Fifth Avenue Forum

My company dropped our match and contribution awhile ago.. really sucks. But atleast still working and getting paid

Did they do it in response to Covid, or was this a permanent change before this all started?

financial conditions due to covid basically. Big wigs, BOD, took paycuts and such too

Hopefully it's just temporary, then.

At the end of our town hall, our CIO mentioned that she'll be letting us know about moving to full time work from home at the end of July, after they send a survey out to all of IS. That would be fan-****-tastic.

You could cash out PTO? Wow.

They took that away from us about 10 years ago right as I was getting to 4 weeks.

I wish our company would figure out what they're doing regarding the long term return to work plan. If i only have to go to work 2 or so days per week, I'm going to start finishing our basement so I have a legit office. If it's back to 5, I may look at purchasing a vehicle.

My company is still full steam ahead on getting everybody back into the office by mid July. The execs have been there since June 1 and my sense is that they're simply lonely.

We have heard not a peep about going back to the office or to the brand new building in bakery square anytime soon.

"Let's all turn our webcams on to get a bit more normalcy feeling."

meow has left the meeting

"Let's all turn our webcams on to get a bit more normalcy feeling."

meow has left the meeting

I haven't turned my webcam on for any meeting outside of ones I have with my Citrix team.

The sound on my work desktop doesn't work, which by proxy makes my sound not work when I remote it.

So great having a fall back excuse for not doing video conferencing.

You could always buy a USB headset...

Watch that "temporary" 403B match suspension.

We had a 7% match for years - decades evidently - and because of bad budgets, they gradually started taking it back each year, always promising it would be back ASAP. Well, it's at 4% and there's no talk about bringing it back to 7% any time soon.

Mind you these cuts were well before the Rona.

It sounded like they were going to eliminate the entire match temporarily, in our case.

7% is a freaking generous contribution

You could always buy a USB headset...

No, it's an issue with the system. I've been unable to get sound through headphones going back like a year.

Not that I want it fixed any time soon.

7% is a freaking generous contribution

Yeah, it sure was. I got it for about 2 years. I've been here 13.

The old timers say it was the only reason why they hung around to become old timers!

We currently have a 6% match and so far no plans to remove/postpone it.

Sooooo, I reported back at the end of February that Golf Channel was moving its operations to Stamford in the near future and we'd find out more at a later date. Monday was that later date. The gist of the deal is that our office closes its doors on December 31 and we're all layed off, though some of us are getting layed off in phases, beginning at the end of August. My phase falls somewhere between October 30 and end of the year. With the work I do and the Masters happening in November, my guess would be that my time will come near Thanksgiving. We all have the opportunity to apply for positions (some of which were the same ones we already occupied) in Stamford but those are pretty limited. All in all, it's a total of 270 employees who are getting slashed by the end of the calendar year and probably 20-30 who will have jobs related to the new regime in Stamford. What that will mean for the coverage going forward, I have no idea. To make matters more sour, at least in my eyes, we were given a 4-hour notice on Monday morning that there was a 1pm conference call. So people knew stuff and they tried their best to hold it in as long as they could. You can't tell me the execs hatched it all together at 11pm on Sunday night. Then, our weekly department meeting that we started having at the beginning of the pandemic got canceled 10 minutes before it was to be held. Our top executives in our news department are always in that meeting. Me thinks they didn't want to face the crowd.

What this means for me -- I've applied for a couple of the jobs that I already do. One of which COULD allow me to continue living here while doing it, which would be my perfect-world scenario. If I don't get picked or if I choose to not accept because of compensation (need a bump to offset the cost of living between here and Connecticut), then I will receive 8 months severance since I'll have close to 16 years service when the doors close. So I'm at least financially secure thru this time next year. I'll have some decisions to make because if I don't continue, I'll need to decide what I want to do next. It's been a pretty sad week because it's going to be a breakup of a longtime team. And I can tell you that Arnold is staring daggers at the NBC brass from his place on high.

Arnie would not have handled it like that. Hope everything works out OP.

Sorry to hear about your tough spot, OP. Hope you work it out...

Sorry to hear that OP. That just straight up sucks. Hope everything works out.

That blows. I'll pour out some Arnold Palmer later today for you and your team.

Had a townhall this morning. Sounds like we are remote the rest of 2020. We have to clear out our old building by the end of July since that building is being repurposed for another part of our company whenever everyone eventually gets back to the office.

I really have no reason to go back because all that is my desk is my old monitors and we are getting new ones at the new building when it officially opens. I pretty much cleared out when we left back in March.

Not sure how much of a delay there will be in opening the new place in Bakery Square, but it seems for at least the rest of 2020 we are remote.

Our townhall was yesterday and they want to start bringing a percentage of workers back to the building. From everyone I talked to yesterday, nobody is interested in being the group to go back first.

Our firm sent out a survey with WFH preference options of either 2 days a week WFH, 3 days WFH or all in the office. Far as I can tell no one I talked to said all days in the office. Yet here we are, all required to go back full time on 7/6 every day. What's the point of sending the survey?