The rumor is true, there will be another round of layoff in my company. We saw managers packing their belongings after work today. The managers know their fate a day earlier than the grunts, so the big axe is already swinging up, waiting to chop down the head counts tomorrow. According to reliable source of water cooler talks, they are laying ten or so people off from my on-loan department and shut down a money losing division.

It is pure bad management decisions lead to the end of that division. The now defunct division is working on DSL product line. Somehow the executive think the VP of the PON product line should also manage the DSL products. DSL and PON are two competing technology for the next generation home access network. It is a clear conflict of interest asking the PON VP to manage the DSL products. The PON VP must secretly wish the DSL product die and fade away instead of gaining market share. Long story short, because the PON VP didn’t put enough resource into the DSL division, we lose some potential big accounts. If we had those account, the balance sheet of the DSL division would in black instead of red. The division should have survived this round of lay off.

Well, being lay off is not necessary a bad thing. Some people laid off in last round filed class law suite against the company for wrongful dismissal and they won the case. The court ordered the company to pay them one year of salary for the severance package. In other words, whoever get laid off in the future can use this case as precedence to sue the company if the severance package is less than one year of salary. I am sure if the company ask volunteers to be laid off with this generous severance package, there will be a long line up to take the money and run.