Layoffs in the Oil Patch 3

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by Looch City

Man stuff like this makes you realize how inconsequential regular employees are in corporations.

No matter what your job is, what project you're currently working on, what deadlines are next week or tomorrow, how high priority the task is....#### all that, you're getting laid off and lose all access immediately.

It's hilarious and sad at the same time.

I can see it from both points of view when I have sat in the dreaded "sit in your office and if you are still here by 1PM, you still have a job" layoff round as well as having to help facilitate the lay-offing.

During those sit in your office rounds, people definitely backed up company data into their personal google drives, etc. and had time to delete all their work and emails. The company can usually restore that but sometimes malicious behavior is difficult to deal with. Same thing with company property like laptops - information and documents can be saved and cached and disseminated even if your access is cut off in a remote lay-off. This can lead to privacy breaches and other damage which can get very costly or even involve law enforcement.

But I think we all know know after all the cycles in O&G that at the end of the day, the company only cares about its business & information and not about the employee. As friendly as you are with the HR person (and they are great people!) they are there to protect the company and not the employee.

[CaptainCrunch]

Its weird, my sister was laid off by Husky/Cenovus at the end of December, she'd been there for nearly 40 years. She had been working from home and they'd given her a really nice laptop to work with. They said they would make arrangements to get it, but nothing ever came from it, she hasn't bothered to turn it on, and its just sitting on it. Maybe they self destructed it and don't care if they get it back.

[Hack&Lube]

I have other tales too from O&G days - I've been asked to reverse search a terminated employees archived emails for keywords like "retirement" or "performance" so that HR could build a case against the employee that they had talked about early retirement before and they have had negative performance mentioned to them before by their superiors. It was like generating justification that the employee had been creating their own case for retirement before they got Blade Runnered in case they lawyered up. I felt bad but at the same time, I see both sides here as well and the employee was definitely underperforming or no-longer keeping up with the modern pace of work.

[nik-]

They laid off like 2500 people, they probably don't even know that laptop exists.

[Hack&Lube]

Originally Posted by nik-

They laid off like 2500 people, they probably don't even know that laptop exists.

IT probably got shredded as well and nobody has time or manpowerer enough to fix the inventory or even track assets down. $100K/year salary saved > $2000 laptop.

[Samonadreau]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

IT probably got shredded as well and nobody has time or manpowerer enough to fix the inventory or even track assets down. $100K/year salary saved > $2000 laptop.

100k salary plus 100k in overheads.

[burn_this_city]

What's the point in chasing a few laptops to add to the stacks you have leftover from all the layoffs. Who wants a 10 year old 15" HP?

[HockeyIlliterate]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

During those sit in your office rounds, people definitely backed up company data into their personal google drives, etc. and had time to delete all their work and emails. The company can usually restore that but sometimes malicious behavior is difficult to deal with. Same thing with company property like laptops - information and documents can be saved and cached and disseminated even if your access is cut off in a remote lay-off. This can lead to privacy breaches and other damage which can get very costly or even involve law enforcement.

Neither here nor there, but at one company I worked for (and allegedly as a result of someone copying loads of data just before leaving) they shut down all of the USBs and CD drives so that you couldn’t copy anything from or to a flash drive or CD, but the company completely failed to restrict one’s ability to transfer files to the cloud (specifically, to one’s personal Dropbox account).

Seems like quite the open backdoor to me.

[OldDutch]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

IT probably got shredded as well and nobody has time or manpowerer enough to fix the inventory or even track assets down. $100K/year salary saved > $2000 laptop.

2500 laptops are worth millions.

I never get why every company fails to invest in proper asset management systems. It seems like the very last thing anyone spends money on.

It always falls to a excel sheet and email, with a desktop guy like “Hey Manager, you get a laptop back?”

And honestly if a person said “they never had one”, there isn’t much else to do.

Just baffles me.

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by OldDutch

2500 laptops are worth millions.

I never get why every company fails to invest in proper asset management systems. It seems like the very last thing anyone spends money on.

It always falls to a excel sheet and email, with a desktop guy like “Hey Manager, you get a laptop back?”

And honestly if a person said “they never had one”, there isn’t much else to do.

Just baffles me.

2500 laptops cost millions, but if you don't need them because you terminated all the employees I doubt they're worth millions. Whats the resale on a used laptop? They probably got most of them back, so they'll have internal supply for long past when those are obsolete. I can see how tracking down the last few might not be good ROI.

[Volas]

Layoffs at NorthRiver today.

[Torture]

Originally Posted by bizaro86

2500 laptops cost millions, but if you don't need them because you terminated all the employees I doubt they're worth millions. Whats the resale on a used laptop? They probably got most of them back, so they'll have internal supply for long past when those are obsolete. I can see how tracking down the last few might not be good ROI.

2500 laptops may seem like a lot of money, and sure, the company wants to pick them all up, but if a handful get missed it's a pretty small impact compared to 2500 severance packages that might be 5-6 figures each.

[Torture]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

I have other tales too from O&G days - I've been asked to reverse search a terminated employees archived emails for keywords like "retirement" or "performance" so that HR could build a case against the employee that they had talked about early retirement before and they have had negative performance mentioned to them before by their superiors. It was like generating justification that the employee had been creating their own case for retirement before they got Blade Runnered in case they lawyered up. I felt bad but at the same time, I see both sides here as well and the employee was definitely underperforming or no-longer keeping up with the modern pace of work.

As an HR professional, wow, that is suuuper shady. I don't doubt it happens, but I can't imagine it would be a very strong case if you're building it afterwards. I've never done anything like that and would not feel comfortable doing so.

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by Torture

2500 laptops may seem like a lot of money, and sure, the company wants to pick them all up, but if a handful get missed it's a pretty small impact compared to 2500 severance packages that might be 5-6 figures each.

Yeah, that was pretty much my point. I bet they got 90% back. So they probably have hundreds of surplus laptops.

I can't imagine they'd get much for a bunch of used laptops, so basically its not that big a deal

[Rutuu]

Originally Posted by bizaro86

Yeah, that was pretty much my point. I bet they got 90% back. So they probably have hundreds of surplus laptops.

I can't imagine they'd get much for a bunch of used laptops, so basically its not that big a deal

I used to sell money to companies that put together leasing terms for big organisations IT equipment. Most companies don't want to deal with getting rid of the equipment so these leasing companies come in and put together terms where the equipment is paid off in a reasonable time frame, then any day over the original rental term is pure profit. If the laptops aren't returned they'll be paying on them for awhile. There was a legendary story at one of the companies that someone was recently still paying their $20/mo for their old Motorola cell phone from 1986.

The leasing companies also usually have a down line to sell or recycle the equipment as well.

[I-Hate-Hulse]

Originally Posted by bizaro86

I can't imagine they'd get much for a bunch of used laptops, so basically its not that big a deal

From an IT security and Legal perspective, you want those laptops back in the event the user has confidential or proprietary files saved locally to that devices's hard drive/SSD.

[Ironhorse]

Originally Posted by I-Hate-Hulse

From an IT security and Legal perspective, you want those laptops back in the event the user has confidential or proprietary files saved locally to that devices's hard drive/SSD.

I thought you guys could remote brick them, provided they are part of the company’s AD domain? That’s what my IT guys have told me.

[I-Hate-Hulse]

People have a bad habit of saving files to the actual hard drive/ssd of their system and not network / cloud drives. (i.e. your desktop or somewhere on c:/)

Unless the drive is encrypted (and it's rarely done in O&G) - those drives could be physically pulled out, plugged into a new system, and the data retrieved. This is all outside of AD and other access being cut off.

That and it's just preferable not to have trusted devices floating around.

[RichieRich]

Originally Posted by Volas

Layoffs at NorthRiver today.

Any more intel on the carnage?

[Madman]

Won't someone think of all the VPs??