Ford has changed a lot, but my perception of this company has also changed now that I am more than 10 years older than when I first started working here. Now I wonder if Ford has always been a decent place only for younger employees. Any thoughts?
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I wish I could give you more than one upvote... You nailed it right on the head.
And to OP, I don't necessarily think it's a 'younger' employee versus and 'older' employee thing. That is the way it worked out for you. But I think we are going to see a lot of younger employees being less happy compared to years passed.
I think DF ad above want Ford to operate like a tech company in the sense that young talent is brought in and burned out and replaced. It ends up being a miserable work experience that young people use as a resume builder...
All the youngsters know they have 5 years at best with Ford. The few that don’t have a clue are all on the leadership track
And of course, laying off all the talented, experienced people a few years before their retirement is a great way to make young people confident about their future at the company. It totally doesn't make them want to dust off their CV.
@OP. Ford was never great, but good enough for an engineer. As in other companies, your direct supervisor is going to make the most impact on your professional life. Good LL6s protect employees from most of the cr-p coming from upstairs, while motivating them to excel and deliver great quality. Bad LL6s cause enough grief/anger that some employees leave, while others just pray and wait for the reorg that is going to take these pricks into another role.
Most of my LL6s have been something in between, where team leads are the ones pushing the troops uphill. We have been in fear for our jobs for too long. That takes a toll on you, and we are seeing the results now. Now with the moral in the toilet, things got so boring. People are just waiting to get fired. FMC is not longer a good place to work, and maybe it won't be a place at all soon.
As someone that retired this past May after 25 years, I can tell you my perspective is that is used to be a great place to work, in that you could start right out of college and if you had some talent and willingness to work you could put in 25 to 30 years, move up the food chain a bit, and then either retire or move on after that 25 to 30 years and have a comfortable retirement. Sadly, those days have long been gone in actuality, I just did not fully realize it until the last 5 years.
One reason - lack of a pension for the white collar people (though brand new UAW members that make it past probation still gets pensions in 2022). Less incentive to stick around and or do the right thing if the future of employees is going to be more temporary in nature; plus long term programs that can be transformational can’t really gain as much traction anymore when most are not full ‘vested’ in a long term outcome. That decision was made way back in 2003; that right there should have been a signal things were going to change for the worse.
The other thing that really has hurt the last 5 to 7 years is lack of stability in leadership, from CEO on down….having three different CEO’s during that time frame, and their games of musical chairs and bringing in their own favorites really leads to an atmosphere of almost ‘why bother’ when things are just going to change in another 2 to 3 years…..all continuity in important things that should be getting done & moved along, like quality, material sourcing, product planning keep getting ‘tweaked’ which just leads to some things getting lip service more or less. Not necessarily on purpose, either, sometimes out of sheer desperation as people of ALL ages have a hard time struggling to even make sense of how to make/meet ever changing goals. The massive shifting to BEV’s to ICE had something to do with it, but not nearly as much as one can think - would still be this way regardless.
In summary, Ford is no longer an employer of choice for anyone of any age, as they just struggle too much the last few years and don’t show any signs of it getting better. In fact, likely to get worse as current crop of leaders had only shown the ability to be tone deaf and not listen to the ranks at all…
Just put in my two week notice. Leaving the auto industry. Won't miss it. The writing was in the wall the first time I heard Doug Field open his lying mouth. Ford will be in the dust heap, and Doug will be the biggest reason.
I think you are right.