A story of the 500 fired senior workers in Silicone Valley

What is my depression experience in 2002 ?
It was a result of big fight between me with my manager and my company.
Silicon valley Mercury new head line at 2002 : Natinal Semiconductor fired
500 employee.
I was one of the 500 senior workers, and sent email to president:
Fire a 20 years hard work worker without lay-off package is this fair? 

My company gave me retirement package to exchange dropping discrimination
Charge From US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
This story explain the high technical company at Silicone valley,
How to do cost cutting by fire people, Why the US soft engineer jobs 
moved to India, It also explain my depression due to the tool used to
fire people by company called “employee performs review” and EEOC  investigations on NSM.
all by the company email. 
 
This email NSM Christian group : 

Dear Brothers & Sisters:

I have been missing you since our last National Semiconductor Christian meeting.
I enjoyed sharing God’s word with you. This is my testimony regarding 
the end of my employment at National Semiconductor.
I tried to save my job in a dispute with My manager Cely, IS manager Mike, IS Personal Laura,
IS director Ulrich, ending with President Brian (details in email;
“Fired a 20 years worker without package”

The dispute was settled by HR Vice President Edward Sweeney, by giving me a full retirement 
lay-off package with the condition I drop the age discrimination charge from EEOC.

I am suffering from depression and have a hard time sleeping supported by a state disability benefit plan.
My doctor sent a request to VPA Insurance to extend my disability benefits for another 3 months
but was ignored and my phone calls was never answered by a VPA manager.  
But the long-term disability benefits are not so important to me any more.
The important thing is that God leads the way and God gives me strength when I am weak. 
You can read my other testimony on my Web but only if you can read Chinese.

May God Bless You,
Jerry Sun
P.S. My only request is that you pray for me, specifically for my health recovery and for me to forget the past.

Copy of My Email to President of National Semiconductor and forward Email about the dispute :

To:	Brian Halla/
Subject:	Fire a 20 year worker for performance reason without lay-off package
Brian,
I am 62 years  old and hard worker for national semiconductor 20 years, 
they are going to fire me for performance reason without lay-off package, do you think this is fair ?

I am sick and hard to sleep and  depression, please allow me sick leave for 4 days.

Please assign a new HR person to read my email and set a counselor appointment next week.

Thanks.

Regards,  Jerry Sun

This is Email to my manager, IS personal, IS director, IS manager, They had a pre-meeting
as a set-up to me :

To:	Cely Montecillo/ 
cc:	Laura Frank/ , Ulrich Seif/ , Mike Glynn/  

Subject:	More Detail about the meeting with Laura on Jan 24

Cely,

I have to explain more detail about the meeting with Laura on Jan 24.

 2:00 PM - 2:25 PM  - PAR meeting with you

2:25 PM - 2:28 PM - sent email to Ulrich from my desk and asked for help because you gave me hard time.

2:30 PM - 2:40 PM -  walked to Ulrich's office and Tom Cremer told me Ulrich was at a meeting.

2:40 PM - 2:51 PM - Borrowed  PC outside Ulrich's meeting room and forwarded  email to Laura
                                   asked Laura to set meeting with me while waiting for Ulrich. 

2:51 PM - 3:51 PM - Tried to call Laura both at the office phone and cell phone but nobody answered.
                    Met Mike walking out of meeting room and  Mike said he had only 5 minutes to talk,
                    I showed him my email and he said he would talk to you.

4:00 PM - 4:05 PM - Met Ulrich walking out of meeting room, I showed my email to him, Ulrich said he
                    cannot interfere with Cely, said I have to work PAR with you, but I can talk
                    to Laura. When he opened the meeting room next to his office, Laura was waiting me.
                                
4:10 PM - 4:45  PM - Conversation detail between Laura and me :

Laura just repeated everything from the PAR just as Cely have which made
it apparent that you already had a meeting to discuss me.
I complained that Cely gave me a hard time because she is discriminated against me
because of my age and the fact that I am not female and Laura wanted to know the details.
    
I explained that you humiliated me in front of staff for missing a DR meeting.
After the meeting, you walked in front my desk continuing to humiliate me. 
During one of the PAR meetings, you complained that I did not concentrate on the meeting
Karen already covered the meeting for the whole group so I did not see what the big deal was about.

Cely have constantly humiliated me on several occasions in front of  Karen and Vijaya.
For instance, Karen and you both would say very loudly that I did not do the test . 
Vijaya, on the other hand, said it was not a critical problem and said she already recovered the problem.
When I told Laura the details of my experience, she said, "I did not hear anything."

On several occasions, I was unable to carpool with Julie's big van only you 
and Karen in the van and you told me you were ladies and do not want men in the car 
and I had to car pool with Reddy for group lunch.

When I asked Rose to help me to transfer to Tom's group and Rose sent email saying not this month
because "there is stuff going on that Tom is working on" in his group just like the stuff 
that Cely is working on with me.
I said that I was one of two targets to save lay-off package costs by firing people.
Laura said that you cannot compare different cases and you are not supposed to
print Rose's email and hurt 4 people already., other than email Rose told me
"Our Group doing Ugly thing on this month, but I can't tell you". 

I said to Laura Ulrich have a cost cutting plan target same high pay employee 
fire them for performance reason and Cely use this killing 2 birds with one stone :
1. Exercise Ulrich cost cutting plan 2. Get rid of the people she do not like.

Laura said this is nothing to do with Ulrich please do not bring this up.

The following email send to my manager Cely Personal, Is manager, Is director as :


Cely Laura Frank/Mike Glynn/Ulrich Seif/
 
Subject:	Set the Record Straight

Cely, I need to set the record straight between the two of us and
what went on during the i2 staff meetings.

1. MVS PROC & JCL convert and Cross Reference project.

When I completed the MVS to UNIX cross reference project,
I made it easier to complete the MVS PROC & JCL conversion and cross reference for i2.
I completed the demo version on UNIX and showed you how it will cut a great deal of cost. 
However, you rejected my idea immediately and said, 
"You are wasting your time and I do not want to you do the duplicate work with Karen's Cobol version."
I stopped developing the UNIX version at that time.

During the staff meeting on Oct 30, 2002, you put Karen/Jerry both on a task list for job J650SCXR
that I had just completed for MVS to UNIX cross ref. You never told me I had to do it alone without Karen's involvement.
During your meeting with Karen, you called me to ask how long it will take to finish this project
and I told you that I am waiting for Karen's involvement or for her to hand over the JCL.

You blamed me for the delay of this project even though I never expected to bear the full responsibility
for this project alone. The next day, I used Karen's JCL to start run all the details and found a lot of problems.
You asked me to run my UNIX demo version for comparison and the result. Since UNIX version takes less than 1%
of CPU time and cost, there is no debate to give up the COBOL version The next day, I saw you use a calculator to
calculate the CPU time at your desk.
With Karen there, you told me that it is not bad, only 1.5 CPU time for each job and the just longest CPU time
on my sample J650SCBM improved from 41.35 to 23.16 CPU time.
Yet the both of you still insisted that I install the COBOL version.
I said, "Please, please let me do the UNIX version" and Karen said she did not care about the CPU time
as long as the UNIX version can do all the functions. Finally, we agreed for Karen to install the COBOL
version on production to buy the time for me to change to the UNIX version that will perform the same function
as the COBOL version.
When I developed the UNIX version and told you I can generate a complete cross ref. very easily,
you said it was not needed which I did not understand.
When I asked you why Karen did not install the COBOL vision, you told me you told her
do not install it.  As I understand it, the MVS PROC cannot handle more than 300 at a time
for capacity problem plus 1.5 X 497 = 745 min CPU time.  
It is impossible for anyone to install it so I did not understand why you expected the task
to be done a lot sooner. 
This was Karen's project in the first place. You should have asked her to install and finish this project by herself.
It is not normal procedure for a manager to ask somebody else to finish their project and your reason was
she was busy and you wanted me to learn the COBOL version.
My main objection is that I function as a UNIX programmer and as a back up for  Reddy.
I have 35 years COBOL experience, therefore I do not need to learn the COBOL version;
but I still tried to do the best I can. After the meeting between the three of us, 
you asked only me to finish this project.
The next day I asked Karen's involvement but she did not give me any advice.
I found her presentation sample and ran every step by myself and I showed you OC7 looping,
a long CPU time problem. I saw you walking to Karen's desk and I did not know the details
of your meeting. Then the other day,  Karen told me the OC7 was fixed and to try it now
but I told her that Cely asked me start the UNIX version. Her involvement only started at that time.
You assigned Karen/Jerry to this task as if she is the leader of this project.
If she was busy, either you and she would order me to do it. But I only got 2 orders from you,
first was put Karen/Jerry name on the task list during the staff meeting.
After 2 weeks, you suddenly asked me how long it was I going to take to finish it.
You could not accept my offer to finish my UNIX version in 5 days.
I worked very hard at home and during Thanksgiving, I worked more than 20 hours
work at home to finish my UNIX version on time so I do not understand you blaming me
for delaying the project and said KAREN DESERVES A LOT OF CREDIT.
   
I did demo the UNIX version to Rose, Craig, & Miguel. They were very happy with the UNIX version because 
it was simple, fast, and cost only 1% of the COBOL old version, therefore presented a better solution.
Rose sent an email to you and asked me help to install and to learn the UNIX version and
I did not understand why you said "I feel that the Cobol tool will be more useful and understandable to them."

Your E-mail :
I certainly expected the task to be done a lot sooner than now if you had worked with Karen's programs and JCL 
instead of developing a Unix program. I have made this clear in several staff meetings  that what
I expect is the Cobol/JCL tool  to be in production.
KAREN DESERVES  A LOT OF CREDIT for this jcl-proc converter and the ideas which allowed i2 group to narrow down
the list of datasets to back up for the DR plan, and also to allow us to get the cross-reference between datasets
and jcl/programs.
Since groups that use procs in their JCL are mainframe-centric, I feel that the Cobol tool will be more useful
and understandable to them.   Not all mainframe groups have Unix programmers on their staff.
Hence, the task assigned to you  was to put the Cobol tool  in production  for other groups
to pick up and adopt for their systems. This was not achieved.
That said,  the  Unix program is another solution to the same problem- basically reinventing the wheel.    

2. Alchemist-like UNIX migration tool.

You have been inconsistent by rebuffing my request to demo the tool that I developed at the first
communication meeting by saying, "That is not what a communication meeting is for" 
yet during the second communication meeting, you presented this tool by yourself.
You called it a "quick and dirty tool" in your e-mail even though my tool completed one of your 2001 goals. 
From my point-of-view, this tool can replace the original Alchemist to include MVS migration
and save millions of infrastructure money and CPU time but it was rejected by you even just to talk to infrastructure people.  

3. You asked me to do the UNIX project all by myself without asking Reddy questions.

You asked me to support i2 consultant K.C., include FTP i2 information to i2,
write both Oracle and Sybase programs, and compare both results in order to test me.
You said in the  following :

Subject:	Re: i2 WIP flush is still reprojecting the WIP dates

Jerry, assume that Reddy is on vacation in the Himalayas with no phone 
or network access.
Pls provide the info to KC and also ftp the mp weekly saved engine by 
today.    Thanks.

I finished this task all by myself even though this is against company policy.
We are supposed to work together and ask questions of each other as a team.
The FTP to i2 user name and password were changed causing me great difficulty until I called the consultant K.C.
because I could not ask Reddy any questions.
One time I tried to restore the i2 engine but the user function still did not work until
Reddy told me this is an Enable/Disable function on the i2 engine.
I asked Reddy where is the Enable/Disable function documentation and he said nobody looks at the documentation
so he did not write it. Instead, I had to write all the details on G drive.
     	Reddy had the i2 project for a long time with the help of 5 or 6 i2 consultants but
only a few consultants were left when I was transferred to i2. Now Reddy was my only resource 
and you tell me not to ask him any questions? How can you expect me to handle i2 just like him?
So I read i2 documentation and traced i2 scripts and trained myself. Like I said,
I can do 90% of the i2 work.  During Reddy's long vacation to the Himalayas or whatever,
I would be the only one left to handle all i2 UNIX technical issues and support users.

As the person footing the responsibility in Reddy's absence, I suggested we redefine 3 user groups
  on i2 UNIX security login:
a. Use only mpadmin login for batch production jobs. Currently only you and Reddy
   have the password to do the write & exec function.
b. Define UNIX persons as a group composed of people like Reddy and myself. All
  functions would be just like mpadmin but any write exec function will have the logon id 
  and timestamp on it.
c.  Define all COBOL programmers as a group while others have read only function
as does my current logon id cjjssc on R81/R82/R83 production server.

You rejected this suggestion. How could you tie my hands like that by making me do work 
without a production password and expect me to handle i2 UNIX production problem just like Reddy did?

One or two years ago, all groups shared one user name as mpadmin until a mistake was made by somebody
that deleted the whole directory. You did not know who did it, and changed the mpadmin password to one 
that only Reddy and yourself knew.  The UNIX system has a well-defined 3 level security system built for us to use.
Why are you not implementing this system effectively by not taking my suggestion?

You said in a staff meeting everybody changing scripts should follow the standard migration procedure.
My attached "Scripts change notice reports" showed that Reddy did not follow the procedure.
He made mistakes causing several abends but you said nothing.

Because Reddy did not follow the migration procedure, I could not compare the script before/after the change to trace
what he was doing in production that kept a big information gap between him and myself.
Besides, all people have job security issues.

When I made any small mistake, you called other female employees to mock and humiliate me
causing me a great deal of mental distress and embarrassment. Many times,
I pointed this out as a double standard, but you gave me no explanation. 

 
4. Severe problem on DR backup Jobs.

I do not understand why this caused such is a severe problem. When you asked me to do the MVS backup data sets,
I searched all data sets and put them on a backup list. Karen then said we needed only to backup the data
after her test run, so she gave out two lists, one data set for i2 and a 2nd data set for another group
but needed by i2. You and Karen continued to modify this list so it was no longer under my control.
You found some data sets missing and all you had to do was put it back with no problem. 
Why did you have to treat me differently from the others after this incident as if I committed 
a terrible blunder that caused irrevocable damage? 

Subject:	Issues with i2 DR and proc change

Jerry,  I have to bring to your attention a severe problem with the 
work you had done recently.

1)   The DR job for i2 should have included all the cntl, sysin, 
matchjcl and all other libraries used by the JCL to send control data to 
Unix.    When we asked you to put in the R1 back up job only the datasets 
needed by i2, these were supposed to be in that backup.     Instead,  
these critical files were removed
These errors show  lack of attention to detail which will be reflected 
in your performance review.    We will do our next assessment as 
outlined in your performance improvement plan.    Please improve the quality 
of your work and be consistent.



5. Add new rpt tables to plndate checking.

You made a mistake with a wrong table name and ordered me to add to the plndate table.
Since it was almost after hours, I did not double check and catch your mistake but as
I said during the meeting with Reddy and you, "I did what my boss asked me to do,
because my boss is always right." This made you rather upset.

It is impossible to make no mistakes at all as a programmer; we are human beings.
As long as the mistake did not cause irrevocable damage, we can recover the error together and work as a team.
I do not understand why you magnify any small mistake I make? 


As Rose pointed out, there were 66 abends in Period 6 of the I2 production abends and not a single one of 
the 66 abends were caused by me.

Subject:	pls add new rpt tables to plndate  checking

Jerry, this is an example of what I requested you to do which was not 
done right.     Instead of adding the table like below based on what the 
ZX stored procedures named the tables, you added the table name like 
the dsdb name which was incorrect.    After making the change, you did 
not verify if next day's job ran okay.    Only after Reddy noticed this 
that it was corrected.

If, as you say you know 90% what Reddy knows, you won't make this kind 
of mistake.    Also, if you are quality focused, you would check the 
status of the jobs after you made any change to ensure everything was 
okay.

6. Parallel Crystal & Business Objects as tool for Web report.

You said you did not want Larry's group to get all the credit after BPI was phased out.
You made the decision that learning Parallel Crystal & Business Object would be the group goal.
I used my previous developed web page builder & SQL builder to display the same information as Larry's group web reports.
I explained that I could create a program that would be identical even in format to Larry's group without 
learning any new tools if I used CGI hardcode.

You stopped me and said that I would be re-inventing the wheel, but after 7 or 8 months,
I do not see any Parallel Crystal or Business Objects reports on production yet.


7.  Progressive Action Review.
      
You dropped this PAR on 10/18/02 just before my car pool during after hours and asked for me to sign it
immediately without any explanation of what my rights were. I signed the PAR in 2 minutes and after
that I observed you building up critical performance records which were totally biased and unfair.

I completed all the tasks or tests on this PAR, but you continued to add more difficult tasks to prove I cannot do it,
This one even not on  original  Progressive Action Review:

Okay, Jerry.     Here is what we will go over at our next PAR meeting.
Problem:  User is questioning the DP forecast quantities going into MP. 
You have been assigned the task of investigating this and determining where is the issue.
Item numbers in question are : level 95  LMX2354TM    and LMX2354TMX.
 
8. Permission for one-on-one meeting with Ulrich.

You asked for a draft of any correspondence with Ulrich and this is what I am doing.
If we have too many differences and do not agree with one another, 
please allow me to set up a one-on-one meeting with Ulrich.

Regards,  
Jerry Sun

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