Lots of IT people cut in Columbus
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I posted the dispatch link on Reddit with the headline that AEP was set to layoff over 7000 employees by July. I was met with a barrage of hate - being called a fear mongering tool, among a slew of other terrible comments. Tho I explained that voluntary severance is a pretty corporate phrase for saying layoff, only 2 people understood it meant layoffs (former Columbia gas workers who worked there when they were asked to volunteer to lose their jobs). My point Is I’m afraid the general public does not understand what it means either because of the language AEP purposely used. I think we need to spread the word of what’s really happening so people outside of the organization understand that the company wants to get rid of nearly half the company. The company wants people to “volunteer” to not get their hands dirty while protecting their image. I’m going to post more Glassdoor, all social media sites, Reddit again (someone had my post removed) anywhere I can think off. The more of us who put it out there that theses are layoffs, the more the people will understand what’s actually happening
This has been in the works since Sloate was appointed CEO. Her sole purpose was to lead the “reconstructing” and sale AEP Energy’s unregulated renewable energy portfolio. There was a hiring freeze that started late 2022, shortly after she was appointed and this was the beginning of the process. Upper management was already planning layoffs and anticipated they would start in Summer of 2023. The process of selling the unregulated renewable energy portfolio to IRG took longer to work out than the company anticipated, which is why the layoffs were pushed to February.
Additionally, to get out of the dark money scandal a few years ago, AEP entered into a contract with the city of Columbus and many others across the state to be the sole energy supplier. It’s like a plea deal that allows the state profit and AEP just got a slap on the hand.
@1Hwes+1qB6FXi3 - It is perfectly fine to feel upset about seeing something you care about a lot decline and to see the situation as a potential for personal change/growth. People can walk and chew gum at the same time.
I would contend that as a company a big part of why we are where we currently are is an ongoing preference to be and reward pollyannas that focus on collectively sweeping anything even slightly negative under the rug and instead prioritizing rooting out any "negative nancy" who even acknowledges that the rug possibly has things under it at all.
This company is truly a dumpster fire.
Middle to upper management has the idea of constant change will make things run better , we cannot get adjusted to yesterdays changes before the procedure changes again. They are running around changing things just to say look at me and what I did.
On an optimistic note; perhaps this is an opportunity. Often we get stuck in a place not realizing there is something better and different for us. Most often someone has to make the choice for us and knock us out of our comfort zone. I know a couple folks who have been laid off recently, and have actually made a change for the better, both personally and professionally. As harsh as it may sound, a company does not owe you anything. It is not much different than a company investing in you and then you to take a better paying position elsewhere with the knowledge and experienced you gained. So perhaps rather than a complaining attitude try to have a grateful heart, trust in yourself and those around you, and pursue something bigger and better. Good luck to all.
You're right,my day of caring for this company has come to an end. If the Board doesn't care, why should I. If the Board only cares about making a show of doing something and collecting the check why should I be any different. If the Board treats people as numbers, fine, I now now I'm a number and numbers don't have feelings. I'll collect my check and and at 5p I'm done for the day.
The motivation is gone. Most people I know at engineering, plan to leave AEP and are waiting for their 4 years experience to get PE. AEP has become the place to get experience and leave. I feel like people barely do their job, or they don't care about their designs anymore, so the cost of design is much higher than it should be.
In general, AEP is only alive because of its monopoly, the team is literally not even doing 50% in their work.
It's hard to keep going to work for a company that only a few years came to a grinding halt for half a day due to a datacenter power outage, yet now Therace has surrounded the hen house with foxes and it's only a matter of time until the company suffers a catastrophic failure or cyber attack far worse. The board doesn't care that everyone who cares about keeping AEP's systems safe and secure were pushed out or fired by Therace because those principals don't fit her agenda. They don't care that Therace's cronies have added event and security monitoring tools like Dynatrace that generate thousands of nonsense alerts and vulnerabilities so she can make it look like TCS is busy at work when they are accomplishing nothing but robbing our company of the finances they claim are so limited. While blowing all of our budget on nonsense work, she deprioritizes and cancels works to fix real security holes and then pushes out another security manager as a scapegoat anytime one of our systems is taken over by a hacker. All the while she opens up all of our secure NERC environment to incompetents in India so they can mishandle and leak all of our critical systems to foreign nationals. I almost want to be laid off so I don't have to keep witnessing this gross misconduct and borderline treason. Traitor Therace.
My biggest complaint about the entire mess is, you have people that want to leave and maybe can financially handle a buyout and then you have others that may not have a choice in a month that can't. Why not just let those that want to go from the entire pool of employees just take the money and leave. I'm in both camps, I don't want to leave but I could maybe if it was 5 years from now. However, if I could leave now and was told I couldn't, I'd be pi$$ed. These buy outs happens once every 15 years, if you miss it, it might not happen again when you come close to retirement.
I’m wondering how many people’s district manager is telling them the same thing we are getting told in my department. We are being told that everything will be fine in our department and we won’t be losing people if there is an involuntary severance yet we are eligible for this severance. I don’t trust it at all and sounds like what a manager would say in any situation.
What could be done to get rid of the new regime? I like that someone went to the Columbus Dislatch about the buyout. Maybe that’s all we can do. If you know anyone remotely in media reach out to them and share details with them. You can remain anonymous. Hurting the stock price by bad press is probably the only way to get the board to change course. Or at least speed up the Therace exit timeline.
I would love to know how many new employees we’ve brought on from Minnesota since 2020. I know of 12+ personally. All of which are high paying jobs. How is nepotism of that magnitude allowed? I know nepotism alone isn’t illegal, but if someone else applied and got passed up in favor of someone Therace and her buddies know then that discrimination. Which is illegal. There’s too many of them for it to not be true, at the very least once. The Minnesota Mafia is ruining AEP.
https://www.dispatch.com/story/business/2024/04/27/aep-targets-job-reductions-through-voluntary-severance-program/73453338007/
The comments on employee morale being included are interesting. Can't help but think that the media is finally catching on that something is up around here worthy of more attention from them.
AEP did the same in 2010; back than they already had the contractors to replace who they did not need.
@1Cixx+1qB6FXi3
I just read your post and I got to thinking, did they actually have that in mind knowing they were going to have all of these cuts? It makes you wonder if all of this was in the works for the past 9-10 months. Get rid of the survey BEFORE we start cutting the employees. We do not need to have those left slam management for the cuts. Doesn't look good and it was part of the ICP. Now they can just ignore the side effects of the cuts because there is no feedback to the management team. All of the other "surveys" that are posted on the internal site are handled by HR and Corp Comm who are going to tow the company message. Most don't care what JD Powers, Gallup, or JUST Jobs have to say about the company, they mean nothing to most of the employees.
A week closer to retirement or a layoff. At this point in my 30+ years at AEP, not sure which will happen first. It feels like I've worked for 4 different companies in that time. The pre-merger with CSW, Post-merger, the Lean years and now the Dark Ages with the Black Death. This by far is the worse of them. If we get out of this mess, I will hope the next stage will be a Renaissance. For that to happen, change has to come with a complete overhaul of upper-level managers and not the grunts in the trenches. And please for God sake, get rid of TCS. Cap Gemini or Accenture would have been a better choice if we had to have IT outsourced.
Let the firings continue until morale improves.
Let the purges begin. Long live the state. Are they going to start offering bonuses if we rat out people who are unhappy soon?
I LOVED AEP. I was there 18 years and loved it until Therace came in and destroyed morale, the culture, and the feeling that AEP cared about the employees. This is what hiring an unqualified person for the sake of diversity. I was SHOCKED when I was let go in January. It’s very sad to see what has happened to the IT organization. I used to recommend people to work at AEP. Not anymore. So sad. I loved working there and planned on retiring from there. :-(
IT has been tasked to do broad keyword searches on all corporate owned devices. The word "Therace" is on the list of flagged words. Do with that info what you will.
A career at AEP, I had to laugh. That died in May, 2020. From the very beginning it's been you can and will be replaced at our whim. You're lucky to have a job and when we decide you can be replaced by some guy in India, you're gone. The former AEP managers are so scared they'll do anything to keep their jobs because they know she'll replace them with a cronie or a TCS contractor.
Read Therace's email to IT and it's absolutely pathetic. The woman has no clue what she sowed. She thinks it's great we cut IT to point where the limbs are barely hanging on, projects cut, maintenance put off, people cut and we're doing great. Anyone who can afford to retire, do so. Do not stick around. If you can get another job, leave. Give your 2 weeks and just leave for a place that will give you a career and not just a paycheck.
Ops leadership is very good at picking the d-mbest strategy and then being advised by HR and Comm leadership on the least effective means of communicating it. The past year has demonstrated that this is a company full of mediocre-to-terrible individuals in middle management and higher ranks, when it comes to actual work, whose only actual strengths are personal branding and mutual self-fluffing of everyones brilliance in that club.
I just don't care anymore.
I think a lot of people were disappointed with the company and how they handled it. There is so much I'll will towards the company internally it's unreal. I have never seen it this bad. They would have been better off doing mandatory cuts in the groups left out in Jan. Then next month ask for volunteers across all BUs. Or they should have asked for volunteers in Jan
Psh… Unreal…
When a company lays off employees, especially if they are also customers, often it creates a negative perception. Employees feel betrayed or undervalued, leading to decreased morale and loyalty.
It also raises questions about the company’s ethics and commitment to its workforce.
With these ongoing layoffs I am curious about the effect on a company’s reputation as a responsible employer.
Curious, after the February layoffs, was that followed by rate increases for services? If so, could that give a perception they are profiteering at employee's expense?
As a customer/employee wouldn’t you prefer that the company support local employment and contribute to the community?
My heart goes out to those impacted in by the February and the April (and the one after).
Very interesting
Speaking from IT. When I came here I was so impressed with how well everyone worked together and how lean IT was. We were able to be lean because we had personal relationships with everyone we relied on. AEP IT did more with less than any IT I have ever seen, and I have seen a lot. Then in comes Therace and dismantles it all. Now we have rotating TCS id--ts that just got out of high school. If any of them show promise, they rip them out immediately and send them to a higher paying Customer. Now we are hemorrhaging money and getting nothing done. Great job Therace, if you wanted to destroy AEP, you couldn't have done a better job. Why is our Board still allowing this to happen?
Morale in my team has been at rock bottom for a couple of years now, and the hits just keep coming, and no one cares. We were literally told ‘be thankful you have a job’. Might not even be able to say that to us in a couple months….
Looks like mostly all the non union positions All office, engineering, administration, etc.
Which business units were targeted?
Agreed, not sure we hit rock bottom but seems like we are very close. No wonder they got rid of the annual employee survey. Could you imagine what the numbers would be this year.
I’ve been with AEP for 40+ years and I have never seen the employee moral any worse. It’s almost like management takes great joy in making everyone miserable. The field employees, the ones that keep the lights on, were excluded from the severance. While management enjoys their 15% and up ICP awards the field employees were cut from 5% to 3%. I truly feel sorry for the people that are going to lose their jobs due to a company that is horribly ran. If it wasn’t for a guaranteed return through the regulated companies AEP would have been bankrupt years ago.
It is only 26.6% of the eligible employees......
Before the announcement, the leaker said that amount was needed to reduce the costs. They’ll probably try to get 500-600 to volunteer then discharge another 500-600 to try to meet the target.
Where are people hearing the 2000 people/10% of employees from? If it's true, 2000 out of 7500 people is an insanely large amount to cut...
The second email that came out to the 9400 not eligible was all disaster control. Personally the Board is a disaster in their handling of this. Based on track record, I'm sure they'll sc--w up the new CEO hire.
Has the communication been released ? If so, how many eligible ?
IT seems exempt from these voluntary layoffs. Where else are they going to cut? I’m hearing ~10% or more need to go for this to be a success.