Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Letter from a Pfizer employee to Wyeth employees.

As a 20 year Pfizer employee, I've seen my company go from the best place to work in the industry to one of (if not) the worst. We had 20% layoffs in 2005 (FFO). At the 2006 Exubera launch (hah!) in San Francisco, the VP for US sales stood up and said "FFO is F-F-Over". 2 weeks later the CEO (also in attendance) was canned, Jeff "The Hatchet Man" Kindler was brought in, and 5 months later we were getting phone calls informing us of our job status (retained or Pfired - 30% were canned including unfilled vacancies). Those cuts (called FFT) were finalized less than 2 years ago (April 2007), and now we're cutting another 50%. We get the call this Friday. This one is called F-F-U, because they actually want us to go out and work that day.

And for those who are retained, we're getting electronic babysitters (computers with signature time stamps), and you can bet your butt every new GM in each new Business Unit will be riding RM/DM butt to ensure that their signature numbers look the best (daily average, average time of first/last call, number of computer detail pages viewed per call, etc). This place has got to be the worst place to work in the industry. But then again, we'll be going through another round of layoffs as soon as Wyeth is devoured. I'm sure it will hit reps in both companies hard. I look for another 50-75% reduction in sales, with a severance package that will be far less generous than our current agreement (which expires June 1, 2009... 2 month WARN, 3 months pay + 3 weeks for every year with the company up to a maximum of 2 years).

I feel sorry for the good people of Wyeth. You didn't ask to be gobbled up by this monster. As for myself, I was just to lazy/stupid/complacent to leave. I got caught up remembering all the good times, and I forgot that they pretty much ended 10 years ago.

Best wishes to all of you, and please accept my hearfelt apologies.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the heads up. Am not in sales, but after listening to your CEO attempt to speechify at us this week, I can see why you feel that way. He completely ignored most of our direct questions and gave our CEO dirty looks when our CEO answered them in Corporatese. Sort of an "OMG, how dare you tell those serfs that this deal was done for your shareholders! Fool!"

Question: Is he really that stupid, does he think we are that stupid, does he rely mainly on his subordinates to tell him smart things to do?

Good luck to you.

Anonymous said...

Stop your crying. You suckers were stupid enough to go work for these capitalist bloodsuckers, so you're getting what's coming to you.