Ll6 hit the hardest, why?

There is a widely held opinion that the odd numbered # LL could be eliminated with zero impact to the business LL5, LL3, LL1

This is definitely true in the technical areas such as engineering , mobility, analytics and IT.

The people in these areas actually need to be subject matter experts in order to make good business decisions. The old Ford mentality is that these people should be generalists with Ford political skills. This might of been a good idea in 1950, but in 2019 very bad idea. The amount of wasteful projects initiated by the “generalists” is astounding. Anyone at the lower levels raising their hand to say excuse me, the better way costs 1000 not 10,000,000 finds themselves retaliated against. The problem with “generalists” is they can’t tell the difference between facts and fiction. They invariably go with the snake oil salesman’s proposal and not the qualified technician’s solution. Which is how Fords ends up in their predicament.

An interesting post by @YZN5PGN-1pof

Comment! It's anonymous!

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@oqap

In IT infrastructure there are/were a lot of tech spec LL6 old GSR band 9 who do/did most of the technical work. There are a lot of LL6+ who are just yes men and have no skills or knowledge. There are a lot of long time GSRs who sit around doing nothing until the tech spec LL6 spoon feed them with step by step instructions and follow behind them with a cattle prod and broom and dustbin. You would think after 20+ years a GSR8 would know how to do their job. What happened in our area was all the skilled and performing LL6 were trimmed and all the yes men were kept. Now nothing is getting done as the people who knew what to do and were motivated to get it done are gone.

The LL5s in our area add no value. Only one of the LL above the LL5s contributes value.

Good for you if you have GSRs who actually do work. Our tenured GSRs with pensions barely make an effort. Yet they remain, one guy is in is 70s and has been retired on the job for twenty years. The guy can certainly sling it and has plenty of time to smooze.

What department are you working in? From my viewpoint, the bloat is at the LL5-LL6 level. The only folks who do any productive work are the GSRs and the contractors. The LL5 and LL6 merely take credit for the GSRs and contractors work and are the yes men to the LL4 and LL3s and high level management. As far as technical skills, LL5 and LL6 knowledge are outdated by several decades. I think Ford could cut all or most of the LL5-LL6 wihtout any appreciable loss of productivity

When is next round supposed to happen? IT still safe?

I am in IT, i know so far LL6 hit the hardest (despite that they mentioned IT will not be done until June). There were LL4, couple of 5 and few GSR so far from different orgs of IT.

I am assuming this will continue to Friday, then the second round go in June for GSR. God help us all.

OMG totally agree. Sad to report that just the opposite happened. The generalists survived. The qualified experts fired.

Unfortunately all these LLs trying to demonstrate their leadership skills to their superiors and inventing different reporting matrices and/or procedures. Eventually these unnecessary processes are going away as management changes almost every year.Commodity expertise is much less valuable than reporting to superior skills! Hopefully this smart redesign would make the difference and will change not only the headcount!

I'd argue a lot of this is also the immediate mentality to outsource because no one wants to 'own' something and see it through, end-to-end, and have technical capabilities as well as build a team with them to.

Wish I could keep voting you up to the top ! That's exactly what I see !!

Thread regarding Ford layoffs

Ll6 hit the hardest, why?

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