Well it’s not the wildest story you’ll hear today but it made me think of this sub right away.
My coworker (40’s male, 3 small children) who has been with the company for roughly 8 years, was let go last week. They had told him they were eliminating his position and that was essentially it. Note: I live in a “no-cause” state in the US where there doesn’t need to be reason in order to terminate an employee, so they didn’t do anything illegal in any of this, but it was still some shitty behavior being displayed.
The next day we had a team meeting where my boss proceeded to explain how we need to bring “more talent” onto the team and he really made it passive aggressive basically stating how the ex-employee was outdated and didn’t pick up new technology as quickly (which I think is BS because the amount of sheer knowledge he had of our systems and processes was more than anyone else on the team due to his longevity with the company, and he brought a lot to the table in the aspect of being able to train new employees and troubleshoot issues with his experience of different things over the years).
The speech rubbed everyone the wrong way, it seemed ageist and frankly harsh considering his continued devotion over the years.
THEN this morning my boss accidentally let it slip that they are in fact back-filling his position but with a slightly different title…. Which again is not illegal in any way as far as I know, but just a shitty thing to lie to everyone and make it seem like a positive “we’re bringing in more talent!!”
I guess my whole reason for this post is to say that these employers don’t care about you or your loyalty, it’s all about trying to maximize profit. And it breaks my heart to think about a father of 3 getting the boot simply because he may not keep up with the current technology as well