UW Compensation is Competitive* II
May 20th, 2008 by joby
So back in April, I snarked about a study at the UW that explained that our compensation is competitive because in addition to our non-competitive wages we get terrific benefits and five other wonderful alternate compensation forms. Of those additional benefits the only one that seemed to be a real bonus was “job security” — not so much for ~65 of my co-workers.
UW Technology is going through a huge financial crunch that pretty much came out of nowhere. From what I hear (which isn’t much), a major element of the crunch is a rules change that departments that rely on recharge (charging other departments money for their services) have to pay the benefits of their staff instead of the UW paying the benefits. But there are some other reasons that haven’t been made clear to staff — and there are people that are pointing fingers at senior management (particularly since we had a surplus a year ago).
The end result has been a good sized group of layoffs, including one person from my group. (Fortunately, he seems to be in good spirits about it — it’ll give him some time to devote to game development and he can look for a job in that sector.) One entire sub-team was eliminated, and others were all but eliminated. I only know 10 names for sure that have been laid off, but 65 people is 10-15% of the affected operating groups.
I wonder what the study will report next year…