Weyerhaeuser – “Great people in a company with no future”

Pros

Smart, committed people; interesting work; lots of diversity; decent benefits package (for now)

Cons

Too many managers with not enough employees! Managers are hand-picked from previously cut/non-profitable organizations and brought over with absolutely no experience. Lack of work. Horrible morale due to irresponsible communications regarding unemployment. Benefits being cut soon (probably pension). Junior employees (employees not there for the 5-10+ years of the average employee) are treated very badly.

Advice to Senior Management

Cut the crap and make the changes that you are talking about. Having a constant low morale does nothing but make people dread coming into work everyday. If you want to survive these times, you need people who want to contribute, not people who want to get out as quickly as possible. Communication to employees is great to a point, but telling employees that 75% of them are getting cut in the next 9 months and nothing after that is horribly counter productive.

Figure out a proper management structure. Managers who have no experience in software development should NOT be leading a group of software developers. Managers who have no experience testing should NOT be leading a group of testers. Managers who have no experience managing projects should NOT be leading a group of project managers. Stop the buddy crap and get the best people who can save this sinking ship.

Get rid of excess managers. There should not be 2-3 managers for 15 employees. Get rid of workpace, get rid of processes which get in the way of actually saving the company money and time. There are way too many people there that are more focused on how to save their jobs than on how to save the company money. Decisions are being made daily which make no sense other than to secure their own positions.