Thread regarding American Electric Power Co. Inc. layoffs

The last comment shows the problems that AEP faces. Rather then listed to find out why employees are becoming disengaged, theywould rather put people down ang try to humiliate them. Tge thought is we can just replace you. However, when tgry hire a new employee and they become disengaged the cycle will continue. Maybe the problem is not employees but a lack of true leadership, that can motivate. Inspire and lead a team.

If you’re just showing up, giving little to no effort, and lack enthusiasm, you really don’t have much credibility to advise a CEO of a major company. At minimum you would work hard and give maximum effort out of self respect and integrity. Not to mention to ensure your co-workers are safe and supported. But instead, TR lives rent free in your head.

Bill has to fix the 'ism' that occur at all AEP. Especially Nepotism and favortism. They destroy any value system. Many work environments have turned into a trade time for money. Why, because it is ok and many leaders dont have a clue because they were not qualified to be a leader.

Employees lack of enthusiasm and hope is truly appalling. Every day is a funeral at work. Employees are succumbing to stress related and exacerbated illnesses that leave our organization weaker and more vulnerable to mistakes and accidents. I am beginning to question, if enriching shareholders is worth all this undeserved misery and suffering? Maybe working for AEP comes at too high a cost for employees, who will retire as empty husks of their former selves.

Open letter to Bill Fehrman

We are all waiting for a sign. A sign that AEP is going in the right direction. A sign that AEP will be better. A sign that you understand what's really happening at AEP.

The associates in the technology areas are fed up. Many just show up, few make an effort anymore, and everyone is; ~ Looking for a sign.

Are these associates lazy people? No, they are intelligent ambitious professional career IT people with a passion for what they do and the work they perform. They are people who have watched all of their legacy leaders replaced with examples of unqualified nepotism. Their former coworkers got fed up and left or fired. Not to mention that all of the existing technology associates have a ring side seat to watch the daily the sh-t show called TCS to sink morale a bit more every day.

Associates have been beaten down for years and have seen first hand what real retaliation looks like. IT leadership has now even tried a proactive retaliation strategy by insisting they intercept any comments from staff before they end up at "Ask Bill". The associates are forced to witness the decline of the technology areas without any means of stopping it. They have learned that AEP doesn't give a damn about them, so it's perfectly acceptable to not give a damn about AEP.

They wait for a sign. A sign that you see it. A sign that you understand.

Let's start with the biggest pain point in technology. Therace. AEP wasn't perfect before her, but it's a lot worse with her.

You've stated you had to take the news on the condition of cyber security and vulnerabilities to the board. Who do you think has been here for 4 years while those problems fester? TR. With so many problems you would think your CITO of 4 years would be on top of it. How did it get like this you may ask? TR's incompetence let it happen.

TR doubled down on the bet that TCS would just magically fix it all. TCS fumbles the ball every day by stepping on their own shoe laces because they can't figure out how to tie them.

TCS has no loyalty to AEP. They don't have the drive or commitment to see AEP as a great company like an associate does. They don't have the technical skills, ability for abstract thought or to think outside the box.

TCS's goal is to make PowerPoint charts green, pacify leadership by meeting SLA's on problems that they mostly cause and get paid for problems produced by their own lack of skills. TCS extracts treasure from AEP, meanwhile the leaders that funnel news, statistics and reports to you have no incentive to tell you the truth on how bad it really is. The policy is to whitewash everything you see and to make you believe everything within technology and TCS is perfect.

Let's look at Capitol. Before TR using and charging time and materials to capitol was the norm. Before TR everyone knew to spend capitol dollars first.

It's obvious that you see this, because you've said the word capital more times in 3 months than what's been heard at AEP in the past 3 years. After the arrival of TR everyone was told that it's all just money, green on the back and black on the front. It did not matter if it was capital or O&M.

Think of all of the spend that has occured over the last few years that could have been charged to capital and wasn't. It's not shocking to see why the current and prior spend looks like it does because you have leaders that can't add or subtract and don't have an understanding of basic accounting. They will try to convince you they do, but the past years of accounting will say different.

Being new to AEP yourself you need to understand the current state of technology and how we got here. The associates know the board brought in TR. But did the board know that by doing so that massive numbers of new leadership would be brought in without any understanding of utilies, technology, or how basic accounting works? While at the same time purging decades of knowledge that once made AEP great.

TR wiped out all of the legacy AEP technology leaders not to mention the hundreds of years of combined experience that they brought to the table. TR populated all of those roles with unqualified examples of nepotism that knew nothing about electric other than how to turn on a lamp.

Did TR use ANY meaningful form of executive recruiting to get the best of the best? No. AEP got TR's friends and neighbors along with all the other retail failures from companies that TR was at and plundered before coming to AEP to do the same.

You should look at all of the present leadership hired after TR and their employment history. How many had experience in utilities? Most of them came from places where they worked with TR previously, and where she failed with them before. TR's current leadership structure extracts more value from AEP than any value they bring.

Everyone in technology laughs at her. She's a daily joke now. theracerisch.com was created so everyone can laugh at her even more. She doesn't have the respect of the associates which makes it impossible for her to continue to lead at AEP.

You want to turn things around?

The associates are waiting for a sign.

A sign from you.

Did you guys pay attention to EEI? Bill is expected to hire a CFO in the next month or so, and he’s looking for someone to replace him. Even Bill sees himself as a stopgap to get the regulatory strategy and org structure under control

The future of AEP is in the hands of a man with no sweat equity, no shared sacrifice and no suffering for the good of our customers. Woefully inadequate personal investment for his level of compensation. Value extractor, not value cultivator nor creator. The wood he is chopping needs to be in distribution right of ways and at the corporate board table. That is where the greatest savings can be achieved with the smallest impact on daily operations that benefit our customers.

Bill will make AEP great again for shareholder value. Employees stand by. We are going to chop wood.

Draining the swamp leaves an empty basin filled with fecal matter, toxins and decay. The slurry is drained away and the most concentrated toxins remain in the sludge at the bottom of the swamp. It will require a great deal more than draining the swamp to restore the vibrant wetlands of a functioning ecosystem. All the crony sludge must be removed, contained and neutralized, rendering it no longer a threat to the professional corporate culture. This most often requires a Superfund Site Designation.

Hopefully he will drain the swamp. However, he will really have to look at the leaders of the company with a bias. And ask are they truly leaders or are they bullies with an ego.

This may be an unpopular post, in my humble opinion Bill is spot on. He has been on the road talking to the various operating companies and learning details about company issues. I feel like he has developed a good plan to get us moving in the right direction. I appreciate our stated goals to provide stable and affordable electricity. I believe the best way to achieve goals is to publish quality metrics that we all work to improve. That said, he has to convince a ton of managers to get on board. Moves to flatten the organization will help. As a long-term employee, I am staying curious. Who's with me??

I hope there are no tax cuts for AEP. We should not give tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas.

Indoctrinate, Assimilate and Subjugate are the goals of our crony corporate culture. We are not captive workers in an authoritarian regime, who have been brainwashed that their individual identity is their employer and as long as the employer is doing well, they are doing well. Young employees are struggling to remain employees because their cost of living far exceeds their compensation and they will hopefully retire with a 401K, no pension and no health care but its okay corporate officers' compensation are steadily increasing and major shareholders' greed is being satisfied while everyone else is appallingly disgusted and disenfranchised.

AEP does not value military service.

The question is not just about money. The real question is, what is AEPs values, mission and purpose. Those are not clear. Also, how are their associates included in their plans. AEP leadership has changed, how do they view employees and their roles with the company.

The main thread across all of the comments have been, leadership su-ks, it's going to take a long time to fix, if ever. Any costs are bore by the employees and not leadership. Financial benefits are weighted towards leadership and not to the employees doing the work.

Lack of common sense and common virtue in leadership is driving poor reliability and affordability of the essential service we provide to our customers. How many times have we been asked, "How do we improve reliability?" and how many times have we answered, "Cut the damn right of ways, eliminating all lateral and vertical encroachment on distribution lines." The answer is common sense and all these highly educated and compensated managers choose to ignore the obvious solution. In doing so they are compromising the safety of damage assessors, line workers and contractors. The overgrown and inaccessible right of ways dramatically increases assessment and restoration times. If you can't see the primary, you can't tell if it is on the insulators or on the ground. Drones are a tool but they do not climb through dense vegetation that makes it impossible to see where you are stepping or what is three feet in any direction including up to get to the damage and fix it. Safety First, until it costs a dollar.

The obvious solution to the overwhelming majority of problems plaguing American Electric Power is employee elected representation on the corporate board of American Electric Power. Disciplined, virtuous accountability that values their integrity and selflessness more than their advancement and enrichment. The undesirable employees, who shall not sell out or go along to get along are your most valuable assets because they refuse to compromise their values and principles. They are and shall always be their brothers' keeper. They are the only reason our customers have not come for the heads of corporate management.

"We have a lot of wood to chop yet around the company," AEP CEO Bill Furman said on a company earnings call. Furman declined to say which parts of the company could be put up for sale. - Reuters Glad I'm out of there! For those remaining behind it must not feel good to be considered as potential wood to be chopped out.

Platitudes are easy. Changing an entrenched crony leadership culture that protects its own has proven to be an insurmountable task in previous reorganizations. Aspiring for excellence through innovation requires resolute determination capable of overcoming the institutionalized crony clique's invested self-interests.

Yea man idk this whole working for AEP thing just doesn’t seem very cash money.

In the past, you would replace the lead with 30-50 yrs with someone with 20-30 yrs. The folks below would move up a notch and you would hire someone new. Now, you've lost the most experience person to retirement, the next in line to a buy out since they could bridge to retirement. Next layer left for better positions somewhere else so that leaves the new guy and the intern. I forgot about the TCS contractors who knows cr-p about the business but knows how to meet SLAs by working the system. I'm so glad I'm on that retirement list. Good luck to everyone, you'll need it and no I am not coming back as a contractor.

@4Jopu+1qB6FXi3 "du*m"

4Jnsc+1qB6FXi3 - Younger employees that are still there have few options. They’re either too lazy or too du*m to go anywhere else. Otherwise they would have left already.

Younger employees are looking at their long tenure colleagues and realizing shrinking compensation for enriching corporate officers and major shareholders is not a viable career path for achieving the American Dream. Grinding day in and day out to for a continuously shrinking share of the prosperity is ludicrous. Crony corporate culture rigs way too many promotions to ensure crony corporate culture is sustained stifling any innovation in favor of effortless and comfortable mediocrity.

The loss of Boomers is a great point. AEP is a company of experienced people. There’s no real structured pipeline to replenish talent, so the best folks are almost all close to retirement. Some were forced out over the last year, and some will be retiring within the next few. I shudder to think where we’ll be then.

There is some young talent in Transmission and TFS though. I hope those folks stick around.

The company will have to deal with the exodus of Boomers over the next few years. With those retirements so will the knowledge they have. None of that will be replaced. Sc--w the company if it think that I'm going to stick around 3 days a week to train someone or some guy in India. You made this mess, now live with the effects of it. That will be my feelings when I leave. I heard that from someone this summer when he left, he was not going to help with the transition when he left or so strike around a few days a week I think most boomers have the same feelings. I'll take my retirement and just leave. I turn 65 next year and I'm done.

Our corporate culture has never been more fragile. Severances have left a workforce that is just functioning despite itself. Leadership realizes a few key retirements or resignations shall lead to a catastrophic cascading failure of corporate structure that shall leave major shareholders' greed fest a smoking crater of value destruction. It is imperative that corporate management rebuild employees' trust, sense of shared sacrifice and shared reward to head off a mass stampede of talent which shall leave a woefully inadequate and incompetent herd of ego strokers to run the company into the ground. Employees are in control and corporate management has its back to the Wall Street wall.

It feels like ichan is pulling a page from the ge jack welch playbook. Raising the dividend for shareholders, slashing labor costs, outsourcing; who knows what other costs he is eyeing. That played out terrible for ge in the long term; however if you cashed in short term you made some good money.

This is starting to look like the cure is going to ki-l the patient. I have no doubt many of us will still be here at the end of the year. After that all bets are off, either people will retire at an accelerated rate or more targeted layoffs. AEP is the Titanic, I doubt we're going to make Port on time or in one piece.

Those employees and retirees, who labor and have labored diligently to create and sustain our company's, our states' and our nation's prosperity shall not be denied our virtuous destiny nor our noble legacy. Virtue-less tyrants and oligarchs, who swear allegiance only to themselves and their major shareholders' insatiable greed shall not subjugate our virtuous American Dream.

The destruction of AEP Generation continues with the pending loss of two of the very finest leaders, Chris Beam and Tim Kerns. Initially I had hoped with Julie's departure that the new senior leadership would build the company back up, but it now appears to just be the Draper Years Part II.

@4Dikp+1qB6FXi3

Generation Engineering? The Great Flattening of the Org seems to be starting the "Spans and Layers" plan in Generation and rolling it out across the company. HR seems to be struggling to create new roles for the demoted supervisors and managers. The timeline seems absolutely compressed to meet an unknown deadline regardless of how disruptive it is to the day-to-day operations.

Another thing for everyone to keep in mind, they are focusing on data security hard right now by revoking USB access to most of the people that previously had it. Additionally, they are asking Director levels to review and verify certain types of email attachments sent by their reports for "valid business reasons". So be mindful if you're working on resumes or backing up contacts for personal use.

Unfortunately, for many the damage is done. Employees are emotionally and intellectually exhausted and have no desire to play the corporate crony culture game any longer. Waiting for things to get better has proven futile as 31 flavors of clique management always winds up being cheap window dressing on the same sad and pathetic self-absorbed, as long as I am doing good sc--w the employees leadership paradigm.

@4Fdbi+1qB6FXi3 "growing pains" are you serious? She's been here for over 4 years. TCS is as bad today as they were the first day they came onboard. At some point changes in the Board or Bill will catch up with her. I just wish it would happen sooner than later.

Looks like I’m safe.

Fehrman cleaning house. Peggy and Beam both gone. I wonder why he hasn’t shed Therace yet. I think it’s fair to say that the board has endorsed her offshoring strategy for IT functions despite the growing pains.

How many managers to be demoted this week?
Many more managers and coordinators to be eliminated by weeks end?

One has to wonder, if some of these promotions allowed the company to receive higher COVID 19 Pandemic reimbursements from the federal government for keeping workers on the job because promoted employees had higher earnings. Now, that these promoted employees are no longer cash cows for the company they are being demoted back to their former positions because Pandemic assistance was great while it lasted.

I cant believe they want to fire me. Im doing such a good job and have been a real asset since I took over IT.

The Chief Administrative Officer's org is making changes currently.