Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

McDonald's announced this week that it plans to hire 375,000 people this summer. The news is being touted, politically, as evidence of President Trump's strong economy. But how significant is that figure of 375,000 in McDonald's overall picture? I mean, it sure looks like a big number, but is it, really? My conclusion after doing a bit of research is that it looks like Business As Usual that's being touted for political purposes. Here's my analysis:

The first question I considered is how many people work at McDonald's already. 375k is an increase of what percent? A quick search shows that McDonald's currently employs about 800,000 workers. In that sense, adding 375,000 new employees is a huge gain, nearly +50%. But that's not an accurate picture. 800k jobs is a corporate figure. Most McDonald's restaurants are run as franchises, and franchisees do their own hiring. McDonald's actually said in its press release that 375,000 will be hired by it and its franchisees. Added together they currently have an estimated 2 million employees today. So while 375,000 is still a big number it's less than a 20% increase.

My next question is what McDonald's turnover rate is. Hiring 20% new employees is a lot if it's all net growth, but if it's just replacing people who leave then it's nothing new. It turns out McDonald's turnover rate is pretty astonishing— it's 150% per year! That means that for every 100 jobs they have, they have to hire 150 new people every year. Even if we assume this 150% turnover figure applies to only the 1.2 million employees working at franchises, that means McDonald's has to hire at least 1.8 million people every year just to stay level. Dividing that by 4 for a very rough quarterly figure, that means 450,000 new hires every quarter, just to stay level. Viewed from that perspective this announcement of hiring 375,000 people looks like it's actually a staff reduction strategy.

So, is this supposedly positive economic news actually a stealthy way of announcing layoffs? I don't know. Technically, BTW, McDonald's wouldn't need to lay off workers as they have such a high turnover rate anyway. But the point is they could well be decreasing their staff overall.

The notion of a staff reduction makes sense if you look at what's happening at the restaurant level. In more and more places, ordering kiosks are being installed to replace human cashiers. It kind of sucks from a customer perspective, but hey, many restaurants are trying to replace people with self-service.

Ever since my company made cuts and restructuring in parts of the sales and customer service organization last week Tuesday the situation has been getting worse day by day. I already gave up trying to call it worse, worse-er, worse-er-er and switched to mathematical notation like worse-(er)⁵ yesterday. A new day today brings yet-another increase in the exponent; i.e., a new, higher degree of worse.

Today's new degree of worse-ification comes in the form of something I heard yesterday but considered a rumor at the time now being confirmed as true. Yesterday when I was discussing problems in company strategy and execution with "Ike", a former a colleague who coincidentally quit just ahead of the staff cuts, he said, "I hear that John and Liz are leaving the company." I mentally filed it as rumor because I'd heard no official news of imminent departures and hadn't yet heard it unofficially from anyone else.

"John" is a manager within my organization, a peer of my boss; "Liz" is a VP in marketing. The news that either of them might be leaving is disappointing, as both are high performers in their jobs. Liz is the most engaged and industry savvy marketing leader we've had in years. John is relatively new as a manager but has really stepped up to lead not just his team of people but drive drive side projects that benefit everyone in the sales engineering function.

Well, today I saw confirmation that John is leaving. It was mentioned in an anonymous comment at the very end of a department-wide meeting. I haven't gotten confirmation yet of Liz resigning, though the fact that Ike was right about John makes it more likely he's right about Liz, too. Update: I got confirmation of Liz's departure a few days later.

Losing people like John and Liz is an example of brightsizing I first wrote about a few days ago. Simply put, brightsizing is when smart, successful people quit in a context of job cuts or reorganizations. When a company makes cuts it usually targets low performers termination. But when people subsequently quit because they no longer believe in or trust leadership, it's often the high performers, the best and the brightest, who leave first. That's why it's called bright-sizing.

High performers tend to leave quickly because they've got the strongest résumés and thus the greatest ability to get hired into a great new job right away. And as high performers they want to work in equally high-performing organizations. They're not going to squander their careers under executive leaders who demonstrate poorly thought-out strategy, unprofessional communication, and a growing record of insufficient results.

Brightsizing is a double-whammy for those of us who'd like to see it through. Not only is their departure another no-confidence vote in the leadership, the loss of high performers makes getting our job done well with who's left much harder.

Yesterday I wrote about how my upcoming two+ week vacation will be the longest vacation from work I've taken. I suppose I should put an asterisk next to that claim. I actually took 3 weeks off from work once before. The asterisk is because it technically wasn't vacation time. It was a sabbatical.

20+ years ago I worked at a big company where sabbatical was one of the benefits. Sabbatical was 6 weeks of paid time off awarded every 4 years. Having 6 weeks off was close to incomprehensible to me at the time, plus Hawk had nowhere near that amount of time off available, so I split my sabbatical into two chunks of 3 weeks each, as company policy allowed.

The first week of those 3 weeks I actually had vacation with Hawk. We traveled together and did some backpacking. Then the next 2 weeks I spent on moving house. We'd just bought a new place! I spent a week cleaning up & packing up the old place for move out, then a week unpacking & arranging in the new place. Overall it was time well spent. But what happened next wasn't good.

In the US there's a broad misgiving about taking long vacations from work. "If you're gone too long, they'll realize they don't need you," the sentiment goes. Indeed, I came back from sabbatical— half a sabbatical— just to be laid off a week or two later. Yup, I had just demonstrated that I wasn't critical path to my company! 😰😱🤯

Let's hope a mere two weeks away from work hits the sweet spot of being long enough for overseas trip but not so long my company decides my employment is no longer consequential to them.

Trade Show Day 1 is in the books now. I got back to my hotel at almost 9pm. It was a long day! I was working already before 8am, trying to get a demo into shape. By 9:15 I was at the convention center. At 10:30am the exhibitor hall opened. And then it was almost nonstop until 8pm.

One amusing bit about the show today was that across from our booth is a job postings board. It's a white board where people (mostly) freehand notes about what they're looking to hire. I thought about going up there and writing



See also: my company's small layoff a few weeks ago.

Keep reading: More humor from Day 2 at the show!

Whew. This story about my first experience with a corporate layoff has grown to 6 entries. Well, that's really not surprising as it was an eventful and formative time for me. Really the biggest surprise is that I didn't set down in writing, except for a few emails to friends at the time, my thoughts about it until now, so many years later!

At the end of The Day of Truth, after The Aftermath, my colleagues and I went our separate ways. We did plan a lunch date to get back together a week or two later.

Our spirits were still high when we met back up for lunch. As I cast my memory back upon that time from my perspective today I still marvel at how optimistic we all were, at how optimistic I was. Of course, it wasn't just optimism. The job market was good, and our particular sector was hot. I'd interviewed with at least 5 companies and had verbal or written offers from two already.

Where to Go Next— or Not 

My former manager, a former colleagues, and I all had written offers from the same company. It's another major, name-brand tech company you'd recognize the name of today... though back then it was not yet a household name. The three of us met to discuss the prospect of working there. We agreed, "No." 

Why no? For me it was a stonewalling answer from the VP Engineering I'd be working under. "How do you manage a project that falls behind schedule?" I asked during our interview. He gave a blanket denial that projects ever run late. "That doesn't happen," he repeated as he refused to answer the question. That struck me as a) gross incompetence, b) outright dishonesty, or c) both.

My colleagues had observed an interaction between the CEO and his executive assistant... she flinched when he seemed upset, like she expected him to scream at her... or worse. FWIW I saw that interaction, too. I didn't realize, "OMG, she's afraid he's going to hit her!" until my colleagues challenged me to think about it again.

"Bert", the manager in our department who quit in protest on The Day of Truth, already had a job offer from a company in Chicago. They Fed-Exed him a deep dish pizza packed in dry ice with his offer letter to say, "Welcome to the team."

Bert also had one of our former colleagues practically sitting on his lap at lunch. They were dating. They had actually been dating several months but keeping it quiet since he was her manager and it was against company policy. Now they were "out" publicly and moving in together. She was still working at the company but planning to quit. The new department was in chaos.

Most of us took a bit of time to ourselves between jobs... except Bert, whose new employer wanted him to start right away. That was just as well for him, as he didn't get a severance package. Those of us laid off were given reasonably generous severance. I'd worked there less than a year, and my payout totaled to nearly 4 months salary.

I used that money to take two weeks to choose the right job offer (I chose wrong anyway— but that's another story!) and then relax two weeks before starting my new position. The rest I used, with a bit of existing savings once I got situated in my new job, to buy a new car.

Recently I've been writing a small series about a time when my work colleagues and I knew a layoff was coming weeks in advance (part 1). We partied and slacked (part 2). Except I wasn't certain I would be laid off— though I did stack the tea leaves (part 3). After six weeks it came down to the Day of Truth.

The Day of Truth

The Day of Truth came. It was a Monday. I remember years later it was a Monday only because I remember meeting friends that evening at a local pub, the Duke of Edinburgh, for weekly Monday night gathering. I had affixed a "NOT COMPANY PROPERTY" sticker, intended to distinguish personal items from company assets, to my shirt. It was worth a few laughs among people who knew what it signaled.

Anyway, the Day of Truth. I had a first-of-the-morning meeting with my new director, Fabio. Yes, amid all the wrangling about layoffs the company also reorged me. 🙄

As I've written previously I was in the "maybe layoff" portion of my team. During the long walk to my new boss's office in a neighboring building on campus I legit didn't know whether the conversation was going to be, "Welcome to my team, CW!" or "Hi, I'm your new boss, and BTW you're fired." 😨 This director was the head goofball in the neighboring department of goofballs I mentioned previously, so I hoped it was the latter. 😅

For all that I'd spent the previous 5-6 weeks being nonchalantly non-worried about being laid off, suddenly I felt anxious. The Day of Truth was becoming the Moment of Truth.

The conversation in my new boss's office was mercifully short. Fabio didn't try to get to know me; we barely even made smalltalk. We quickly got down to business, which was my dismissal from the company. I assured him I had prepared for this possibility, was not worried for myself or my family, and held no ill will toward him or the company. I think we were done in less than 10 minutes.

After getting my papers I walked back to my office, packed my things, and hung out one last time with my colleagues. I stayed much longer than I needed to. I know part of me didn't really want it to end.

Staying through the end of the day did bring one unexpected note of closure. Fabio called me again. "CW, please come back to my office."

"Uh-oh," I wondered, "Is something wrong with my discharge?" 😳

Stay tuned... The Aftermath!

In a recent blog I recalled a work situation years ago when my team and I knew we were getting laid off well ahead of time. Well, not all of would get laid off (plot twist!), but pretty much all of us knew we'd leave the company one way or another when the ax fell.

What, Me Worry?

"Aren't you worried?" my friends and relatives asked. I really wasn't. A big part of it was certainty vs. uncertainty. Many in the company were worried, because they didn't know what would happen to their jobs. But for me and my colleagues, we knew. And thus we could plan.

Another part of it was the situation didn't totally suck. The job market was strong, and we were all young enough in our careers that we hadn't become Company Men/Company Women who could no longer imagine— or, in some cases, qualify— for comparable jobs anywhere else. Don't get me wrong; staying at the company would've been our first choice. Staying at the company with an intact team and project, that is. But that option was already off the table. Senior management had already decided to cancel our project and dismiss at least half the team. So we started looking for our next gigs. And slacking.

Like an In-Office Vacation

We went into "marking time" mode for the next 5 weeks. My colleagues would drift in a bit after 9am, we'd take lunch together at 11:30, then a leisurely team coffee break for at least 45 minute in the afternoon, and we'd all leave a bit after 5. I was generally in at 8am, but I routinely spent the first hour or so surfing the web until my colleagues arrived.

In between all this we were still working, but barely. Email, we'd answer promptly, but little else had a sense of urgency. Mixed in with work we polished our resumes and reviewed them with each other, searched job boards, and did phone interviews in our offices. Oh, we still did work; we just didn't do it fast. Our work output slowed to about 1/3 normal.

One eerie thing— to me, anyway, as this was early in my career— was that our work slowed down for over a month, and nobody higher up cared. They all either a) knew that we were getting whacked and thus didn't care we were slacking, or b) were too worried about their own jobs and those of their favorites (many of them were Company Men/Women terrified by the prospect of having to find work anywhere else) to care about us. Or c) both. Yay, the reality of Corporate America.

Next up: Stacking the Tea Leaves