Lots of IT people cut in Columbus
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The loss of Boomers is a great point. AEP is a company of experienced people. There’s no real structured pipeline to replenish talent, so the best folks are almost all close to retirement. Some were forced out over the last year, and some will be retiring within the next few. I shudder to think where we’ll be then.
There is some young talent in Transmission and TFS though. I hope those folks stick around.
The company will have to deal with the exodus of Boomers over the next few years. With those retirements so will the knowledge they have. None of that will be replaced. Sc--w the company if it think that I'm going to stick around 3 days a week to train someone or some guy in India. You made this mess, now live with the effects of it. That will be my feelings when I leave. I heard that from someone this summer when he left, he was not going to help with the transition when he left or so strike around a few days a week I think most boomers have the same feelings. I'll take my retirement and just leave. I turn 65 next year and I'm done.
Our corporate culture has never been more fragile. Severances have left a workforce that is just functioning despite itself. Leadership realizes a few key retirements or resignations shall lead to a catastrophic cascading failure of corporate structure that shall leave major shareholders' greed fest a smoking crater of value destruction. It is imperative that corporate management rebuild employees' trust, sense of shared sacrifice and shared reward to head off a mass stampede of talent which shall leave a woefully inadequate and incompetent herd of ego strokers to run the company into the ground. Employees are in control and corporate management has its back to the Wall Street wall.
It feels like ichan is pulling a page from the ge jack welch playbook. Raising the dividend for shareholders, slashing labor costs, outsourcing; who knows what other costs he is eyeing. That played out terrible for ge in the long term; however if you cashed in short term you made some good money.
This is starting to look like the cure is going to ki-l the patient. I have no doubt many of us will still be here at the end of the year. After that all bets are off, either people will retire at an accelerated rate or more targeted layoffs. AEP is the Titanic, I doubt we're going to make Port on time or in one piece.
Those employees and retirees, who labor and have labored diligently to create and sustain our company's, our states' and our nation's prosperity shall not be denied our virtuous destiny nor our noble legacy. Virtue-less tyrants and oligarchs, who swear allegiance only to themselves and their major shareholders' insatiable greed shall not subjugate our virtuous American Dream.
The destruction of AEP Generation continues with the pending loss of two of the very finest leaders, Chris Beam and Tim Kerns. Initially I had hoped with Julie's departure that the new senior leadership would build the company back up, but it now appears to just be the Draper Years Part II.
Generation Engineering? The Great Flattening of the Org seems to be starting the "Spans and Layers" plan in Generation and rolling it out across the company. HR seems to be struggling to create new roles for the demoted supervisors and managers. The timeline seems absolutely compressed to meet an unknown deadline regardless of how disruptive it is to the day-to-day operations.
Another thing for everyone to keep in mind, they are focusing on data security hard right now by revoking USB access to most of the people that previously had it. Additionally, they are asking Director levels to review and verify certain types of email attachments sent by their reports for "valid business reasons". So be mindful if you're working on resumes or backing up contacts for personal use.
Unfortunately, for many the damage is done. Employees are emotionally and intellectually exhausted and have no desire to play the corporate crony culture game any longer. Waiting for things to get better has proven futile as 31 flavors of clique management always winds up being cheap window dressing on the same sad and pathetic self-absorbed, as long as I am doing good sc--w the employees leadership paradigm.
@4Fdbi+1qB6FXi3 "growing pains" are you serious? She's been here for over 4 years. TCS is as bad today as they were the first day they came onboard. At some point changes in the Board or Bill will catch up with her. I just wish it would happen sooner than later.
Looks like I’m safe.
Fehrman cleaning house. Peggy and Beam both gone. I wonder why he hasn’t shed Therace yet. I think it’s fair to say that the board has endorsed her offshoring strategy for IT functions despite the growing pains.
How many managers to be demoted this week?
Many more managers and coordinators to be eliminated by weeks end?
One has to wonder, if some of these promotions allowed the company to receive higher COVID 19 Pandemic reimbursements from the federal government for keeping workers on the job because promoted employees had higher earnings. Now, that these promoted employees are no longer cash cows for the company they are being demoted back to their former positions because Pandemic assistance was great while it lasted.
I cant believe they want to fire me. Im doing such a good job and have been a real asset since I took over IT.
The Chief Administrative Officer's org is making changes currently.
What groups are making those changes? My leadership has been communicating the spans and layers is a suggestion….
I am so happy that I'm out of that place. What a sh it show for the past 4 years.
No layoffs in my department but layers of leadership being cut and managers/supervisors demoted so that our directors can have more direct reports. I get that AEP is top heavy, but let's take a look at the 90+ folks who are VP or above, or the managing directors, directors, and managers that don't have any direct reports. Its was such a wonderful feeling getting demoted today from manager role to a individual contributor because there's not enough folks on our team to meet Bill's 5-4-3-12 spans of control philosophy. And being told it is so those of us being demoted can focus on the day to day work....Im a working manager, I do day to day work and manage my folks on top of that. Was told that my role won't change except that I won't approve timesheets or do PMRs but yet I still have to lead, coach and mentor staff and be responsible for performance.
Thankful to still have a job but pi---d that frontline management is treated like this when we have way too many leaders above manager level - highly doubt any of them are being demoted because they're the ones making the decisions and are going to protect themselves instead of looking at efficiencies that make sense instead of playing a numbers game.
AEP's intrinsic value is its dedicated work force which has not shared in the financial success they are directly responsible for on a day-to-day basis. Leadership and shareholders reap all the rewards and employees do all the suffering and sacrificing. Working multiple days in high heat and humidity is dangerous and exhausting and employees see no appreciation for their dedication. Rising benefits costs, inadequate cost of living increases, rigged to fail ICP incentive program metrics and pitiful payouts are woefully inadequate and insulting. Self-absorbed leadership have neglected to address employee dissatisfaction and morale exhaustion. Without your dedicated long tenure employees your value is an illusion.
Bill is counting on us, guys.
Do it for Bill.
Hopefully not, but if the socialists win or steal the election look for mass fire sales of large portions of this company and many more like it. Like others said below, pensions and retirements may be stolen from the workers to maintain profits for the large shareholders.
If you don’t believe in the kickbacks, ask around about Optiv in cyber. 30-50% markup but management kept them for years. There’s a reason cyber used a different VAR than the rest of the company.
If you're worried about your pension, retire as soon as you can. Take the lump sum option on the cash balance and move it to a traditional IRA. You won't pay any taxes on the move if you use a direct rollover. Take your 401k and do the same thing. At that point Carl can go pound sand. The only thing left with AEP is medical coverage and memories.
Eight days after signing the Icahn agreement, AEP’s board of directors—including both of Icahn’s non-voting designees—“determined to remove” Julia A. Sloat from her roles as Chair, Chief Executive Officer and President of AEP, deeming her removal as an “Involuntary Termination”.[4]
Activist investor Carl C. Icahn owns only 1% of AEP’s voting shares. For typical investors, owning 1% of voting shares grants no special rights or privileges, let alone control over two seats on the board of directors. But Mr. Icahn is not a typical investor. He is an activist investor—earning the colloquial moniker “corporate raider”[5]— specializing in engaging in protracted, hostile shareholder fights to gain control of target corporations for the sole purpose of moving the company’s stock price to a pre-determined target that bestows considerable profit for Mr. Icahn.
There isn't much information about how many pensions Carl Icahn has stolen, but here's some information about a pension dispute he had with TWA:
In 1992, the federal pension agency, the PBGC, claimed that Icahn needed to put up money to fix a $1.2 billion pension shortfall at TWA.
Icahn said that TWA had made all required payments to its pension funds since he bought the airline.
Icahn preferred to negotiate a settlement instead of being sued by the PBGC.
If there was an out-of-court settlement, the PBGC would receive hundreds of millions of dollars from Icahn.
@4Aldk+1qB6FXi3
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Sounds like they took it from. The Democrats playbook. Let in 20 million illegals, ship them to swing states and then give the right to vote. Now you get a single party like in California. Companirs are no different, they'll bring people in to perform some tasks to completely remake a company and in many cases it never works out with the intended result. Based on who is in charge at various levels of leadership, most are Dems and have no clue what they are doing.
If you follow these hedge fund maneuvers, you will see that when the target corporation is brought to the verge of bankruptcy, the executive pensions are fully funded. It is only the workers’ pensions that take a hit. The solution is simple: pass a law that if the workers’ pensions are not fully funded, as all executive pensions are, the executive pensions must make up the shortfall. Then, we will have fully funded worker pensions — no problem.
As part of the hedge fund maneuvers, you will see that when the target corporation is brought to bankruptcy, the executive pensions are often, but not always, fully funded, but workers’ pensions always take a hit. That means that workers must make a claim on a federal agency called the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. This body of responsible corporations are forced to increase their contributions to this fund in order to support the Private Equity plunder.
The enemy within cloaks itself in the illusion of superiority while draining the organization of its virtuous soul. An empty husk is all that shall remain as they enemy within waddles away in a ecstasy of gluttony seeking its next unsuspecting victim.
DEI was pushed in many circles over the past 4-5 years. The company jumped on the BLM band wagon and pushed a completely different agenda over that time. Low cost, safe work environment, satisfying career and decent leadership. What do we have now? You can be replaced with some guy in India making $10 a day, no career, stuck where you are, need to leave to get anywhere, stagnant pay, sold off 1/3 of generation and replaced it with solar and wind. Wind farms have a 20 year life and solar only works half the time. Unstable grid because the base load can't keep up with demand. I may work for AEP but I have a different supplier by choice. Sc--w them getting any of my pay back.
It was not Leftist or righ wingers who destroyed AEPs culture. It was bad leadership. Leadership that is is self absorbed and choose the low road path of leadership. It chased talent away. High road leadership is about providing an environment for all employees to thrive in. That is not occuring in AEP across the company.
The company was ran into the ground long before the corporate raiders , the leftists and wokeness pretty much had done that, best thing now would be a fire sale of the units and assets.
At least kickbacks from vendors are still flowing. Pays my mortgage.
We went from essential employees, who were subsidized by the federal government during the pandemic to unnecessary expenses when the federal government wealth-fare dried up. How did the company turn a profit before the pandemic? They didn't let conmen and corporate raiders run the company into the ground. We are better than this tawdry travesty of virtue-less greed and haughty hubris.
Everyone returns to the office and the good ones will go on their own. EASY to do no cost layoffs that way. The dead weight will just report to the office and do nothing there vs. nothing at home. The ones that got work done at home or at the office will go to employers that want good workers. Employers that are not tied to expensive real estate and locality tax breaks that require butts in seats for their payout. Employers that would fire the dead weight vs keeping them on cause it is easier to ignore them than deal with HR to fire them.
Some one downtown is hitting the EASY button right now. We just haven't been made aware yet.
Who are they going to layoff? After the cuts in January and the VSP, people are stretched thin as is. There’s not a lot of fat in the org right now.
If they are considering it, they must be worried that there isn’t enough regulatory muscle in the org to win rate cases, so they’ve got to get O&M down somehow.
Word is layoffs around thanksgiving, delaying until after elections
Does anyone even care about the dividend? 88 cents a share? What is that like 3.5% a year? My savings account gets more than that
The reason people leave and come back is because there is no one left to cut. And they keep cutting the wrong people. Has anyone ever noticed that not one single TR person, or Minnesota resident (besides Sanjay for for being a crook) has ever been cut?
When people come back as contractors that is a poor representation of the managent of who they were under. You cut the wrong people and you have to bring them back just to get the work done. If you have to bring them back, then your decision to cut them was a bad one.
They keep wanting cuts, with no forward looking plans more than 6 months. It's like a crack addict trying to do whatever to get their next fix.
In this case they will do anything to pay that dividend and not show weakness on Wallstreet.
I would think they'll get rid of people based on their desires and not the employees. This is just a job now