An announcement from CEO went out at 5:00 am regarding reduction in workforce. CDW co-workers should expect this to be substantial 2,500+. The Sirius acquisition never worked out. That falls on the front door of the CEO as a failure. Most of the people impacted will be on the Digital Velocity side.
49 replies (most recent on top)
!. Not one SVP (or above) has lost employment because of financial results.
- They call it a "lay off" but what is said internally is that it is "getting rid of dead wood." Great way to motivate and incent "coworkers" - pick one - either is bad. Manage your poor business results by blaming your employees? Make them fearful of what will happen if the numbers are bad those t hat its senior management controlled.
- Ms. Leahy is a failed leader. Compare her to Mr. Richards. Any success under Ms. Leahy was a tail wind from Mr. Richards and NOT due to any brilliant (or even just "good") work by Ms. Leahy.
- It is a brutal culture now. Heavy workload. Long hours and annual salary that doesn't even keep your head above inflation. I have lost money the last three years just because of the laughable salary increases.
- There are some fun areas to work in the company. And some great people that work there - not in senior management. It is a paternalistic, hierarchical where no one has decision authority except those who are VP or above.
- Sirius? Hahaha. CDW was not prepared for an acquisition that size. Sr Management didn't do an honest assessment of itself. Consistent with typical. Oh, and someone tell Sirius that this was an ACQUSITION and NOT a merger. Sirius missed that memo. CDW Coworkers thought they were integrating. Not so much. No one wants to talk about the success of that deal or its effect on the results. It's ugly.
I only feel slightly better. There are a great number of good things about CDW. They are just not the ones you think and they have to do with pockest of people and rpactices that allow satisfying and challenging employment. However, that is far, far from the norm.
You're right, solutions and services are the way forward. I'm sure I'll get downvoted but I don't care - CDW does a poor job with services. Very transactional, rarely strategic, and they engage with clients who are way too small to be worthwhile. They either can't win the major enterprise service deals or don't bid on them. I'm not sure what the issue is but they need to do better.
I've worked for multiple other consulting orgs in the past and a 24-40 hour service engagement for a 200 person company would be laughed out the door. You'd only see something like that fly for long-established, large clients who spend big bucks and who just needed a small, tactical engagement. You wouldn't see it for these tiny 200 person companies CDW deals with. And don't even get me started on the sub 24 hour adhoc stuff - that belongs in managed services not PS.
CDW without acquisitions would not exist today. PC margins are declining as is demand. I get people are mad they can’t make $1m+ managing accounts any longer, but the economics don’t make sense. No company pays sellers this much money to manage business. Solutions and services are the only way. If you don’t agree, go to Paragon and sell core all you want. We are not a small mom and pop shop. Growing pains will happen. Change is inevitable.
I'm not in sales or DV but I was very unexpectedly "separated" from my position after 7.5 years. I managed my team for 6.5 years but didn't hold the title or get the pay. I was an hourly employee as well. And it's my first time being laid off. All my work apps deleted themselves off my phone as soon as I hung up on CWS and the division director. Like I literally was logged into my email and I went to log into Teams to say goodbye to a chat channel and then everything just got nuked off my phone. Today I received the box to send back my laptop. I'm so overwhelmed and think it's wild how fast they moved with all this when I spent a long time watching them have to gather stuff up on folks who weren't doing the job. And what really su-ks is I learned the hard way that being a master at my job, having a big caseload and keeping everything running meant NAWT to this place. Meanwhile I know of at least 5 people in the same division who are salaried but log in at 10am and log off by 2pm. My sense of worth has been completely decimated, especially since it seems like I was the sole lay off in my entire division. I was weighed, measured and found wanting and now I get to start all over again.
For all of the armchair lawyers in this thread, 60 days of severance pay effectively negates the need for a WARN notice.
CDW will chug along trying to put a happy face on sponsoring commercials and advertising on NFL, Golf and College Basketball games.
Sona Chawla (Chief Growth and Innovation Officer) did well for herself - selling over $4M worth of CDW shares back in July.
More layoffs to come in April 2025 if Q4 and Q1 turn in soft/poor numbers. Take advantage of training, certifications - make connections with key vendors and keep your resume up to date. CDW for the most part is a high volume / low margin marketing & advertising store front for vendors/partners. 2 years of shortfall and big $$$ spent on acquisitions = nice executive bonuses/stock options.
I know folks who are gonna ride it out for the rest of the year but start looking in the new year.
was there no warn notice?
“As a VP once told me, "The accounts you work with are not yours. They are CDW's accounts and we just allow you to work with them."
💯 % heard the same exact thing about an account I lost due to some political BS, but from a long-term middle manager who is never going much higher on the org chart. Grew account from $0 to $10m in 3 years, and he still had to remind me that it was never my account anyways. A stagnant middle of the road manager power tripping is quite hilarious TBH. I’m sure he’ll continue su-king the life out of CDW like so many other worthless leaders over here. The great CDW culture and strong morale of the past is officially GONE. 👋
I say, class action lawsuit time by current CDW, direct tires, and those who have been laid off. I have looked online CDW did not report lay offs to the state as recruited by law.
Layoffs
Illinois WARN defines notice-triggering events differently than federal WARN. Illinois WARN applies to employers with 75 or more full-time employees (excluding part-time workers) and requires employers to provide 60 days advance notice of pending plant closures or mass layoffs.
A “mass layoff” under Illinois WARN is a reduction in force at a single site of employment that is not the result of a “plant closing” and results in employment losses during any 30-day period (or, in some cases, during any 90-day period) of 25 or more full-time employees if they constitute one-third or more of full-time employees at the site, or 250 or more full-time employees.
I love how the CEO got a benefits package of around 15 million for this acquisition, they fu-k it up, then the employees lose their holiday bonus's and now a lot of them are gone. 2024 one of the best places to work for my a-s
Wokeism? I didn’t realize we had so many fascist traitors working for CDW!
18 years ago the cr-p all started (Berbee). Let's create these teams called SETs...because you are going to sell so much service to all your customers. Since you are going to be able to sell so many services, we are cutting your book in half. News flash it didn't work at all. Payouts were made to reps that were adversely affected by poor managment (at least they cared back then).
Fast forwad a few years...Here is your inflated goal with a 30 to 50% growth number. If you don't hit it, we are going to take upwards of 30% of your commission.
Territory Maximization, National Accounts, Levers, etc... I've seen all the programs and every time one rolls out, it's just a way for them to shrink the amount they pay out overall (while selling it to everyone as a way to make more! lol).
The majority has not stayed late or worried about being "in the office" for the end of quarter or month in more than a decade. This isn't 2003; you are just an employee/sales number on a spreadsheet to the executives and board.
As a VP once told me, "The accounts you work with are not yours. They are CDW's accounts and we just allow you to work with them."
Time to get back in the offices. 5 years ago, top AEs got work from home one or two days a week. The Sirius acquisition was always going to be difficult to integrate. The PTO change has been a huge issue. OOO on the last days of months and even calendar quarters. That would have been unbelievable 5-10 years ago.
The CDW Layoffs is a classic example of financial mismanagement in my opinion. New management comes in and they have to look like they are all transformational but in reality they are just going out and looking for latest buzz words aka Salesforce, Workday, ServiceNow and burning away millions in implementing them with no real benefit to the company. CDW got scammed big time with the new management in internal IT
Congratulations Christine (Chris), Wokeism has proven to fail yet you’re maliciously trying to force CDW down that route and ruining families and customers in the process, so you can make your 12M bonus. Cheers.
I get it, people are saying leadership handles the Sirius acquisition poorly but keep in mind CDW purchased Sirius specifically because of the Cloud expertise. No offense to CDW Cloud but the differences in the way Sirius Cloud handles accounts vs CDW Cloud is night and day. CDW is much more "corporate" focusing solely on numbers where Sirius is more "white glove". CDW Cloud Ops handle orders; Sirius Cloud Ops handle ACCOUNTS.
Sirius is not fully integrated because CDW is/was using a ridiculous number of archaic systems to service and process orders. Their sales compensation was less generous than Sirius and where everything was in-house with Sirius, CDW farms out bits and pieces making following an order from end to end chaotic at best. (cough Genpact cough
The economic environment is difficult and tech is going through another evolution which has buyers clutching their pearls and wallets. There is plenty of blame to go around - Not all of it belongs on leadership but even if it did, the 300+ people who lost their jobs are the ones we should be focusing on. Pointing fingers isn't going to get their jobs back.
Sirius Folks: Let me also repeat - you had a good organization and when it was said that the Sirius $2.5B acquisition was partly to blame for CDW's woes, that's not a jab at Sirius but for CDW's failed leadership in handling the acquisition just like how they poorly handled the Salesforce rollout. You can buy a great organization but fail miserably in the planning and integration of it.
It happened when Cognizant bought a great Azure Systems Integrator - 10th Magnitude - Cognizant's culture ki-led them.
So after CDW bought Sirius - CDW could turn around and tell investors - hey look at the numbers we do more services now! But the real people, process, and platform integration was a sh*t show - poorly done.
"Blaming the Sirius acquisition is hilarious. If you look at the Top Seller rankings YTD the majority are Sirius sellers."
"No, it's not the fault of Sirius that CDW is where it is. Sirius didn't cause the global tech market to collapse for the last two years."
What??? You got it all wrong. When someone says they are blaming the Sirius acquisition, they're not blaming Sirius! I can't believe you can't comprehend that? They're blaming CDW Leadership for the Sirius acquisition because it was poorly handled and poorly integrated - on top of that CDW was trying to roll out Salesforce while trying to integrate Sirius' Saleforce instance. It just got messy. And on top of that they're blaming CDW execs because the cost for the acquisition was $2.5B - that's not including $$$ needed to spend on post-acquisition integration work and lost productivity.
Yes Sirius was bigger in services but there were also a lot of overlap. We're not saying Sirius is bad or blaming them for the company woes but CDW Leadership should've looked for a better fit organization for CDW to complement - maybe areas more laser focused around Cloud, AI and Cybersecurity which are big growing areas - those weren't big areas with Sirius - there was very little "people power" in those areas. I knew of the Sirius folks who came over to the DV Cloud practice and it was like a tiny number. CDW Execs should've been more laser focused with the acquisition - again yes Sirius was bigger into services but in the end Sirius had a sizable traditional Reseller/VAR business that overlapped with CDW.
A year after the acquisition - I knew of Sirius Presales resourcess floundering around not knowing what to do or how to integrate with CDW - their model was quite different and sales alignment weren't as structured as CDW's. THE BLAME ISN'T PUT ON SIRIUS but CDW Leadership for the poor thought put into the acquisition and for their poor integration planning and implementation - and it was a very costly acquisition and ill-timed (and of course that last part was unknown at the time)!!!
And then we have @1kpb+1uNMZU9e, who can’t even spell Sirius and can barely string together coherent sentences. Sounds like he/she has CDW upper management potential written all over him/her.
Sirus was bought to knock them out.they wanted other parts of sirus.
Sirus is Garbage workers
Sirius people need to just be quiet. If you don’t like CDW, GET OUT! LEAVE! Not one enjoyable or professional experience working with them. Arrogant! Rude! Demanding. Who the h*ll do you people think you are? You come to a new company and act like you acquired them. We are CDW. Love it or leave it!
I'd love to still be sirius and far away from CDW. Things were amazing. Chris has been the worst thing to happen to CDW and Sirius. Let's buy everyone and not worry about what could happen.
Yep, Sirius is at fault. Little did we know, Joe Mertens was the mastermind behind skyrocketing interest rates and the decline of the tech market starting in 2022. Fortunately for us, the masterminds at CDW took over in 2021 and led us to…..what exactly?
Id--t.
Yes, such awesome solution sellers you were basically a sinking ship when we acquired you.....now you are taking down two ships!!! Congrats!
Blaming the Sirius acquisition is hilarious. If you look at the Top Seller rankings YTD the majority are Sirius sellers. We sell solutions, not widgets. This organization is designed from the inside out to sell high volumes at low margins which is why a thing called Bid Adders exist (to tax the sellers who actually know how to sell). What company penalizes you for selling at a higher profit? CDW does!
While there are regrettable losses in any workforce reduction. Half of this was in sales and it was people in the bottom 5% almost exclusively. This is a performance based business and those people weren’t getting it done. It’s fairly easy to be successful in sales at CDW, if anything the cuts should have been more.
Blaming the Sirius acquisition is hilarious. If you look at the Top Seller rankings YTD the majority are Sirius sellers. We sell solutions, not widgets. This organization is designed from the inside out to sell high volumes at low margins which is why a thing called Bid Adders exist (to tax the sellers who actually know how to sell). What company penalizes you for selling at a higher profit? CDW does!
Layoffs are 2% of total workforce
No, it's not the fault of Sirius that CDW is where it is. Sirius didn't cause the global tech market to collapse for the last two years. Sirius didn't cause inflation to spike to 40 year highs. Sirius employees aren't in the top 2-3 levels of management of this company and calling the shots.
Former Sirius employees (of which I'm one) are people just like all of the folks at CDW - we go to work to feed our families and not a single one of us asked to be acquired. We didn't have a say in that decision and neither did you and likely anyone reading this post. So instead of the id--tic finger pointing and grandstanding, how about all of us act like a team? You think there are rude and arrogant Sirius employees? There are! You know what else? There are rude and arrogant CDW employees too. I've dealt with both.
The Sirius employees cannot help that we were bought by Computer Discount Warehouse. Maybe if CDW sold services and something larger than laptops they would not have these problems
IBM did it and they are still not above the revenue they had as a company in 1991, so yeah, I guess that works for some people (who, I'm not sure). Intel is getting eaten alive by Nvidia, AMD and Broadcom currently. YoY declines in both profit and revenue for Intel...maybe they can purchase Sirius from CDW so they can become a "Services First" company?
So, I guess if you want CDW to be like IBM and Intel, they are on the right path?
Unfortunately, I suspect that this will be only the first in a series of workforce reductions for CDW. Probably the next one will occur in April of 2025. I say this because CDW recently went to an "unlimited PTO" policy for salaried coworkers/employees; and mandated that everyone use any accrued PTO by the end of Q1 2025 upon pain of disciplinary action if they don't. So, on April 1, 2025 there shouldn't be any accrued but unpaid PTO that people are owed when they are terminated. So I expect the layoff in April of 2025 will be quite a bit larger.
Okay. The lack of transparency regarding the number of employees laid off is making the situation seem far worse than it likely is. That is on Leahy & Company. Get out in front on of this and share that j formation. The speculation is consuming the workforce at the moment. Additionally, we all knew there was redundancy with the Sirius and Focal Point acquisitions. Part of this is still fallout from that. Remember CDW took heat for having layoffs right after Converge in April. At least they're out in front of the next one. Finally, remember that we are reinventing CDW to be a Services First company, so part of this is just growing pains. IBM and Intel are doing the exact same thing.
Replying to the poster for faster service turnaround, contact Jonathan at Fieldstar, we are a 25 year CDW service partner. 781-547-8353
We’ll have to see - some are estimating 300-500 cut and others believe it’s more like 500-1000. In any case, a $2.5B disaster spent on acquiring Sirius.
This is my third RIF at CDW since 2019 (not counting the one in January of last year that wasn’t formally announced…)
Here are my thoughts:
- if you did not receive an email, you are safe
- if we miss q4 and q1 results, there will be another RIF in April
- if you are a people leader and can be strategic about not backfilling roles and limiting travel and expense in order to protect your team, than do it. I am lucky enough to be on a team whose leaders have pulled these levers. We all have more work but I’d rather have that than be under utilized and at risk of being cut. Thank you to the leaders doing what they can during this tough time.
If there are executive leaders who read any of this here is my $.002 as an individual contributor hitting above 100% of my goal:
- We need to drastically improve our time to market for new partnerships and services. Current process is broken and it’s hurting us financially. We should be able to develop new services and partners in 3 months or less. To show up as a true integrator for customers, we need to invest in integration services and partners that do this type of work. This would drastically increase my ability to drive profitable multi-million dollar deals forward while getting hardware drag to follow. We are missing the boat. If you don’t know what I’m talking about when I say integration services, ask your teams. They will know.
- We need to redirect PPM funding to a bucket of funds used for competitive hardware and services deals. This can be for strategic enterprise customers or product categories we want to push. Our competitors do this, and we are losing business because we simply can’t compete. It has been said many times customers are tightening their spending. You know what gets customers to work with us? Competitive offerings. Funded or discounted services that help them solve specific issues. Competitively priced products. Let’s use our buying power and strategic partnerships to actually win deals. Enough of PPM working in a silo without input from people on the ground actually doing the work. That team needs to seriously be revamped from both a performance and culture perspective. They are a huge blocker in pretty much every way imaginable.
- We need true integration between Sirius & CDW teams. It has been mentioned here often. I work with some of the best and brightest people that came from former Sirius and genuinely believe that our services business has accelerated in large part due to their success in this area. However, they still operate as an independent business with their own processes and books of business. It seems leadership at CDW has shied away from making tough calls and/or political decisions regarding account coverage, and a hard line in the sand of the correct processes to follow. Make the calls and let’s really be “one CDW” as has been touted without any real action behind it.
- ITS alignment with Sales is non-strategic and put on the plates of individual contributors. This is not the way to success. We need collaboration between ITS and sales leadership that provides clarity around how we support sellers, what areas we support them in and where we are trying to drive business based on the DATA we have available for customers, specifically for the enterprise.
It would also help to have clarity on the sales coverage model, as I often feel there is no rhyme or reason for which teams I’m working with and what accounts they cover. Some are half enterprise and half majors. Some could literally be small business accounts. Lastly, there have been so many roles added between strategists and enterprise architects, sellers take the easiest path available to them instead of engaging with ITS, which ultimately hurts and siloes our teams from customer opportunities. I have to fight everyday to “get in front of sales” and keep my team relevant and top of mind. It shouldn’t be this way.
Compensation. I know changes are coming with GCF and I’m hopeful. Ultimately, many of us on the ITS side want to do our jobs well, help customers and be paid appropriately. There have been more errors and time spent correcting errors than I’d like to spend on low value tasks such as ensuring I’m being compensated on what I sell, which often times I’m not. Spiffs are nonexistent. Teams should have one shared number, divvy’d up into individual goals and AORs by the manager, that hold individuals accountable for their quota instead of riding the coattails of a pod of teammates. We should be able to sell everything in our bucket instead of having to compete internally for customer business. I think most of us would be happy with a 70/30 or 80/20 split and if our team hits above 100%, bonus should be tied to CDW stock. I never understood why more of our compensation at every level isn’t tied to company stock and performance. Seems like a no brainer in my opinion.
Now…. We put our heads down and do everything we can to hit Q4 results. Don’t let low morale and negative energy drag you down. Prioritize your emergency fund, always be interviewing for other roles, and do the best you can in your current role now. Document your wins. Do whatever is in your control to be a good performer and avoid being on the next RIF list. Good luck everyone.
2500+ coworkers did not get laid off… not even close
Yeah, Sirius made a profit... by their cooked books. CDW didn't do their homework well enough before the acquisition to realize Sirius wasn't worth nearly what we paid.
It's disappointing to hear that the Sirius acquisition didn't work. What's more disappointing is that Sirius had made profit almost every year since its inception in 1980 prior to being acquired by CDW. If it takes 3 years and it's not fully integrated, who is to blame? I suspect its not the majority of the 2500+ employees impacted. I think it's a fair question for shareholders to ask how long prior acquisitions have taken to integrate and get value.
It's time for a change of senior leadership. Since Leahy took over the business has not been the same, she was a great GC but not at the level of Edwardson or Richards.