If they are so critical to Ford's future and improving quality, shouldn't they all be designated HTHS, and all made LL6/5 with immediate retention bonuses?
Legitimate experts are impossible to find, and take years / decades to develop. Legitimate outside talent won't be coming to Ford. Why would they?
Do it before the remaining ones leave.......
We promote completely unqualified DEI that deliver nothing or worse yet, create recalls.
Where would our resources be better spent?
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Can't have "technical expertise" just at the top. Got to have it all throughout the company.
And you need EXPERIENCED people who have battle scars.
Ford management has been getting rid of the lower-level technically-experience people and replacing them with... what?
@2wja, ok Dougie
Not sure where the OP or others commenting here are coming from. Ford has brought on top technical talent from tech companies that everyone here readily knows. Most have been put in leadership roles to share their knowledge with all the downstream teams and employees under them.
So don't give us these falsehoods of lack of technical expertise at Ford.
It’s like the laughable Bill Ford line “At Ford we honor knowledge over hierarchy”. LMAO
Can’t think of a single place at Ford where that is true. I suspect Bill wishes this was true, and maybe if he repeats it often enough it will manifest in a few hundred years.
The opposite is true the knowledgeable and respected employees all have a target on their back. The hierarchy views them as threats to be eliminated. Chop chop chop those pesky TS LL6; chop chop chop the grey haired GoTo GSRs; chop chop chop the vocal newhires wanting to fix things;
@efm+1pneRMSa i hear you brother: meetings, budgets, processes, headcount. and the content of the processes they dont care about, as long as you are following them. i sure hope that reporter from the WSJ is taking all this down. maybe mr ford will believe it if he reads it there. we are not merely disgruntled employees, we really want the company to succeed, but they dont let us. now there is this huge overhang in EVs that they have to amortize. can you imagine if the taurus and the explorer both flopped at the same time? this is mach-e and lightning. and i actually like both of them for what they are, but its hard to argue that things are going as planned with EVs.
Yeah one TS that got clipped in 2019 was quickly snapped up by a software company that has service contracts with Ford. It has been hilarious watching the Ford LL3 and LL5 trying to back door tap that fired TS expertise. Funny how that TS knows nothing about Ford environment and can’t assist. LOL
Being designated HTHD or otherwise sticking out(high performer) seems like a great way to get paid enough to have your head sticking up when the cost save ehack-a-mole game starts again.
We've clearly seen there is an agenda to release high paid employees when these tasks come down, eith absolutely no consideration to how valuable the person really is. Anymore I can't see a reason anyone would want.to be the best paid.
If that's what you want, you should just goto another place now, before you invest years into Ford and are forced out later.
“and cost”
My salary was low and I didn’t have a pension. My supervisor was shocked at how low my pay was when he took over the group.
Smart redesign was a d-mb redesign. Furniture guy and Bill Ford screwed up massively. Results are the quality we see today. Where is that furniture clown now?
HTHD just means that Ford acknowledges they have been underpaying you and that when they hire new people, you can be rest assured, they are paid more than you.
"I think it was my age and non-DEI classification."
and cost
and the people that made the decision would not know the difference between
a tire and a donut
nowadays there are a lot of wealthy people with very little useful knowledge or useful skills
The TS population in Product Development took it on the chin in the so-called Smart Redesign of 2019. Most of the ones who were short of a pension milestone were involuntarily separated from the company. Many of the rest were demoted from LL6 to GSR8, reassigned to the Feature Owner activity, and given one year of Interim Grade Protection (IGP) to find an LL6 opening that would let them keep their lease cars and dodge the pay cut. Not surprisingly, very few were able to find that elusive LL6 job in the one-year IGP window.
As someone who was HTHD it means nothing. It’s their way to make you feel special without having to pay you more. All the TS I knew that survived 2019 were made LL6s and given a team to run
Unfortunately this is a big problem. They keep saying we need Technical Specialists (TS) but being a TS puts you in a dangerous position during layoffs. Since a TS may make a little bit more they are the first ones to be let go.
From what I remember a lot of TS's lost their jobs in the 2019 round of layoffs. The rest in 2022. Some of them were key go-to people. Things stopped working after they left.
I agree with OP. They should automatically promote a TS to LL6/LL5. Otherwise they get overruled by LL6/LL5 who think they are smarter than a TS.
Having a HTHD specialty didn’t help me at all, even with decent performance reviews. My management never let me use the skills and knowledge my advanced education and experience equipped me for. PhD and 30 years in the local automotive industry. All I did was attend meetings. Then they told me my skills and experience was not what the company needed. I think it was my age and non-DEI classification.
Former TS here. They cut more than half TS’s in my organization last summer. All who wanted to keep working got jobs at other OEMs or Tier ones in less than a month.
I was a TS Ford bought out several years ago. Had to sign a disclaimer to "never work for Ford or any supplier on Ford projects" Why Ford would shoot themselves in the foot with the disclaimer is beyond what my pay grade was. Probably why all the issues are happening so often now.
TS & SME mean nothing anymore. All of them in our department are fake experts given titles/designation after they cut all the true experts in 2019. Same with HTHD - secret gift bestowed upon someone by LL6 and LL5 buddies.
This place is a dumpster fire