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Spent ten years at a Vista company that I won't name, half before acquisition and half after, and all of this pretty much tracks. (Maybe not the security guard part, but I can confirm that when you were laid off, you were escorted straight out the door.) I was a manager and hired people, and I never had a candidate who didn't pass the CCAT. But I'd have to qualify that with "a native speaker of English" and "in the US." I never hired in India or elsewhere overseas, but I heard from other managers that this could be a challenge, which makes me think the CCAT was a convenient way of weeding out "non-culture fits." As far as layoffs and CCATs, they layoff decisions were always a few steps above me in the org chart, but what I observed was that the last couple of rounds were very directly related to employee age. NOT tenure, although being there for 20 years meant you were on the chopping block to be replaced by a few HPELs. But I saw people who were 50+ and only around a few years get cut. Maybe it was due to salary, maybe not. Officially, it was due to "a formula" that included "several factors" because of course basing layoffs on age is illegal. Annual reviews were a bit bogus, because they were 1-5, with 1 being you were actively involved in a felony against the company, 2 being you were on a PIP, and you couldn't give a 5 to anyone. I would give a scattering of 3s and 4s, and then my boss's boss would say I had too many 4s, so effectively everyone was a 3, which doesn't do much for the "several factors." (It did play well into massively underfunding the bonus pool, though.) The only other part missing from your story is how between every layoff cycle, there would be a giant rumor that Broadcom or Oracle or someone was going to buy the company for the rolodex and real estate, and fire everyone they couldn't offshore. |