UPS laying off Technical hourly employees

[ups_tech]

Sorry to hear about the layoffs guys. I worked as a ups tech in region 06
until about 8 months ago, when I bailed for another job at another company.
Best decision I ever made. I truly hope it all works out for those
displaced.

In the end its typical new(post IPO) UPS. Lets put all of our eggs in one
basket (PAS being that basket) and piss off the people carrying that basket.
When I left most regions I had worked with were poorly staffed, both head
count and skill levels. There was the big push for A+ and later Network+
certs, which were a joke. The company has done a terrible joke in keeping
an recruiting people that are skilled enough to deal with the vast amount of
technology it employs. Those that are skilled are paid the same as those
that are not, so they leave. I would have hoped that they would have used
this layoff to trim the fat, which of course they didn't. There are some
great people UPS cannot afford to loose, esp at the help desk. If Carlos
and Janet from the helpdesk are reading this, you are these people; I hope
you guys are okay.

And lets put this in perspective for those of you out there who doubt the
need for good TSG people at your local site. If 1 driver screws the pooch
any given morning there are a few hundred packages that are going to be
late. If the network/server screws the pooch on that same morning, PAS is
hosed. All the packages are going to be late. Now the management theory
goes that the Helpdesk or outsourced Dork Squad are going to race to the
rescue. The helpdesk is going to be pretty much flying blind, its like open
heart surgery from space. The outsourced group is firstly going to take a
while to get on the scene. How much disruption would be caused by PAS down
for an hour? Secondly, UPS deals with a lot of technology in a way that is
completely unique. It would take a newbie a long time to even figure out
where to begin.

So how much is this little cutback going to save? Guess what, its not
enough!

Kristopher

 

[Janette]

Sorry to hear about the layoffs guys. I worked as a ups tech in region 06 until about 8 months ago, when I bailed for another job at another company. Best decision I ever made. I truly hope it all works out for those displaced.

There are some great people UPS cannot afford to loose, esp at the help desk. If Carlos and Janet from the helpdesk are reading this, you are these people; I hope you guys are okay.

Secondly, UPS deals with a lot of technology in a way that is completely unique. It would take a newbie a long time to even figure out where to begin.

Kristopher

Oh by goodness, Kristopher!!!!

As soon as I started reading and saw "Region 06 until 8 months ago", I immediately scrolled down to see if it was one of my buddies!!!! I wondered what happened to you!!! I had heard that you moved on to greener grass (as well as a few other folks, but that's another story!)

I am so glad to hear that you are doing well!!!

What is so funny is that Carlos is now sitting by me, so you KNOW that tomorrow morning (because of the timeshifting of call volume, I'm now working 9-6 instead of the night shift) I'll be telling Carlos to come check this board out!!!!

This is so totally cool!!!!!

Anyhow, you are so very right about the unique software. I'm hoping that the selling point of how we can follow instructions, research, network to find the answers for proprietary software will serve us well in the job market. I guess you are testament to that fact!

Meanwhile, I have to say that I am so very proud to be part of the Houston TSC family as we are all supporting each other during this trying time.

One of the tools is by finding parts of songs that apply to the situation. (Carlos is good at this too!) Yes, we may have to modify them a bit... (Leaving with an SAP (jet plane)... don't know when I'll be back again.... oh, babe I hate to go....)

Then, of course, we have Juan to sing them (or anything else) at random and in the special key that only Juan can find. ;o) The latest rendition (Josue added his creative talent and made it a duet.) was a song about Taco Cabana (restaurant) to the tune of Barry Manilow's Copacabana. (cracks me up just thinking about it!)

Sandy to tell the 'poor' HR dude that he only has a hall pass to walk through the department twice per week. Every time he walks through, she either counts it down and tells him how many more times he can come through or informs him loudly how he isn't allowed and needs to keep on walking. He knows she's being our spokesperson as well as cracking us up and smiles good-naturedly. (He is genuinely not happy with the position he is placed in by having to coordinate the workforce balancing. Which by some weird twist, makes it not quite as bad.)

Juan and Vish to come up with the idea and where for everyone to meet at Social's to celebrate 100 days left. Now there's talk of getting a bus to go to Coushatta Casino in Kenner, Louisiana to celebrate 50 days left. Going to have a picnic too. Haven't quite decided when...

And then there is Jose who has managed to compile 100 memories / tributes and is presenting them one each day until the end. Which leads the rest of us to throw in our humorous memories of when so-n-so did blah blah and we all fell out laughing.

Yep, we are going to shut the department down with fond memories. We are already discussing reserving the BBQ pit and grilling on the last day. Food always makes things better.

Anywho... I ramble on. So glad to hear from you Kristopher! I had to come out of 'read only' mode to let you know!

Janette
Southwest Region TSC until 1 August

 

[Janette]

Off Topic, apologies to everyone!

Hey Kris!

Forgot to tell you.... Alan and Rachel are expecting their firstborn around early November!

Janette

 

[Mustang]

Today was a bit of dejavu. Made me have flashbacks to January 17th.

At noon all of the admins were called to a "nationwide" meeting and informed that there will be workforce balancing in the admin ranks. What I heard is that it is going to affect certain jobs in BD, one job position in HR and the whole DRG department. Now I have no idea what the 'certain' jobs are and like TSG / TSC workforce balancing, if your district's BD or HR was running lean and did not have someone in that position, then they aren't affected. Rumor is that DRG is being closed down like the TSC.

Guess we'll have company in the unemployement line.

 

[Disillusioned Tech]

It's good to see that some of us TSC'ers are appreciated, specially by someone that has been in TSG. All of us TSC'ers at one point or another have felt unappreciated at work, either by users or other techs, nonwithstanding time spent at this job. Is also good to know that someone that left UPS found a better position in the job market. That alone keeps hope alive for those of us being laid off from UPS. This job used to be fun, and UPS was a company that appreciated their employees and their customers. Not anymore. That went into retirement with Jim Casey. I will get a new, better job, but I will also get away from pc support. It's not something you can keep doing until it's time for retirement. It's time to move on from UPS and from this type of job. To quote REO Speedwagon....I'ts time for me to fly...

 

[bdoy910]

Hey Everyone I was in the exact same situation as Kristopher and thanks really to him I did find that the Grass is a lot greener on the other side. I worked with Kris for 5 years in the same facility watched some of the best people come and go. I realy regret some of the decisions being made. On another note I was happy to see the post from the Janette. I have been curious about how things were going. How is James doing? Is he still there? I really do hope you all the best. Keep me and kris in the loop on any major get togethers. Could use a little roadtrip...LOL.

Mike

 

[pdx1tjl]

I jumped ship from UPS about a year ago now, a while before the tech bust. I still had a LOT of friends in TSG and TSC since our TSC was located in our building. This TSC got shut down and rolled into TSG so 20+ lost their jobs...


For the better...


To start: I had 15 year in at UPS when I left. I saw the writing on the wall with things such as the notorious Pmt.

UPS pounds into you that you are working for the best company on the planet and that there is nothing better out there (in fact when you leave, they still tell you this). I never bought into that. Its interesting now that this was the best thing to happen to just about all the guys I knew (who had any reasonable amount of IT skill). Most of them have acquired new IT jobs making a lot more money in a LOT better environment. You just don’t realize how morally demoralizing UPS is until you leave and how you are not paid for what you do.

I personally hired one of the best guys from this. He’s now my network administrators and between us we are having a great time actually getting to control technology, not just push buttons like a random monkey in TSG.

I actually feel sorry for the TSG people who got "stuck" in TSG.

The field is a LOT greener on the other side of the fence, don’t let them fool you all of you good TSG people.
The skills a typical TSG person learns at UPS (those who tend to actually learn it and do more then follow corp docs) are extremely valuable. Mainly because you put your hands on almost every important system out there. I was able to take those skills and turn into an IT manager for a company. Most of the general skills I used at UPS were easily turned into more specialized skills on a lot less systems. I get to build the exchange servers, I get to build AD, I get to build the routers and connect the VPN mesh. I get to buy the Cisco switches and configure them properly!!!

 

[Janette]

Hey Everyone I was in the exact same situation as Kristopher and thanks really to him I did find that the Grass is a lot greener on the other side. I worked with Kris for 5 years in the same facility watched some of the best people come and go. I realy regret some of the decisions being made. On another note I was happy to see the post from the Janette. I have been curious about how things were going. How is James doing? Is he still there? I really do hope you all the best. Keep me and kris in the loop on any major get togethers. Could use a little roadtrip...LOL.

Mike

Mike S!!!!!

LOL!!! This is old home week!!!! and *so* VERY COOL!!!!!

Do you and Kris keep in touch with any of the folks at the hub? If so, who and I'll make sure they have James, Alan and my email address / contact info.

Another thing... goes to show how brown my blood is... Coushatta is in Kinder, Louisiana not Kenner. LaKnr is the New Orleans Gateway! LOL!!!!

We are talking about making that trip in May for 50 days. Not sure which weekend (Saturday trip). If we have enough people (and we are sure we will as it's bring your spouse / friend / kid over 18 if you want) we will have two busses. When you get contact info, give me a shout and I'll let you know once we have more of a clue. ** Road Trip!!!*** ;o)

James is doing well. I started to tell you what he has up his sleeve, but my Mom always told me I should let a person tell their own story. ) I'll tell him you wrote/asked about him and I know he will reply either here or via email when we exchange info.

Well, they say that for every cloud, there is a silver lining and getting back in touch with you and Kris is a very excellent beginning!

Janette

 

[TSG Underdog]

Just had my OJO this morning. They are already bracing us for no pay increase this year (I don't consider anything less than 3% to be an increase. In fact with over 4% inflation it is a pay cut).

 

[Techie0673]

I work in the TSG dept. We had 2 techs in my district that were forced to take the SAP. I don't think that Corp UPS fully understand the job we do. With many of our centers implementing PFT they are now completely dependent on technology. Why would they downsize the people who support it?

 

[pdx1tjl]

I work in the TSG dept. We had 2 techs in my district that were forced to take the SAP. I don't think that Corp UPS fully understand the job we do. With many of our centers implementing PFT they are now completely dependent on technology. Why would they downsize the people who support it?

Some of us saw the writing on the wall with Active Directories roll out. Corp *should* be able to manage the entire network from a central location. At that point they simply need dumb monkeys out in the field (didn’t we all feel that way anyways?) to deal with hardware issue. I rolled out a beta PFS site in my location back in the day. It was a complete cluster. I actually once spent a week on conference calls trying to fix problems. We had the entire PAS team doing it. And to be honest, they had no fooking clue what they were doing. They system would bog down during the preload at like 3:00 AM. I don’t know how many times I told them that it just so happened that they were setting the tape backups at that time. I also kept telling them that the little 64K MSD service was having a problem blowing up to 2 gigs (with the other 2 SQL services at 2+ gigs) each and it was completely hosing the server.. along with all of the memory leaks they had on other services.

Corp UPS TSG is a cluster, they should hire me back to fix it. You don’t realize how messed up UPS AD is until you move to another company and actually implement it yourself.

In my 10 years in TSG, I saw it all. When I started UPS, there was 1 PC in the districts and it was an 8088. I watched UPS roll out one cluster after another. From Maxi-crap to World-sheet. Hell, I remember patches in Online Pro that hosed all 1200 customers in my district. There was the infamous IBM at UPS.. who the heck got the big bucks from IBM to roll out Token rign, os2 servers, AS400's... etc.. etc... 128K buildings running PAS.. MY GOD!!!!

I thought it was turning around about the time ad and w2k rolled out but now I look back and realize what a cluster UPS AD is. Then there PAS... my god... that system will single handedly kill UPS.

Good luck those of you left in TSG... They will pay you to be monkeys but the fact is that you will have to be the people in the for front of the battle.

The joke for us was that we didn’t call corp for anything unless we had to.. because we would end up having to train them on the system for 30 minutes before we got anywhere.

IT Manager
A nice regional sized company.

 

[Two Cows]

I hear you about AD. The bad thing is that those of who left have had to develop AD skills on our own to even compete for jobs. Those staying behind have no idea how much industry-standard technology has passed by them.

I believe with every passing month, TSG technicians knock 25 cent off their earning potential elsewhere.

I believe TSG technicians were good 5 or 10 years ago, but the more UPS standardizes, the more disposal the tech become, and the more deskilled they become.

A tech with good troubleshooting skills can only get you so far. You gotta know about AD, about Cisco's IOS, about groundup builds of workstations and servers. TSG technicians are allowed to know any of this.

From my own experience, I'll tell you that I am having play catch-up for the last 6 months since I left.

 

[bdoy910]

Mike S!!!!!

LOL!!! This is old home week!!!! and *so* VERY COOL!!!!!

Do you and Kris keep in touch with any of the folks at the hub? If so, who and I'll make sure they have James, Alan and my email address / contact info.

Another thing... goes to show how brown my blood is... Coushatta is in Kinder, Louisiana not Kenner. LaKnr is the New Orleans Gateway! LOL!!!!

We are talking about making that trip in May for 50 days. Not sure which weekend (Saturday trip). If we have enough people (and we are sure we will as it's bring your spouse / friend / kid over 18 if you want) we will have two busses. When you get contact info, give me a shout and I'll let you know once we have more of a clue. ** Road Trip!!!*** ;o)

James is doing well. I started to tell you what he has up his sleeve, but my Mom always told me I should let a person tell their own story. ) I'll tell him you wrote/asked about him and I know he will reply either here or via email when we exchange info.

Well, they say that for every cloud, there is a silver lining and getting back in touch with you and Kris is a very excellent beginning!

Janette

Yes we are in contact with all the techs we used to work with. They will get you any of the info you need. But please do let us know if there is any get togethers. I know I never got a chance to meet any of you at the helpdesk. I know that the group that I worked with at the helpdesk were all very good at what they did. I know most of you will go on to much better things. I wish you all the best.

Mike

 

[Janette]

Yes we are in contact with all the techs we used to work with. They will get you any of the info you need. But please do let us know if there is any get togethers. I know I never got a chance to meet any of you at the helpdesk. I know that the group that I worked with at the helpdesk were all very good at what they did. I know most of you will go on to much better things. I wish you all the best.

Mike

They rolled out a newer version of HDFS and it's killing us... The good news I've been speaking to several of the remaining techs on a regular basis re the problems related to this, so getting our info, to them, for you will be quite easy.

James said I can tell you what he has up his sleeve as he is busy setting things up... he is starting up his own consulting firm. He is doing the technicial / troubleshooting / setup etc and a partner / co-contractor is great at databases. They are planning on rolling everything together and already have several clients to develop solutions for their businesses.

Needless to say, we are all wishing him the best!!!!

As for getting together, I'll let you know! I was bummed that I missed out on Alan's wedding because I thought that would be awesome to get to meet everyone under such happy circumstances. But my first responsibility was to make sure our Boy Scout Troop made it to winter camp and if I didn't go, there wouldn't have been enough adults for them to attend.

Hopefully it will work out this time as we will be having several get-togethers before we close (and hopefully afterwards as well!!!! Like family reunions etc!)

Janette

 

[Grease Monkey]

Re: PS laying off Technical hourly employees

We're not being allowed to transfer to different departments. In my district there are hundreds of vacancies, but we will not be allowed into them. We must leave - period. We cannot reapply for any position anywhere in the company for a minimum of 12 months. We cannot even quit and reapply without waiting a year. Many of us in TSG believe this is only the first round of layoffs for us. After all, the Center of the Future does away with Tech Support, On Road Sups, etc....
This company no longer cares one whit for it's people.

Strange, I am a mechanic and our tech guy is now driving one of my trucks and delivering packages.... sounds like a transfer to me.

 

[Parrothead]

Whoever made the decision to get rid of us just made my year. In 2 weeks, I start a job making 150% of what I do now. So a big heartfelt "Thank you!" from me. I hope everyone else is as fortunate in this as I am.

 

[TSG_Lets_Unionize]

Re: PS laying off Technical hourly employees

Strange, I am a mechanic and our tech guy is now driving one of my trucks and delivering packages.... sounds like a transfer to me.

Are there layoffs in your district?






-

 

[Dfigtree]

You ain't seen nothin' yet. When UPS went public there was a shift in Board of Director loyalty. The loyalty is always to the shareholders who used to be the UPS employees, the UPS retirees and the UPS foundations. Now the BOD must pay homage to strangers, random shareholders and investment institutions. So, it's time for them to rub the buffalo off the nickle. Increase profits, that's the ticket.
People are stretching the doorways leaving I.S. and nobody is being hired to replace them. The net effect eventually will be even more people leaving due to burn out. Mike Eskew is on the IBM BOD and probably voted for the curtailment of IBM's pension plan. If he did it there, he will do it here. What UPS needs is new outside management, people who are trained for the job. Some idiot managers in I.S. who know nothing aboput 'puters spend their time monitoring people's day HOUR BY HOUR! It's true and it is very sad. WHAT DO YOU THINK OH MIGHTY P71?

 

[pdx1tjl]

You ain't seen nothin' yet. When UPS went public there was a shift in Board of Director loyalty. The loyalty is always to the shareholders who used to be the UPS employees, the UPS retirees and the UPS foundations. Now the BOD must pay homage to strangers, random shareholders and investment institutions. So, it's time for them to rub the buffalo off the nickle. Increase profits, that's the ticket.
People are stretching the doorways leaving I.S. and nobody is being hired to replace them. The net effect eventually will be even more people leaving due to burn out. Mike Eskew is on the IBM BOD and probably voted for the curtailment of IBM's pension plan. If he did it there, he will do it here. What UPS needs is new outside management, people who are trained for the job. Some idiot managers in I.S. who know nothing aboput 'puters spend their time monitoring people's day HOUR BY HOUR! It's true and it is very sad. WHAT DO YOU THINK OH MIGHTY P71?

agreed... the truth is, and the fact is that UPS is run by a bunch of truck drivers. UPS has made money despite itself over the past 20 years. Now a company like FedX is moving in and dominating.. yes they really are. They are a traditional modern company run by people who know how to run companies. UPS is dying now. Remove the truck drivers. The worst thing is that I still have my 401K at UPS and I’m trying to move it now, half of its in stock and I want to drop that stock like a brick. Especially since its done nothing in 5+ years.

 

[tieguy]

agreed... the truth is, and the fact is that UPS is run by a bunch of truck drivers. UPS has made money despite itself over the past 20 years. Now a company like FedX is moving in and dominating.. yes they really are. They are a traditional modern company run by people who know how to run companies. UPS is dying now. Remove the truck drivers. The worst thing is that I still have my 401K at UPS and I’m trying to move it now, half of its in stock and I want to drop that stock like a brick. Especially since its done nothing in 5+ years.

Not sure how you define dying and dominating. In fact UPS has made money for close to 100 years not twenty. Fdx is hardly dominating. A fair assessment would be that fdx still leads in overnight and UPS still has a commanding lead in the ground business. Both are making significant strides on the international and logistics sides of the business.


Latest on the TSG layoffs in my district. 6 people transferred into other postions. 1 person that looks like he is leaning towards taking the buyout. No layoffs yet.