Allen Armstong is bad for this company and does not care about his employees. I recall him sending out a company-wide memo telling everyone that they are the "best employees in the world". Two weeks later he sends another memo telling everyone he's changing the bonus structure and will no longer include overtime in the basis for one's bonus. For those OT non-exempt employees this resulted a significant reduction and, for myself at 15-20% OT, it reduced my bonus by approximately 40% per year. I got the same bonus as a guy who wouldn't or couldn't handle his project work, while I traveled and worked 12 hrs. per day doing an incompetent's job. I challenged Armstrong via e-mail on these two conflicting memos. He actually answered this lowly front-line worker even as I was accusing him of hypocracy. His resonse: He felt the company needed money to raise the dividend to the MLP stakeholders from 15% to 15.2%. I wish I could post a copy af that e-mail here as I do still have it. Clearly employees at Williams are some sort of second-class stakeholder or he feels that employees have no stake in the company at all. Armstong doesn't feel hard work and dedication deserve recognition and reward.
I left 5 years ago and the lack of integrity at the top weighed in the decision to retire early. I've no reason to believe the jobs are not still relatively good career opportunities, but something else makes me question that as well. Several months prior to "MemoGate" Armstrong was heard on a manager's conference call stating "Our employees make too much money and I'm going to do something about it". A lot of attrition was coming William's Way 5 years ago and my small workgroup alone lost half it's techs (3/4 of the most experienced and dedicated) in just the two years after I became the first (youngest too) to retire. I doubt the newbies make half what we were making and with Armstong's intent, they never will.
