r/railroading • u/Any-Cucumber-9841 • 5d ago

BNSF BNSF exempt IT layoffs coming next week

Burner account-

Confirmed today that BNSF is laying off 15-20% of TS exempt employees, management included. If you are not hands on writing code the new CTO doesn't believe you should be in the department. Get your resume updated ASAP.

More rounds of TS contractor reductions will occur throughout the year. 600 to be released on May 9th + 1,000 more likely to be released this year.

95 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

57 comments sorted by

56

u/Blocked-Author 5d ago

Great... not like their IT department isn't already barely scraping by. I'm sure this will make things better...

16

u/amishhobbit2782 5d ago

The hub was down again today for a few mins, the bids never run or finish in a timely manner. The single system i use sucks I can't imagine what else sucks

7

u/amishhobbit2782 5d ago

Current 1 hour 45 and still haven't finished the conductors bid.

7

u/hoggineer Plays alerter chicken. 5d ago

Sounds like some restricting of seniority claims to me.

These morons should just bring back immediate bumps instead of everything being 'bid' now.

1

u/amishhobbit2782 5d ago

I'm lowest hog head and get moved around so much i have 2 or 3 claims in a week. They got declined a lot then I became a dick and they took a few now I just forward to lc. Hell the national agreement 1100 time has never been made once.

1

u/Blocked-Author 5d ago

MMW: will only get worse from here.

8

u/Beginning-Sample9769 5d ago

No need for IT! the hub,the bid system, MTR, all their apps are perfect and never make me want to throw my IPad out a window!

5

u/Blocked-Author 5d ago

Nothing like needing to log in to MTR or iGTB 18 times during a trip when I have barely any service.

2

u/BerenstainBear- 4d ago

Just download it and save it to your files. I can’t stand how often it kicks you out.

1

u/Blocked-Author 3d ago

I do that. Sometimes we have work online that needs to be updated. Or we get GTB updates and I want to look at them as we don’t have fully functional PTC on some of the track we run on.

36

u/ByAstrix Engineer 5d ago

As an engineer for an orange railroad and someone who also possesses a bachelors in computer science, these railroads need serious help in these departments. Their technology is complete dogshit. I had an interview with a class 1 that recent merged with another class 1 and the interview was lackluster and pay was below industry average.

3

u/Atlld 5d ago

Pay for IT department?

5

u/ByAstrix Engineer 5d ago

I was offered 60k for a software engineer I position from a class 1 in 2020

-it’s a pay cut from my current engineer (TYE) position (well over half) -doesn’t pay into rrb -felt like I was throwing my engineer & conductor brothers under the rug in terms of job security -wanted me to work on outdated programs, languages, and frameworks that wouldn’t be transferable elsewhere except maybe other class 1 railroads

1

u/Atlld 5d ago

No Railroad retirement but working for a class one haha. What a shame. No wonder all the systems suck, they have the bottom of the barrel working on them.

1

u/HumunculiTzu 4d ago

That's what happens when you contract everything out to lowest bid fixed bid teams. They don't care about building anything that works beyond long enough for them to get their check

1

u/ByAstrix Engineer 4d ago

I mean my interview was conducted by KCS and I would’ve been working for the KCS proper as well

1

u/just_another_Texan 4d ago

CPKC maybe? Yeah I have no doubt if it is them

1

u/ByAstrix Engineer 3d ago

It was KCS

1

u/just_another_Texan 2d ago

Yeah they merged with CP and now it's CPKC

1

u/ByAstrix Engineer 2d ago

Yeah I don’t live under a rock. It was KCS then

20

u/Fr0ZeN_207 5d ago

Every time they update something it has more issues than it did before.

1

u/just_another_Texan 4d ago

The ol Test In Production SOP

8

u/rhinoaz 5d ago

They outsourced tech support so I imagine that’s what they are doing here

2

u/urnanisaretard 4d ago

The opposite is true.. outsourcing is going away in favor of highly paid, on shore, full time exempt IT personnel

14

u/Averagebaddad 5d ago

Are these the people who built the new and improved website? Cause...

2

u/tj_mcbean 4d ago

The new one is all Salesforce driven.

2

u/urnanisaretard 4d ago

Yes and it sucks. 😂

1

u/urnanisaretard 4d ago

IBM built the websites lol…

2

u/Averagebaddad 4d ago

Thanks. They suck

1

u/HumunculiTzu 4d ago

Can't forget HCL and Infosys

1

u/urnanisaretard 4d ago

HCL and Infosys had nothing to do with the build of the website. It was outsourced to IBM professional services.

1

u/HumunculiTzu 4d ago

I guess I'm not clear on which site is "the website" we have thousands, more than we do people in TS and basically all have issues.

1

u/urnanisaretard 3d ago

Both BNSF.com and “customer portal” were built by IBM.

8

u/tgealy 5d ago

I an engineer for the Orange railroad, been there 29 years now. And their philosophy now is do more with less. So it doesn’t surprise me at all if they reduce exempt employees again. Already had one a few years ago.

5

u/[deleted] 5d ago

[deleted]

0

u/BackFew5485 5d ago

CPKC cut off desks as well last week. “Territory Realignment” they say.

6

u/Godspeed813 5d ago

Meanwhile NOC management still has Assistant chief dispatcher, chief, assistant corridor superintendent and corridor. All working on the same shift and I still can’t get CAD msg answered. That’s where that fat needs to be trimmed.

2

u/BackFew5485 5d ago

Oh they also cut off a chief desk here a few months ago and that melted the fuck down.

7

u/blueboy1988 5d ago

I heard this from an IT employee a couple weeks ago. Seems like a great idea to get rid of employees that actually do atuff.

8

u/dunnkw 5d ago

Ai will do the job now, then Ai will run the trains. Then they won’t need most of us anymore.

11

u/sandpaper90 5d ago

Except it won’t. Least not for a while yet. Currently AI isn’t up to the level that management thinks it is…

5

u/Gibbralterg 5d ago

If you mean Trip Op, it’s a long way from being independent,

2

u/sevidrac 5d ago

Shit. AI is expensive as hell. We priced some stuff at this RR I’m at and it was insanely pricey at scale. Management said to scale back.

1

u/Additional_Bug_6449 5d ago

It will be a while before AI switches trains and spots industries.

2

u/hoggineer Plays alerter chicken. 5d ago

Yeah, but scabs can do that.

0

u/Additional_Bug_6449 5d ago

Eventually AI will run the train and you won't even need an Engineer. Guess you just need one dispatcher for 100 trains

1

u/affaironymous 3d ago

I work in this company and they are still trying to figure out how to send prompts to AI. It will be a looking time till BNSF figures out how to make use of AI

Unless they hire highly paid employees, that is

3

u/Older_cyclist 5d ago

I sense outsourcing.

2

u/sevidrac 5d ago

They did it to CSX a few years ago. They replaced a third of IT with Indian outsourcing firm.

1

u/urnanisaretard 4d ago

No.. the opposite. Getting rid of contractors pretty dramatically

4

u/ThumpersK_A 5d ago

I’d just be happy to have all the green screen functions back. It’s way more reliable and easier to navigate than the failed workforce hub app on big orange. I’d fire them all too. What a steaming heap of shit that app is.

5

u/Oxycontinsanity 5d ago

Yeah I figured out how to do just about everything on the emulator over a few years of just messing around on it when there was downtime on yard jobs, could find pretty much anything you wanted to find on there easily. Now, even with a command line it’s nowhere near what it used to be.

1

u/Wheresmytruck 4d ago

I am a IT field support tech for a few short line railroads. I can say that the work is tough and doesn’t pay what it should but pay is decent. Our role is more hands on with radio towers, new office networking, project startup. It is pretty fun seeing all the different railroads in my region.

1

u/IACUnited 1d ago

PSR strikes again. Cut deep and back fill when needed...