i know how it is snook/lb...... its a hustle to stay afloat and sometimes it really burns you out......

chicagoarchitect, please realize that Daley's statements about massive layoffs are just a CYA because he wants to raise taxes and cut jobs in the city. Do you really think the top executives of Chciago-based corporations meet with Daley regularly to discuss their staffing decisions? Please! Daley is going to have to balance a tough budget this year, and he is just trying to find blame elsewhere.

Of course, I'm sure there will be plenty of layoffs in Chicago. But Daley doesn't know any more than we do.

Man, my typing and spelling were attrocious in that last post. Sorry!

SOM Chicago laid off 73 the week before Thanksgiving. Now they are back at it this week. Not sure how many more it will take.

Lookout Kid - 1200 jobs to go at United, 10% lay-off at William Blair, US Steel shuts Chicago plant, all announced just yesterday. Closing prices last Friday (an "up" day) for Chicago-based corporations' share prices: Hart-Marx $,17/share, Smurfit-Stone$.57/share, Strategic Hotels $1/share, Corus Bankshares $1.19/share, Playboy Enterprises $1.25/share, Brunswick $2.17/share, Orbitz $2.43/share, General Growth $1.38/share, etc. General Growth Properties (owns Water Tower Place and 2nd largest US mall owner) shares are down 97% year-to-date. All large corporations.

Chicago corporate leaders and Mayor's Office are discussing the overall rapidly deteriorating economic situation in Chicago, not their firms' individual staffing decisions.

SOM Chicago laid off more than 10% staffs today. One guy with great design skills was laid off, who is one of my best friends. Really sad...

Here in China is definitely not immune to the epidemic...

Aedas HK have laid off a total of 200 or so staff since early November, and many just arrived in HK from US or UK in the previous 2 months...with one-year rental lease signed and locked-in, of course.

I had an offer from HOK Shanghai at the end of October, and after the initial deal-making period, never hear from the director again...and the source confirmed this morning that it too had just laid off staff.

pilipalapa, they laid off 10% in addition to the 70+ two weeks ago? A couple of years ago they had about 350 or so outside of "central", so they must be in serious trouble. I'll have to start calling my friends there to see if they're alright...

chicagoarchitect, I don't doubt that big layoffs are happening in Chicago. I do doubt that any of these firms discuss this stuff with Mayor Daley, however! I just don't buy it.

Instead of "firms" I meant "companies" in that last post.

I tend to think that Mayor Daley's mythical discussions with "business leaders" was casual conversation with one or two big shots at a cocktail party, and now he's going into CYA mode to cover for the city's big budget problems this year.

Lookout Kid, yes this is the second round. And rumors said that there will be more coming... Large corporations have big problems, I am wondering which one will collapse in this crisis. Tough time...

SOM NY laid off 80 more last couple days.
I heard not only they never tell you before so you can try to organize your life, they also don't let you go back to your computer. you just have to leave.
SOM sucks big time.

so do their buildings. They are riding the emerging market into oblivion.

that's like a human rights abuse! can you verify it?

lots of companies do that. It happened to me during the dot com downturn. went to the office after lunch and the doors were locked with a note that we were closed for business.

I think companies fear someone unloading a virus or damaging files etc...go figure, ready to cover their ass while booting yours. I do not think it is illegal though.

Orhan, my last firm did that. They would gather all the people getting laid off into one room, tell them the news, and then make them leave. In the meantime they have IT lock their computers.

There was a guy working there for almost 10 years and when he got laid off they just chucked him out like a piece of rubbish.

But I can't believe a firm like SOM has folded this badly... I mean based on this thread it seems like they've eliminated virtually half of their staff or more! I know they have a reputation of doing this but I really didn't think their business was this bad.

if anybody have a similar 'personal' experience with a mass layoff situation, please e-mail me. names and places are preferred. your name will be confidential.

actually, orhan, it locking computers during a layoff is common practice at large firms; it sucks and seems incredibly impersonal, but i understand why it's done. (though i haven't heard of people not being able to collect their personal belongings before they leave; that i believe may be grounds for legal action if they are not returned.)

so workers don't have a right to document the work they did with said company?

it varies quite a lot with the management and the state of the relationship the employee had with the firm. it definitely should be brought up with management during a layoff or i would recommend even if you do not anticipate a layoff, be sure there is a clear understanding what documentation is permissible and keep your own personal documentation of your involvement with projects current.

i think it is un-dignified.
it is not a matter of legality but more of a 'professional conduct' issue.
i am surprised aia has been silent about this and not educating employers about how to conduct difficult procedure like laying people off.
after all the years they are part of a profit making enterprise, employees shouldn't be tossed off like this. this has to create major holes in terms of loyalty, professional security/trust and ultimately quality of the labor and product.
eventually leading to deterioration of some fundamental professional guides and practice of architecture.

There actualy is an article in this month's AIA newsletter about how to do layoffs properly.

And regarding, locked computers, this is why I regularly copy pdfs of projects i've worked on and personal files onto a flashdrive. Not that I want to do anything illegal with it, but at least I have a record of what I worked on for future interviews.

I can see why a major, impersonal firm like SOM would lock computers and force employees to leave immediately because senior management would be paranoid an employee may try to tamper with data after knowing they were being laid off. There's two sides to this, because disgruntled employees are known to tamper with data even when they suspect they may be let go. If i were in that situation, i would have management be sure to email employees PDF copies of some of their best work for the firm for their private portfolios, as well as images of completed/in progress projects that the employees had worked on and would allow them to return to their desks to pick up all personal items and make sure everybody gets a decent severage check if i could afford it.

I don't believe employers should burn bridges with their employees, because it cuts both ways. Disgruntled employees have professional networks as well and if word gets out in the community that your "that firm" that pulls this shit on people it may hinder your ability to bring on new talent when you need it. There's a firm in NYC, i won't say which, that was really a headache to work for and when word got round of this people in my school stopped applying for internships there. They have a very hard time obtaining and holding on to talented employees there.

buts it's fine for companies to burn bridges with employees....because the company knows that 'said person' might apply for a job there down the road/etc......... right?......


on a personal stand, i have been burned by 2 companies and they made it sound like it was my fault.....wtf........ life goes on.... but now i have changed my payment procedures based on this.......


i'm curious to see how people will be able to pay rent/food/etc and still live. not only in the arch field but i believe alot of the midwest is also getting hit due to the auto industry......(time to quit your union job and work for honda/toyota)

Here's how it happens... You get a phone call telling you to go to a conference room. The conference room will have someone who's management level and at least one person from HR. As they are laying you off, IT swoops in to lock you out of your computer.

In this economy, you should just make sure to stay current with your project documentation at all times. Burn baby burn! And if you're not done with IDP yet, stay regular with those reports! It's a lot harder to get your boss's attention to sign a form when you don't work for him anymore.

the ridiculous thing I heard is that this summer SOM was applying the best AEC firm to work for in the year of 2008....wtf....

quantity doesnt mean quality and vise versa

it seems like the firms that have a diverse project list, are standing steady. my firm has grown by 50% in the last year and had to make the decision to stop growing, topping out at 240 +/- in the HOK SF office ...

According to the AIA professional ethics, you must ask your employer before taking copies of any work product, including pdf's or electronic pdf's. Most employers will let you take pdf's of your work, but you must ask.

As an employer, this is serious for two reasons. Sometimes the architect has an agreement with the client that drawings can not be distributed. I had an incident where someone showed up at a clients with copies of drawings we had done. It turned out that a previous employee had taken the drawings, and was using them as an example at a local university. They were copyrighted, and should not have been copied without permission, but the employee who took them ignored this. The client was upset because of security issues with the drawings. Long story short, almost a law suit, and a big slap on the wrist by the college administration of the ex employee.

Also, as an employer, I hate that people take drawings of project without permission. I quite commonly call the former employer, and discuss the drawings the potential employee showed me with the reference. I once had two potential employees come in for interviews about a week apart, neither knowing they were both interviewing. They both showed me the same project, and claimed they were the major designer and project architect, and that they had run the project, done the drawings, etc. I called a contractor I knew had worked on the project. He told me neither of them had more than a mildly passing role in the project.

And then there is the former employee who moved out of state. I helped him start his own firm, gave him some work while he got started. Then a few month later I see his new website, and every project is one he did here, with no credit to my firm whatsoever. He implies that he did them totally on his own, while for many of them, he had a very minor role. And worse, he has photos that he took while under my employee that somehow never got put into our office records.

Take the high road. Ask your employer before you take work product that you are not legally entitled to.

the silver lining is I've been trying to lose five pounds for the last two months and I finally lost them all last week. Probably will be losing a lot more. Laid off in the middle of a major deadline - guess the layoffs were more important than getting actual work done.

am general (ie hummer) has recalled thirty one workers!

"the ridiculous thing I heard is that this summer SOM was applying the best AEC firm to work for in the year of 2008....wtf...."
hehehe. agreed
DO NOT WORK FOR SOM. they do not give a **** about their employees.

I think these big firms probably try to follow laws carefully so they are not sued when laying off. I read the WARN act which is a Guide to Advance Notice of Closings and Layoffs. Probably SOM does the layoffs in a way that they don't have to give advanced notice. It is not a perfect law, as they say: "...and that number is 33% of the number of full-time workers at the single site of employment". So, 80 employees is likely not 33% of companies like SOM and they can get away in treating people like this.

http://www.doleta.gov/layoff/pdf/WorkerWARN2003.pdf

EMPLOYEES PROTECTED BY WARN
You are protected by WARN if your company fits the following profile:
• It is a business with 100 or more full-time workers (not counting work-
ers who have less than 6 months on the job and workers who work
less than 20 hours per week), or employs 100 or more workers who
work at least a combined 4,000 hours a week, and is a private for-prof-
it business, private non-profit organization, or quasi-public entity sep-
arately organized from the regular government.
Workers protected by WARN may be hourly or salaried workers, including
managerial and supervisory employees.

You may be protected by WARN if your job loss occurs as part of:
• A plant closing(see glossary)—where your employer shuts down a
facilityor operating unit(see glossary) within a single site of employ-
ment (see glossary and FAQs) and lays off at least 50 full-time workers;
• A mass layoff (see glossary)—where your employer lays off either
between 50 and 499 full-time workers at a single site of employment
and that number is 33% of the number of full-time workers at the sin-
gle site of employment; or
• A situation where your employer(see glossary) lays off 500 or more
full-time workers at a single site of employment.

I wonder if they mean with the below statement that the company is laying off people in the SAME DAY, or in a certain period of time... because then a company could get away with laying off i.e. every two weeks.

• A mass layoff (see glossary)—where your employer lays off either
between 50 and 499 full-time workers at a single site of employment
and that number is 33% of the number of full-time workers at the sin-
gle site of employment; or

the layoffs continue. beyer blinder belle just laid off 10 at there nyc office and 4 in there dc office.

It's hard to think of firms that AREN'T laying off right now. But hope is on the horizon... At least where I work.

Chicago's ASGG cut all their temp. architects last week [20 people]. Sad to hear as many of those that got cut from other offices were picked up by them.

another option...or personal experience.
I have been recently "temporarily" relocated to one of our N.E. offices where backlog is fairly strong doing large corp. HQ and "federal" work. Sure, we are all stretched thin, but here is the thought behind this.
With a large company and the right leadership, retaining talented people and surviving all this is possible.
I was managing and working on several long term projects currently under construction at my home office. So, while new work dried up in my office, the leaders looked around the company to see where there was need and at which level. So, after a 10% cut across the board holes were discovered and filled with employees worth retaining. By doing this, 2-3 junior people in my office are kept employed (rates are 1/2 or 1/3 mine) by filling the gap I left, and I am kept employed by sending me somewhere where I am needed.
Sure there is a cost to sending me away and paying for my travel over the next few months, but as long as we are showing profitability to our "dutch" owners...we do not have to cut staff.

Like many of you out there, we had alot of projects go on hold with the promise that they would commence early 2009. With our cuts + thining out to other offices any one project coming back would meand health for part of 09. Fortunatelly these projects are in Japan + China (Hospitality), and Middle east + South America (healthcare/infrastructure) and have financing just jittery owners...we have hope that once our new president takes office and starts enacting new policy, these jittery owners will feel comfortable.

Just my 2cents

SOM Chicago office was still laying off people this Monday and Tuesday. More senior people were cut off and some talented senior designers resigned their positions.

As I heard, things become ugly - SOM can not keep their best design people because the bosses would start thinking which side you are - ugly corporation politics. The Lake Michigan is beautiful, but under the pretty surface, it is cold water.

J3, I have to say you are in a really good firm - really good management rather than simply laying off people like an A$$O

J3 - we're in a similar situation with our projects. people are actually waiting until after Jan 20th to start doing anything... it's as if the world has gone on hold until the new admin takes office.

SOM has a very long history of boom & bust hiring/firing cycles.

Yes crowbert. It is a live history - I heard there would be another round of layoffs this week in the windy city...It's almost xmas, holiday season, sad times...

Can anyone confirm the rumor that Smith + Gill cut 60% of it's staff because of middle eastern megaprojects going belly up?

Layed off November 10th after 12 years with same firm. Sent out 4 resumes, got 3 interviews, 2 offers. I accepted offer this week, for close to what I was making before.
I feel lucky!

BoneOfArch - congratulations!

The axe fell today at SOM SF! But I don't know what the total number of people for the day is...Another round of layoffs to come for sure!