Thread regarding CDW layoffs

“year ago we paid Sirius employees $500 for holiday bonuses”

Nope, we got NOTHING a year ago. CDW cancelled holiday bonuses in 2021 and my group was told this was implemented permanently due to the drain on profits. Be glad you got anything. Half my team came from Sirius.

Cdw sellers and Sirius sellers blaming one another for their failures after 5 years together is peak comedy

@1v1 The professional services group at CDW prior to the acquisition was larger than the entire Sirius employee count. CDW had a large practice and added onto it.

@1v8 Not necessarily. I'm just saying if a company wanted to stay in the hardware and software business, they would have to be the best at it. Otherwise, the company would need to expand into services to stay afloat. The decision point for such a transition was 20 years ago. Acquiring Sirius was a good move but wasn't executed well.

@1v1 Integration was led by a CDW bozo and his team of clowns. All of the good leaders quit or got run off. We ended up with our B team managers and some good reps and engineers. Many of those who stayed will now quit over this latest announced plan change and account reassignment. If you want a job in the industry, Presidio or WWT is probably the closest thing to what we had and they will hire you and fight your non solicitation. They know CDW is too wounded to fight back.

@1v1 So you are saying Berbee was a failure since 2006?

@1v2 a lot of us still have our Sirius laptops!

@161 Your right. However, CDW also has some of those coworkers designated as Sirius coworkers. I wouldn't be surprised if some still have their Sirius laptops. So, your story goes both ways.

@160 From my understanding, Sirius was acquired for it successful professional services group. Why would CDW want to convert a successful group into the CDW Way of doing a business model they didn't really have in the first place. It's true, not all Sirius legacy people may not have been the best, but not accepting and integrating a successful business model into CDW was the fault of CDW. I would think that CDW was late to the game in building a professional services group in the first place so Sirius was good timing for CDW to catch-up. They just couldn't get of the way of themselves.

@14r In addition to the ACE managers being let go, the ACE recruiters were let go as well. Yes, I understand that this isn't a RIF or some coordinated layoff from the C Suite, but to some of us in Professional Services, it's a tea leaf.

So, in summary: No. No formal Layoffs or RIF in December. Any group can cut a person here and there, especially if there are performance issues. But there are not layoffs in December.
Now back to these other topics...

@1pr The folks that know for sure whats going to happen in the future, won't comment here. However, there were layoffs that happened last week. Also take a look at the sales re-org going on, and the globalization efforts and draw your own conclusions as to what's going to eventually happen. When, is the question.

This post went off topic- does anyone have any actual idea as to if there may be layoffs in January, or even December?

Yes, we all understand the nonsense that surrounds us. But how about people with actual information add commentary?

@19s Why not call CDW what it is. COMPUTER DISCOUNT WAREHOUSE. That is all they advertise on cable. Pushing laptops and Windows. Their pricing is more expensive than various other paths. Wonder why the CDW stock is where it is at is simple. That is what the market says that the company and management is worth. Not much and going lower.
Don't worry about the Sirius logo bring the Computer Discount Warehouse logo back

@19g There is still so much pervasive collateral damage from how the layoffs over the last 18 months were handled that no one trusts the organization's leadership. Innovation was tossed because no one takes risks or thinks outside the box, Instead we've become an organization where half the teams are trying to stay off the radar and the other half and acting like it's the hunger games and just trying to survive the next round of layoffs. The way we're going CDW is going to end up being a great Harvard Business. Review Case Study on how to kamikaze a corporate culture and subsequently the whole company.

@19c we're hardly the Titanic, more like the SS Minnow with Gilligan & the Skipper in charge but you have a good point. CDW probably isn't an acquisition target as a whole and would be parted out to get the best price for the pieces and I don't think services is sustainable as a standalone business today, we're too niche-y in our CDW internal wacko processes and no overall sustainable strategy. We have minor exec players. No credible industry respected execs that can drive a strategy (if we had one). Maybe a pay-per-strategy comp plan - how about we use the old ROI metric to our own strategy and hold accountable (fire) the people who can't or won't do the best for the company.

@197 In January of 2023 the market cap was $30 billion. We spent roughly a billion on share buybacks during that period and today our market cap is $19 Billion. So basically that's a $12 billion decline which is a 40% reduction in value. By most metrics this would be looked at as a fu--ing disaster. Whatever survives from this will look nothing like CDW did 5 years ago. The plan a couple of years ago was to speed into services and to get out of the sales of boxes long game. Now we're in a position where we would likely be acquired just for parts of the business, but the only problem is that there are none of those that have sustainable competitive advantage. There is no miracle or innovation coming along in 2026 under the current leadership and structure. They're just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

@161 It's both management & employee issue, if former Sirius management and HR are allowing this behavior with no actions, discussions or acknowledgement that it's a major policy and employee issue to have CDW employees for the past 5 years using a old company branding as their email signature, we have more problems than anyone is willing to talk about. maybe you allow it for a short time as a transition so customers get informed but to accept it now as CDW endorsed "culture" is insane. We need to brand as one company with a consistent GTM strategy (yes I know that's hysterical to think we'd have a strategy)

@113 "Get out when you can, as you are just a number on a spreadsheet; especially if your sales and employee # are/were different (IYKYK)."

This, exactly. I'm one of them with two different numbers, sad to see a company that actually use to value employees and culture try and get rid of the very people that once made this company great.

@15x Programs like the ACE program typically enhance innovation and profits while significantly improving employee retention and reducing recruitment expenses. These programs reflect the company’s investment in employee success rather than solely focusing on its own profits. Your perspective is quite telling and speaks to some of the cultural challenges CDW has been dealing with over the years.

I know others have said it before on this board… if you were a Sirius Coworker and still have their logo in your autosig 4 years later… you are the problem. It is like still wearing your high school sweatshirt years later!

Sirius coworkers are a mixed bag just like CDW. Some are great, some were mediocre. Many had an attitude though of “being better than” and certainly have been unwilling to adapt to the CDW ways of doing things. Even the great ones were no better than the CDW great ones. Lots of us vs them attitude and their leaders cater to their people. Weak leaders who sound like
New sales managers who claim they have no time to lead to manage because they are “too busy selling” while true leaders know how to do both. Overall, it has been an expensive mistake that did not get us the gains we hoped for.

@15x All the ACEs (from the US ACE program) actually get to the finish line. The only ones who do not are those who fail their milestone challenges, certifications, or consulting ojt criteria. These are the ones who do not make the cut due to performance or not meeting and SDM/TL expectations.

ACE is a waste of time and energy. Most of those people never even get to the starting line. It’s not a “very successful program”, it’s just more fat. Good bye. Less admin for proserve leaders to do now.

@14r How many people were impacted? As a director or VP you are given an allocation of $ based on a percentage over existing salaries for your total group that you can then reallocate across the team. This is a game to get those off the books now so that those dollars aren't allocated to positions next year they aren't impacted.

@14y It's where we hire people who have little to no experience in the technology and we mold them into a CDW consultant. It's a very successful program and mainly deals with CX/DX, Security, Wireless, and probably others that I don't know about. Maybe you've seen the term "ACE" -- Associate Consulting Engineer.

@14r What's Professional Services "Associates Program"? I am in professional services and never heard of that.

There were some layoffs today that hit CDWs professional services arm... more specifically, its Associates Program.

LOL....look at all the legacy Sirius people on this board all getting their feelings hurt.

I had a Sirius security sme on a customer call of mine when we first acquired them that didn't even know a firewall could be used solely as a VPN concentrator, even an AM such as myself knows that. So yeah, I get what they are saying below.

Niche or very focused based segments of services, sure, maybe they know more in one pointed area, but wholistic knowledge of networking, security, storage, etc, I'll take the legacy CDW ISA/FSA's any day of the week on a customer facing call.

The crybabies are out in force! They think they know how to run this company better than fearless leader.

@113 there was a University in Iowa RFP a couple of years ago and there were two bids that were received CDW, and Sirius. The problem was we had already merged by that point and nobody figured out that we were basically just competing against ourselves.

CDW hasn't been able to acquire anyone and then fully realize/integrate anything. Services will never fit the traditional CDW way. CDW will keep trying to move to a services model, while sc--wing up every acquisition they make. It all started with Berbee which was a cluster and didn't move the needle, services wise, in a meaningful way. Fast forward to Sirius, which they vastly overpaid for...and they again sc--w up everything.

How the top of the leadership is still there baffles me. Expect the traditional sales team to be marginalized as much as possible. Attrition and RIF from the legacy sales team is what CDW wants. Basically, from the director level and above, they are saying to everyone; "The beatings will continue until morale improves...".

Get out when you can, as you are just a number on a spreadsheet; especially if your sales and employee # are/were different (IYKYK).

Education has crashed and burned. Does Simone survive this or does the reorg "align" strategic interests?

@y1 Whether it was deliberate bad strategy or ignorance of how to integrate an acquisition (you figure out which you prefer to believe) there wasn't ever and is not currently any integration or attempt to blend the new services people into the existing business. Not blaming the workers from Sirius, this was absolutely a management failure and still is impacting everyone. No, they didn't "ask" to be acquired but that's life in the big leagues - you get acquired and accept it or you can always leave. No company owes you a lifetime of your old culture, whatever that was. What we have now isn't working and we can fix it or sell them off but it ever be like it was .We need to move on and do business or no one makes money

@xa Half the technical knowledge? That’s rich. I’m not going to bash any of my coworkers, but let’s just say that the level of technical knowledge and project methodology (esp. SOWs) of the projects here shocked many of us when we arrived.

Leadership stated “one CDW” but never backed it. Still don’t - words only. No team can work when the orgs are staged to compete against each other. CDW leadership “knew better” and steered the ship into rocks - then blamed the rocks vs taking accountability. 2yr stock down 32% so you can trust leadership knows what they are doing?!?

@xa you’re joking right? The Sirius technical knowledge and expertise trumps that of the CDW legacy service and solution engineers’ knowledge tenfold. CDW was not a services org before acquiring Sirius and quite frankly, still su-ks at services. I mean let’s be honest here. They bought Sirius at a premium and couldn’t figure out how to integrate them successfully and was a complete PMI fail that they couldn’t and will never recover from.

@w1 because some think they acquired CDW, not the other way around. There are still a few out there with Sirius in their auto signatures, they should be terminated immediately.

Also the world's smallest violin for the legacy Sirius workers, they come in with half the technical knowledge of their CDW counterparts, and make significantly more for the same roles. It was a straight up slap in the face to legacy CDW coworkers. Good riddance.

@w4 only certain departments got them apparently because our department hasn't had a christmas bonus since like 2022.

@w3 Where was this alleged holiday bonus? I sure don't remember getting anything.