Thread regarding FactSet Research Systems Inc. layoffs

@542 That’s how poor behaviour gets normalised at factset. Those behaving poorly are free, those calling out the poor behaviour get the boot.

@4by lateral hire, you might want to see who is the biggest beneficiary out of this fiasco instead of who was gossiping.

@4by agree on the gossip portion, there are worse off performers but if they don’t get gossiped at then they’re safe. Unfortunate

Gossip is at its worst. If you are doing your job earnestly but don't gossip enough, then you are the topic. Topic turns into fire, fire into narrative and ultimately exhaustion for you.
Managers for the most part have all risen from the same culture and are the rot in rotten system. HR useless, can't keep anything confidential, directly asks for gossips, wants you to name shame people and if you can't that means you aren't paying attention in your job.
Off late, I have observed they made PIP as their we-pon against lateral joiners. Keep extending it every 6 weeks just to keep them off any kind of bonus and commissions. Mental harassment is considered normal.
Promote favorites as location leaders to continue with toxicity.
Can't stop talking about this place, but one line summary is - "Show Me the face, I show you the rules", I.e. if its their gossip gang member who fu--s up, its considered God's wish, but anyone outside of gossip gang even if delivers 90%, they are demons serpent.

Toxicity got it's name from this place.

Glint is SCAM. They do nothing with it except catching names and people. Never fill out forms from HR as they read it. Funny enough they did not send one this year because of upcoming reorg, cuts, and office closures.

All you need to know is they requested a GLINT as part of a reorg in Analytics, made people fill it out, and then did nothing with the results. Ask yourself why? I can’t think of a single person who has had a better experience since the reorg.

HRBP sales sneaky person. Gave him feedback and half his friends & counterparts found out about it. Distrustful group - stay away from all of them

Supreme Leader Sanoke has his work cut out for him ridding the FactSet First Order of rebel sc-m.

Entire AI team failed to deliver but got reshuffled under new chief AI. Can someone mention what the global head of AI partnership & strategy has done to be promoted into another job? Guy has delivered nothing + every partnership he did failed miserably. HR can’t do anything about that but want to cut lower level employees. Very unfortunate

@3kg CEO wants everyone back in the office meanwhile all of the big positions and leaders work remotely. Head of Recruiting remote, head of HRBP remote, head of banking remote, head of finance remote, and most employees in marketing remote.

don’t ask engineering to come back if you are all remote - you cannot force others.

HR does nothing except cause chaos behind the scenes. HRBPs are clueless - ask them a question and they defer you to the regional HR and then you end up being the guilty one and they write you up.

Look at the recruiting team. We have more recruiters than job openings and 99% of the time they find unqualified candidates.

Forget about the organizational effectiveness - she is prob head of AI strategy as part of the promotion.

The issue is not the products, engineerings or sales but these people who divide everyone.

@3ka Bullseye on the White/American privilege. How else can a failed musician turn into a pompous boastful people leader with zero followers?

The head of recruitment is a good example of “ all talk, no substance”
She speaks such gibberish that the person dealing with her is exhausted. There are no results and one has to fend for themselves. Confound and exaggerate is her mantra for success.

The organisational effectiveness leader? She won’t take a stand when it matters. Promotes her own buddies without fair assessment of others.

The l&d lead? Keeps priming and paying the on-site friends while piling on their work to other departments citing it as “collaboration”. It’s not collaboration if they are on holiday while someone else holds the fort.

The regional HR leaders and org / COE specific HRBPs? Day begins and ends by imposing standards they can’t uphold themselves.

They can’t shut their trap, the sole focus is discussing who’s romantically pursuing who or who is being paid what. Great examples of how to create noise instead of clarity.

It’s disappointing that the “leaders” at the helm of such an important org are barely functional, let alone aspirational.

@3k5 That’s the expectation from HR - to protect/ preserve the interest of the company. Yet if you look at FDS - the crux of the failure comes from a weak, non functioning HR including L&D, Talent management org.

They fail on looking out for FDS fairly routinely given their incompetence, endless indulgence in mindless gossip and lack of business needs assessment.

Nothing mentioned to HR is “private”, yet it doesn’t need to be broadcast without consideration creating camps that are out to get one another. The “rules” they follow are without much consideration of their stakeholder needs. And the worst offenders are the leaders of these functions - each lady heading these divisions reeks of White/American privilege.

One thing that stuck with me that someone told me about HR is that the HR is there/paid to protect the company, not you. So be careful what you tell them in “private”

If you've been in the data business long enough, you start to recognize the moment when a moat quietly stops being a moat. Identifier control and data gatekeeping used to feel safe and permanent. Now open identifiers, tokenization, and AI are working around them faster than most people inside the system can comprehend. By the time it becomes obvious, it's usually already too late.

what's happenin, everything in limbo - ppl unresponsive, cuts feel imminent

@3cg they have partners for each other. Global partner, regional partner, office and go on. what a waste of team. None does anything except WFH

Avoid the one for sales at all cost. Biggest tattletale HRBP. He will find ways to make employees redundant or break up teams.

Not a single person in marketing HR or finance has an idea what this company actually does. Can we just can can them all and split the proceeds between sales and product? Those orgs should be run on skeleton crews.

@39p peanuts, if anything at all.

@397 Not surprised and sorry to hear that was your experience. I’ve worked with quite a few of them across regions, most are equally loose mouthed. Nothing remains private or contextual. They are driven by weird need for control rather than focus on values and business needs.

Won’t be long before they’re out gunning for you.

What does the company offer for (non exec) severance?

Boston’s basically the office of gossip, mate. Best policy is to keep well clear and shut down all communications to and from that location. It’s practically Gossip HQ at this point. Don’t nominate yourself to be on the roster.

I had a bit of rough experience with the sales HRBP TBH. I shared some info thinking it would stay fairly contained but it felt like everyone ended up knowing about my situation which was not great. On top of that, he seems to have a real dislike for EMEA leaders in the region, which definitely comes across. If I am being frank, HR here has been the least effective part of the organisation. It’s all been a bit disappointing, really.

@373 COE next? Juicy! Reorg or layoffs for them? Aren't they almost all inside DS?

@35k I’m OK they cut but equally within HR org please. Zero help from any of them. None have any credentials. 99% of them were used to be recruiting, chief of staff, customer success manager or payroll.

Job freeze, no more hirings in products and reduction in travels are all indications for layoffs in work.

We have been doing this every yr since 2021 - constant cost cutting equals to NO vision or strategy. Already reflected in stock price and how much margin means no real impact on price when no competitive vision.

Did we need to appoint chief AI strategy? Just switching chairs for someone who failed to deliver on Mercury. What is office of strategy that we announced today?

Cuts will come in April but god knows who gets cut

@36z more to come with pd, strategy & sales. COE next but nothing with HR or Finance.

CEO is bringing and interviewing all his own peeps as expected.

20% of the company is reorged... And that's the entirety of the comments? I know there's more to come but wow... Friends of Sanoke commences.

@2r0 - you say there's no target cut for HR. Does that mean HR doesn't have to lay anyone off? They're the most bloated organization at the company.

@2m8 looks like tech just got reorged

Are good performin ppl actually gonna get shifted away from non-focus products or just get kicked out?

@2st it’s not about Q2. Expenses & future investments are the focus. More will go to India and manila

Heard Engineering and PD by early March

@2rg

The first half just finished. The layoffs will depend on those results.

@2m8 any info on the layoff percentage ?

@2mj not sure but each department got a target to cut We heard (except Finance and HR). Funny enough HR hard at work but leaking info to employees - busy hiring all of external candidates from JPM, Mackenzie, Verizon

@2nx only a few as part of investments. Those are going away as well. Everything will be on hold until new leaders are in place and CEO gets all fundings he needs.

@2m8 I keep seeing job openings though, is there really a hiring freeze?

That timeline seems right. What products will layoffs be for?