Lots of IT people cut in Columbus
2659 replies (most recent on top)
Some months back, one of my coworkers sent a question to “Ask the CEO”. Now, the question was based on a few real issues and ideas our team had.
Somehow that question was routed from Bill to our VP. This (former) VP then asked our supervisor to come up with a response to a question that basically came from his own team! We got a real laugh out of that.
A day later, Bill sends the verbatim message that our supervisor came up with, back to my coworker. You can’t make this stuff up.
The only thing brigading the review section of Kathy Fehrman's totally unrelated restaurant would do is demonstrate how powerless AEP employees are at addressing the actual cause of their problems.
Bill's wife recently opened a restaurant. "Oak Park" in Des Moines, IA. Someone posted about this the other day and the message got deleted. Let's all be adults and don't leave negative Google reviews. That would be ridiculous.
why are posts getting deleted?
https://www.businessrecord.com/architect-oak-park-restaurant-warm-not-intimidating/
Eventually, Kathy and Bill Fehrman, Oak Park’s owners, told Hartman and his team that they could design the restaurant without including the house. The catch? The Fehrmans gave the team one week to produce a new design that included a state-of-the-art kitchen and dining area where every guest had a seat by a window.
https://www.dmcityview.com/civic-skinny/2023/05/03/spendy-condos-a-history-of-iowas-closed-colleges-and-investments-in-highland-park/#:~:text=Fehrman%20is%20married%20to%20Bill,energy%20companies%20throughout%20the%20world.
The Kathleen J. Fehrman Revocable Trust paid $2,838,799 for a unit that takes up half of the top floor in the eight-story building at 3750 Grand Ave. (Or, as the sign says, “3750 ON Grand.”) Fehrman is the developer of the Oak Park restaurant under construction a few blocks away on Ingersoll and is a commissioner and former chair of the Iowa Department of Transportation. According to the DOT, she is also the managing partner of Fehrman Investments, LLC.
Fehrman is married to Bill Fehrman, the president and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway Energy, which owns MidAmerican Energy in Des Moines as well as energy companies throughout the world.
Walgreens didn't pay a dividend, first time in 90+ years. AEP better pay a dividend or else.
There are 2 other threads on this site about AEP but this one is the most active.
When the last employee walks out please turn the lights off and lock the door. Attach a sign to the outside of the door closed due to hedge fund fraud.
@1p5h+1qB6FXi3 remember HR works for the company, not the employee. They will do what is BEST for the COMPANY NOT for the EMPLOYEE! Ask any decent labor lawyer and they will tell you to document everything in writing when dealing with HR. HR will backstab you in a heartbeat if it means saving the company from a lawsuit. HR has never been and will never be your friend.
AEP is a multi-state company. We routinely collaborate with employees remotely because our contacts live all over the US. We have team members in Columbus, Tulsa, Texas, West Virginia, Louisiana, all over. Many of us are intelligent college-educated professionals, yet the best Bill can do is treat us like children and use nonsense HR pseudo-language about "tremendous opportunity" to justify his decisions, which obviously have ulterior motives.
This guy is a menace. He hasn't even been here a year and he's already making sweeping changes to the company, radically worsening the lifestyle of all employees and selling off huge stakes in our business. It's hard to imagine what this company will be like in 5 years but it feels like Bill was brought in and immediately started taking us in the wrong direction.
if you are remote (and make $110k per year) and live about 40 min away; going back in the office 5 days is roughly 15% pay reduction and 18% increase in time (372 hours a year driving). How exciting to work 18% more for 15% less money...?!
I was recently hired as a hybrid employee with no speak of that changing anytime soon. Going back into the office is a pay cut. Guessing our merit increases will be measly and along with bonuses. There’s really no point in sticking around to find out. I would have never accepted this role with the recent changes Bill has made.
Traumatizing employees to weaken their resistance to hedge fund exploitation is inhuman. Toxifying the workplace to divide and conquer employees is the act of a saboteur. How can we be collaborative when we are being dictated to by an outsider, whose first loyalty is to a hedge fund tyrant's insatiable greed.
At bill’s pep rally for leaders, he announced that we didn’t deserve such high ICP’s in the past. Also, he’s been trash talking Nick Akins and saying he did a “terrible” job leading AEP. It’s time to get the f*ck out!!!
Company culture and employee morale are at all-time lows. Here are a few suggestions for this year’s culture action plans:
- Be the hero we all need right now. Turn AEPNow comments back on.
- Change ‘Ask Bill’ to ‘F Bill’. Bonus points if you add his home address for fan mail.
- Make Spotify’s billboard stating employees are not children the photo of the day every day.
- Have employee movie day at 1RP and play a certain Quentin Tarantino classic around the clock. Bonus points if everyone wears matching t-shirts.
Love to hear additional suggestions for this year’s culture action plan. Understand if most of these have implementation dates of March 17.
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Embody Virtue
Defend Liberty
Demand Equality
Define Justice
Vanquish Tyranny
Thus Live Our American Dream
@1nzr+1qB6FXi3 no you want it to be high as possible. Best is anything 1.xx, what we'll most likely see is 0.xx. If your salary is $100k, your base is 10%, and the multiplier is 1.5, your ICP is $15k. If it's 0.5, your ICP is $5k.
You want that number as large as possible. One year we had somewhere around 1.7 but those are days are over.
For ICP a multiplier of 1 means you should receive the % by your salary grade. Example, if you are a grade 8, ICP is 10% of your salary assuming the score/multiplier is 1. So let's say your grade 8 and your salary is 100,000. With a score of 1, you should be receiving around 10,000 gross. This figure may vary as some BUs have separate ICP criteria and your ICP can also be adjusted at your managers discretion for performance. In this example, If the ICP score is .88, then you receive .88x10,000 or 8,800 gross. The score ranges from 0 (no bonus) to 2 (maximum amount allowed). Ideally we want ICP score to be at 1 or more.
The ICP score is largely driven by our Earnings per Share. We have a EPS guidance range with the midpoint equating to an ICP score of 1. EPS alone accounts for about 70% of the overall score and there are other factors such as safety performance, strategic goal performance, etc. If you are an employee, you can search 2024 ICP on the AEPNow and find the ICP scorecard which gives a breakdown of how ICP performance is calculated.
Lasy year the ICP score was .57 - it was the lowest payout in probably the last 10 years or so. Previous years it has been above 1. Long story short, you generally want an ICP score above 1.
So wait a lower multiplier is better? This is too convoluted for me to understand
The "Carl Icahn hedge fund agenda" to impoverish employees and customers while further enriching the filthy rich is not well received. It is imperative we lobby our state legislatures and put an end to this hedge fund or-y of rabid greed. We are the many and they are the few. When we turn against them, their "agenda" and their political sycophants shall not save them from our virtuous and righteous indignation. This is a fight for the survival of our way of life and our American values. We cannot afford to fail.
I heard it’s .88 this year
If some stranger broke into your home and threatened you and your family's well being and lifetime of hard work, what would you do to protect your family and property? Bill is an unwelcome intruder, who broke into our home, attacked our family and started stealing what he never earned.
Unless I missed an HR announcement changing the policy, I know people last year that had their last day as 1/31/24 and received a check at the end of March.
They were not part of the buyout, nor layoff but they
did give 4 week notice and did not retire. Now, it might have
been at the manager's discretion but they got the ICP.
High Commander Billiam Fearman has issued a new directive in his total war against AEP employees.
From now on, AEP employees will be bombarded with an aggressively escalating amount of more and more sophisticated phishing email. Those who fail the test will be....liquidated.
If you leave before March 14th and do not "retire" then you do not get your ICP for 2024. You have to retire to get that money for the 2024 ICP period.
ICP is a percentage of your salary and varies based on your salary grade. Search 2025 pay structure on AEP now and it’s listed on the linked document. Don’t expect a 100% payout, that hasn’t happened in a couple years.
@1nvs+1qB6FXi3
Example, you make $100000 and your an 8 which has a 10%
Payout so you starting at $10000. The multiplier turns out to be
- 58(this is the number everyone is waiting for)
$10000*1.58=$15,800. What you will actually see is
About 70% of that or about $11,000.
Depending on what your 401k match is set
to it could be a lot less.
If the multiplier is say .6 your payout is a lot less,
Like $6000 gross. If your position is set at 5,
You'll be starting out at $5000 not $10000.
I believe 9 and up it's 15%. I'm an 8 so I know mine
is set at 10%.
Technically they are supposed to give you 100% payout if you worked the entire year even if you leave between Jan 1st and the payout. But .... Do you trust them? The rules state that if you worked more then 6 months of the year, you earned 50% of the payout for the year. I seriously doubt those folks are going to get that money. They'll make some excuse not to give it to them.
PLUS AEP has generous sick time (for now until Bill also takes that away.) If things get bad, just take a sick day here and there until March payout.
How does the ICP calculation work? What % of base do we receive? Is there a FAQ on AEPNow?
To the person commenting about leaving before March, please don't do that. You've worked all year for your ICP bonus. Don't leave before you've cashed that check. ICP payouts should be sometime in March. If you start applying for other jobs today, and you go through the interview and hiring process asking to start in late March would be perfectly reasonable. That's my plan too. As soon as I get that ICP check this year I'm out.
Team morale is at an all time low. Our new manager lives states away and from what we’ve heard they’re not the best. What really kept me around was my previous supervisor and team. Now it’s gone to sh-t. I’m don’t want to see half the team leave and be left overloaded with work even more than we already are. It’s a very uncertain time.
I don’t think they’re expecting to lose me, but I think I’m gonna dip out. I was hoping to wait until the March pay out, but I don’t know if I can last that long. My group is being micromanaged beyond what is acceptable and I’m now documenting all of it. I probably won’t do anything with that information but it wouldn’t hurt. They’re trying to make the working conditions so uncomfortable that we leave on our own. But I don’t think I’m one of the people they’re trying to push out. The work still has to get done. I’m not retirement age, but I have enough money to leave. I just don’t give a f anymore.
If they valued employee feedback then we wouldn't be going back to the office. I bet if you polled the employees affected by this, the response would be overwhelmingly negative. They don't care what you think at all, they made their decision and that is the end of it.
I doubt they even look at this out of curiosity. They're too busy enjoying their millions.
The snowball employees are trying to push uphill just keeps growing bigger and bigger and eventually we will all just step aside and watch the destruction wrought by a self-obsessed corporate culture we no longer enable.
I wonder if the executives ever look at these discussions on various sites/threads just to get a feel on how their decisions are affecting people. I know I would just to see how things are going. Then again, I'm just a peon.
A pandemic incubator. Pack a ton of people into a small space and recirculate the air they breath. One employee comes to work sick and you loose 2/3's of a floor to sick days. They will be feeding you antibiotics in your food pellets and electrolytes in your water dispensers. Intelligent people can be so stupid when their is a greater profit to be made at other peoples' expense and detriment.
We don't even get full cubes anymore, they swapped out our old ones for the "zoo cubes" with the glass walls and much larger doorway so that you can be seen at all times. They also arranged us in giant rows like factory workers.
Whatever the last guy is drinking, I'll have one as well. I will say my tact will be a bit different, I'm not going to speak up at all. No suggestions to make things better, no input on any survey (if we have one), no speaking up at meetings. Missing as many meetings as possible due to "work" requirements. No replying to emails requesting input. Nothing other than the work associated to what I was hired to do. Bill made this decision, he gets to live with the results. Low morale will only be one indicator of its failure. I agree with the last guy, don't come to my cube to BS or complain, not interested in hearing it. However I may have a 5 minute rule, you need to have your questions limited to 5 minutes. So when you come into my cube, you will be on the clock. Bonus time may be added it you have cookies or cake.