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comment by b_b
b_b  ·  372 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: March 22, 2023

I'm on the war path today. My wife works for General Motors. If you follow the financial news, you may be aware that GM is trying to reduce their white collar workforce by some unspecified amount, but probably around 10%. My wife's boss is a bone fide misogynist. Fortunately for him of the 200 or so people who work for him only 5 are women. It's a sausage fest. However, he's been pressuring certain people who he thinks are likely to be laid off to take a buyout that GM has offered. Somehow, he has pressured at least 3 and maybe 4 of the 5 women to take it, including my wife. She has until Friday to decide, but I've basically forbidden her from doing so. This is 2023. I tried to tell her that no matter how moronic and anachronistic her boss is, that the leadership of GM is aware that in this day and age a single tweet from a powerful person can tank your stock. How would it look, I asked, if they have to lay off 10%, they're 2% female overall (in design, which is where she works) and women comprise 15-20% of layoffs. Now isn't the time to make your company less diverse, and using attrition to achieve that end is doubly stupid. The whole thing is weird, because GM is led by arguably the most powerful female executive in all of American business. Anyway, I keep trying to reassure her that in a sane world, she's the last person to get axed (female, 20 years experience but not in management, all glowing yearly reviews), but my words have not been soothing to her. Her boss basically back benched her after she returned from maternity leave, so he has a bad track record. Sounds ripe for a lawsuit to me, though I'm admittedly no lawyer. As a last resort I have a powerful friend who can scare them, and probably would if I asked, but I've been asked not to resort to that, not yet anyway.





kleinbl00  ·  371 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Counterpoint:

GM is only going to get shittier.

I mean, if she legit loves her work and the people she works with, that's one thing. But if her misogynistic boss is cleaning house of all ovaries and GM is offering a payout? Now is the time to call up anybody she knows in design literally anywhere else and say "yeah my misogynistic boss is cleaning house of all ovaries I'm wondering if you might know somewhere interested in hiring females with 20 years of design experience in the automotive industry."

We've been dealing with hiring nonsense lately. Our receptionist basically overbalanced her ADHD meds and became a zombie. We put together a list of 30 (thirty) "hey here's this thing you're doing that isn't great that you didn't used to do could you maybe try not to do that" bullet points and she responded by going "...oh yeah I meant to tell you I'm changing careers next week." One of our midwives waited until one of our other midwives was in Brazil to say "oh by the way I'm not coming back from maternity leave." Another one of our midwives told us "hey uhh so yeah I know we discussed that I was trying to get pregnant again and last time it took me six months welll this time it took less than a week." One of our naturopathic doctors told us that her husband just took his dream job 150 miles away so uhh.

And don't get me wrong. Everyone should follow their bliss. They owe us exactly what we pay them for, no more. We have taken as our guiding star that every employee we take on leaves happier than they started and that they really take something fundamental and personal with them and so far we're batting a thousand (minus that idiot we had to fire). But none of them are mission-critical. All of them are great to have around, and we look forward to seeing them in the future. We'd sincerely hope that anyone unhappy where they are would tell us and allow us to remedy it, and also entirely understand that if they get better opportunities even if they're happy they're gonna bail. And they should. And we're happy for them.

That's a big difference from working with misogynists who don't value you.

You know what sucks? Hiring through Indeed or Monster or craigslist or Facebook or WTFever. It REALLY sucks. And it's expensive, and full of tire-kickers, and dipshits who only need three contacts for their unemployment and aren't at all serious. You know what works hella better? Calling up contacts you know and like and saying "hey you know anybody unhappy or moving."

We had four or five candidates for two open positions before we knew those positions were open. And the only way that shit happens is if people know you're a candidate.

Congratulations to your wife for thriving through 20 of the stupidest years in General Motors history. Do either of you really think it'll be any fun through the next 20?

uhsguy  ·  371 days ago  ·  link  ·  

He could probably submit her for layoff but it’s unlikely HR will approve. They typically have special DEI quotas that they can’t breach. As for reviews that probably doesn’t matter