Job Rant.

I've been a manager at this company for more years than I want to admit anymore.  Ok, here goes... of the 32+ years in this company, 3.5 years in the late 80's to early 90's and then the last 16.48 years since August of 1996.  I've never liked being a manager,  that is why I got out of it the first time.  Fortunately I have been able to do technical work and lead a technical team so it wasn't all bad.  I do that part pretty well apparently.
Rant:

• The customer is warning us that they expect a 10% cut in our budget this year.  Just a warning and we won't know for sure until half way through the year.
• The director wants to cut now and avoid having to make a 20% cut later.
• We identified people we could cut by position that would least impact our operations and work.
• Two of those people said they would take the layoff without bumping someone if that is what it came to.
• This plan was submitted to Human Resources.  HR for short.  Heartless Rats.  Human Refuse.
• HR said we have to try to find these people jobs, even if that meant bumping our own people below them in the ranking order.  The outdated ranking order that is over a year old and has no relationship to today's rankings.
• As if I give a shit about rankings.  I need specific people.  The people we decided to release were releasable because we don't need them as much.  If everyone could do anyone's job, we wouldn't have made a selection.  That isn't the real world.  It appears to be the HR world.  A Level 5 System Engineer Sr Stf should be able to step into the shoes of another Level 5 System Engineer Sr Stf of lower ranking without too much training or trouble.
• And what is this bullshit that an employee can't say "I don't want to bump anyone."and we have to try to place him somewhere anyway?  I guess they want to avoid severance pay at all costs since it is 2 weeks pay plus 1 week per year served up to 26 weeks.  But if they bump someone who has the same salary and severance, no gain there!

I am so pissed off I can spit.  Several people are going to get an unnecessary layoff notice because some lawyers tells HR to toe the line and follow process exactly.  I am spending hours of my life writing up justifications for why the other people shouldn't be bumped by this guy ranked higher than them.  Obviously they don't trust my judgement, nor the judgement of the senior manager and director above me.  I am tired of it.  Why do we have managers at all?  Just hire a bunch of HR types to do this shit and let the engineer leads run the real work, until HR runs the company into bankruptcy.