As you can probably guess from the title… I’ve been laid off from my mechanism controls position. My company had been doing layoffs for about 3 ½ years at this point so I lasted pretty long.

I’ve worked in the Aerospace industry for over 11 years now and there are some things I just don’t get.

“You can’t cut your way to growth”

During a down turn for a company they often times go into a serious cost cutting mode. Typically this means you pick up more of your health insurance, the cleaning crews stop coming, and the admins are no longer allow to provide napkins and plastic forks in little kitchenettes. Usually it also means layoffs, small raises and no promotions.

Obviously when the company is making less money it makes sense for that company to cut expenses. However, there’s an adage in business though – “You can’t cut your way to growth.” In other words you can’t just cut costs and expect to grow. Sure most companies are a little fat during good times so some targeted layoffs at the beginning of a downturn makes sense. But deep cuts in staffing don’t make sense from a long-term business standpoint.

Thoughts to consider when cutting staff

My premise is that a certain level of staff cutting is detrimental. And most people would probably respond with a “DUH!”

In my experience, in the Aerospace industry, most companies cut way too many people. Companies cut and cut and cut and cut and… Until they get profitable again. But the cutting rarely has anything to do with why the company (at least in the Aerospace industry) became profitable again. Typically the company has devoted a lot of resources to winning new sales and when it rains it pours. The company wins a big contract or a couple of them and now they don’t have the capacity to fill that contract without hiring. Now with each contract/sale won new people need to be hired.

New people require training and even when they walk into a job pretty much ready to go there are still processes and people to learn. Your older engineers, who are often in a position to define the direction and design of new products, are the only real exception. But the cost of hiring new people isn’t the only cost to be considered.

When companies cut too many people they lose capabilities. Those capabilities are lost both in the here and now and in the future. Not only are those capabilities lost but they have moved – most likely to a competitor. Along with the skills that those engineers have the company also loses all those half formed thoughts for new products or a better way to build or use an existing product.

Slow times are an opportunity – an opportunity usually squandered

In the Aerospace industry most of the products take years to develop. When times are good for the company is going gang-busters making what they promised to make. However, everyone is busy so who has the time to devote 10/20/30 hrs a week to a program that might fail? Ever work on one of those during busy times? I have and at best it seems you are ignored for your failure. At worst it harms your reputation within the company. Never mind that you put in lots of unpaid hours chasing a new product that is often someone else’s brain child – someone who doesn’t bother to stick around long enough to implement it.

Slow times at a company are an opportunity to improve processes, explore new technologies, and pursue more higher education. At my last employer I advocated using the slow time to allow senior engineers the opportunity to pursue their pet projects or more education while splitting their duties on current programs with junior engineers. That way the junior engineers can be brought further along and made more capable. The senior engineers can pursue projects that lead to future products. Everyone wins, the company has new products to sell, new capabilities to market, and the engineers’ career continues to move forward. The usual alternative is to give small or no raises and very few promotions. In this case, everyone loses it’s just a matter of degrees.