In October 2020, there was an announcement that the company was hoping to bring back a 401(k) match of 3% for the year. Up until this point, we had been told the match would be 100% up to 3%, then 50% of the next 4-6%, and 25% of 7-9%. Therefore, myself and many others were contributing the full 9% to get the maximum match. The company had already delayed wage increases, merit based promotions/bonuses and laid off about 50 employees "due to coronavirus" - all of these decisions were not favorable, however it is pretty typical for companies to do this. I have never heard of a company going back on their 401(k) match, especially with no prior warning. I spoke with a couple dozen employees at multiple levels - designers, drafters, project managers, even a few principals and all were caught equally off-guard by this. I sent a message to the HR department and CC'd the CEO and CFO. I explained that I thought these decisions should be made at the beginning of the year, before any employee contributions are made. I explained that if I had known there would be no match or a lesser match, then I would have made those contributions to better investment vehicles like my HSA, IRA, or my children's' 529 college funds. I also proposed changing the contributions for the next year (2021), rather than the current year. I received a rather lengthy response from the CFO stating they made the announcement in March, however the only evidence they could point me to was literally a footnote in a weekly newsletter listing several "possible" cost-cutting measures (some of which were never implemented or discussed further). I replied that there should have been an official statement regarding something as important as this. Less than 2 weeks later, I was fired for "performance issues", despite having a good performance review in July and also having just received a raise before I raised my hand about the 401(k). Why would you give an underperforming employee a wage increase, just to fire them within the month? Especially given the fact that I had over a month of paid vacation that they then had to pay out at my new higher rate. If they come back on this review trying to cover this up, just know that I saved copies of my personnel records (employee reviews) and paystubs to verify that portion of my story, as well as my emails with the CFO and HR.
