my basic salary. I haven't looked back for a single minute!

So my advice to you is to update your CV, remind yourself why you're good at what you do, get some references on LinkedIn and start getting your CV around. Applying for other roles within the bank could be good but don't discount other options - the grass might be far greener.

Best of luck mate

Cheers.

Yes need to get onto LinkedIn. Not got my details on there yet. My GF keeps bleating on about how useful a site it is for this sorta thing.

[RandBlade]

Ditto to the above comments Tim. Sorry to hear this, but good luck and hope it all turns out right in the end.

[Khendraja'aro]

Isn't it also a good thing to have jobs at several companies on your CV? With that, I don't mean the "change companies like your underwear" types, but rather the "several years in position A at company B, some years at C..." and so on.

[EyeKhan]

Hey there Buck, I lived something more or less exactly like this in 2006/ 2007. My company decided its facility maintenance organization was not 'core' to the business and could be more expertly and cost effectively taken on by an outside vendor. All factual analysis and corruption aside, the details of which I cannot comfortably post, the outsourcing 'study' found exactly what upper management wanted to find. The plan went forward and I was given a year to find another place within the company, take a job with the new vendor - at a significant loss of benefits, if not pay - or quit.

I found another spot on very loose grounds - I am a certified 6-Sigma blackbelt and another part of the company was looking for some blackbelts and believed the (IMHO erroneous) idea one was as good as another independant of experience. I left behind 15 years of relationships, experience, and career ticket punches and the move was brutal, absolutely brutal. In the following year, while in a structure I had no experience or education or management relationships what-so-ever, the company held two rounds of firing employees, reducing overall head count by 48%. For reasons I still can't explain I did not get cut. That's probably the most convincing performance review I've ever had, by the way: nothing makes you feel valued like not getting fired when you're a newbie with no tight relationships in the local management.

Today I'm in yet a different role, doing work I enjoy probably more than anything I've done in the company to date. I'm doing a job that 2.5 people did three years ago (one who left and one who was fired, and .5 of which I took with me from my previous role) and which has doubled in scope since then due to a major change in the high level business plan. The whole process of getting here sucked total ass and I'm not going to say some trite shit like "I'm better off for it, the company did what it had to do, it was all god's plan, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, its the way the world is today, change is good, blah blah fucking blah." None of that means shit when your life is upended and you're treading water for your life, facing all sorts of social and personal challenges and emotions on top of extreme stress and economic uncertainty. I made it, I'm secure today, a little more jaded, a little wiser, maybe. That's about it.

[Timbuk2]

Jesus Chaboobies. That's quite a story.

Black-belt 6-Sigma is v useful these days. I've only had limited exposure to it, in my last position.

Your last paragraph is really grounded - v useful words. A lot of trite clichés have come my way this last week, and while I appreciate people's concern, this situation can be awful for some.

[Timbuk2]

Back in the office today to hand over lose threads to my (ex) boss. I now have nothing work-wise to do for the next 3 and a half months..

Have been scouring our HR intranet for details of my redundancy payout. I don't get details of my official redundancy until toward the end of my notice, but have been told it's easily calculable from said intranet.

Turns out I will be paid almost double what I was expecting. Pleased to bits about that.

So am pushed toward finding a job elsewhere, taking the payment, and not looking for another position internally.

[EyeKhan]

Black-belt 6-Sigma is v useful these days. I've only had limited exposure to it, in my last position.

I had finished the training and was working on my second of two required projects when I learned it was sink/swim time. I busted my ass to complete the certification, just in time, and found another job. Today my company has more or less abandoned 6-Sigma - nobody does formal projects anymore. The group I moved into was dissolved which is how I got to my current spot, which is loads better. Today I have so much work I can't possible keep up. I often find myself working Saturday and Sunday afternoons from home, sometimes at night until 11:00pm or later. I use remote desktop and I can literally do 95% of my job anywhere with a laptop and an internet connection. Like any company, mine wants as much as I'm willing to give it. And more. It will eat me alive if I let it.

[Dreadnaught]

Hard as I've tried, I've yet to be able to understand this whole Sig Sigma thing besides the jokes about it on 30 Rock.

[Khendraja'aro]

I have to admit, the only black-belts I know do Karate, Jiu-Jitsu or something like that.

[EyeKhan]

Hard as I've tried, I've yet to be able to understand this whole Sig Sigma thing besides the jokes about it on 30 Rock.

In a nut shell 6-Sigma is a semi-universal process improvement methodology that uses tools and disciplines from the scientific method to objectively analyze business processes of all types, determine problem root causes and improvements, and measure the end results. The key focus is on variation - where does the process have an opportunity to fail, how does it fail, and at what frequency?

At my company, pre-6-Sigma, when someone thought there was a problem, the highest pay grade in the room guessed at a solution and proceeded to implement it. The results might have addressed the problem or made it worse, or created a new problem or done nothing at all, but for the most part it was difficult to know for sure. Without a root cause analysis, without a means to zero in on and measure the frequency of the failure modes or a means to measure the improvement's results, what can you say for sure but that you took a shot in the dark? Of course the highest pay grade in the room could very often just claim "problem solved", mark it on his PR and move on.

Over a period of 5-10 years just about everyone in the company went through Greenbelt training and many key individuals received blackbelt certification. We've backed off on that but IMHO there were solid results. Yes, there were wastes too, but just about everybody has been exposed to the concept of data and metrics and its expected that whatever it is you're up to, you better have measured it and you better be ready to present and explain the results.

A former supervisor/ friend of mine who is now a Master Blackbelt now working at a facilities consulting company insists pretty much every company he works with is about as screwed up as we were at one time. And he has worked with some big, well known companies. IMHO anyone who makes actual process-oriented decisions in a company ought to have some exposure to the scientific method, what its good for, and how to use it. Things are a lot better in my company today, but the key quality of upper management still seems to be ego over objectivity and substance.

[Dreadnaught]

Interesting...is it specialized for companies that produce physical goods whose value can be easily measured? Or does semi-universal really mean semi-universal?

Is it math-heavy? And if I took one of those six sigma online courses to put on my resume for no particular reason, is it worth my while?

[EyeKhan]

Interesting...is it specialized for companies that produce physical goods whose value can be easily measured? Or does semi-universal really mean semi-universal?

It was originally conceived at Motorola for manufacturing. But its adaptable to non-production processes as well. The first step is to sit down, map out your process, determine where there's opportunity for defect and come up with a way to measure the defect. Then you can determine how bad things are by taking some data. I've used it in facility maintenance, service, and logistics.

Is it math-heavy? And if I took one of those six sigma online courses to put on my resume for no particular reason, is it worth my while?

Its very statistics heavy if you're doing a blackbelt certification. I don't know for sure but if you're not getting an actual certification from some credible institution, you're probably wasting your time. On the other hand you can probably word it cleverly on your resume to give a good impression if the interviewers only know 6-Sigma as a buzz word. I don't know what your business is but it seems to me an actual certification would be worth your while in real, practical terms as well as on your resume. Maybe do the online thing to give you a thorough introduction and from there decide if you want to spend the money and time to get certified.

[Dreadnaught]

That's what I was thinking. I need some new shallow check-boxes on my resume.

Unfortunately I don't bring a lot of "process" to my work. Or at least my work doesn't need a lot of process. Probably why walking the corridors of the federal government has become a living nightmare.

[EyeKhan]

Every task you do is probably at least a step, or a few, in a process. You have inputs, whatever your job is (the process), and outputs - whatever you send to your 'customers.' I've worked in a lot of different roles in a variety of bureaucracies and never done a legitimate job that could not be mapped out as a process. It might be a very sloppy, very loosely defined process, but that's just an opportunity for improvement.

EDIT: Haven't you been through an ISO certification? Every task of every job is broken down into work instructions . . . . that's essentially a process.

[Dreadnaught]

Never heard of an ISO certification.

[Timbuk2]

* BUMP *

After three months on gardening leave, not able to work, I officially became an unemployed statistic on the 1st October.

I have spent the last two months applying relentlessly for work, averaging between 10-20 job applications per week.

No bites. Plenty of interest from recruiters, and was head-hunted twice, but to no avail. Financial Services sector slower than I had anticipated. Quite a few jobs going, but so many applicants going for them.

Finally, I have my first interview on tuesday, with a leading Global Financial Services consultancy in the City. Looks like it will be one of the toughest challenges I've faced.

A series of stages, involving interviews, competency-based questioning, skills tests, group exercises and presentations for them to narrow down the applicants to the suitable candidates. I've not been through anything quite like this before.

So have two days to prep, and then do my best.

My redundancy payout comes along on thursday. Would be nice to be back in work before I need to start eating into it.

[Dreadnaught]

Really sorry to hear, I sure didn't expect things to get to this.

But you're certainly qualified and have experience. Have you taken any steps to downscale your lifestyle in the interim?

[Ziggy Stardust]

Crap, I saw this thread and was hoping for better news.

Good luck Tuesday.*crosses fingers* Keep us updated.