Middle managers should be clearing paths, growing talent, and preparing teams for the future. Too many here do none of that. Here, problems always get ignored, issues mount, and nothing ever improves. Sometimes I wonder what’s the point of having them at all.
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@xk I agree, each product line will become its own company and become private, which is why there won’t be a new OpenText CEO. Each company will have an interim CEO appointed. Then other tech companies can purchase the products they want without the baggage. And the companies not purchased can eventually file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and the ones purchased can grow in a new tech stack.
@xk You're right. It's much easier to sell a small company.
@xj Starting in July 2026, OT will look nothing like it looks like In December 2025. Expect carve outs, continued leadership exits, a MUCH smaller company.
OT is obsolete tech. Our best customers are the ones behind the times looking to keep current deployments as long as possible. Being in middle management here is very depressing. The ELT only want to hear and believe everything is good and all the employees see the problem that is finally being looked at. Nashville is the last time you are going to see all the exec drunk on the potential of OT. In 2026, new management will come in set realistic expectations with core products. No more OT is an AI powerhouse, Titanium X and Aviators… let’s get back to Enterprise Content Management, promote that and then be realistic about AI. Also focus growth in Canada and stop focusing everywhere else. We are good when we are a big fish in a small pond.
Uncontested goals is an interesting anology. Lots of really senior management exited the business and continue to exit when they try or tried to kick back on what was being put forward for their BU. The real issue I see is with engineering and what they deliver or have been allowed to deliver when having any net new conversations. We are miles and miles behind the competition in circa 90% of solutions practically to the point of embarrassment. You can do all the sales enablement training you want and try to teach people to su-k eggs, but when the solutions will not get you beyond one or two discovery calls because of feautue parity it is a pointless, frustrating exercise and shows a real lack of understanding of where Opentext solutions sit, from senior sales leaders(do you actually think we are at that top table of solutions that are being considered). We are not, so what is all the SE training that is based on this assumption(we are not MS, Google, SAP, Oracle, etc etc that this would be relevant too)
There is a massive piece of work to be done and more questions than answers atm.
@sn So, you're sympathetic because they're trading in their dignity instead of being honest and authentic.
@OP , I used to hate middle management that preaches unrealistic goals until I realized that some of them too are in survivor mode. They cannot relay bad news upward and can only relay down uncontested goals downward. Good goals are corrupted as no one care to ensure the hard tasks are done to achieve the goals true objective but just completed to provide the "numbers".
Still they are good managers who do the minimal on the crazy goals and bad managers who exploits the crazy goals for their own benefits.
Lucky you if you have a good manager and sorry for you if you have the clueless zealot manager.
Hang in there fellow OTs.
@ra eat your own dogfood works if you have the power to improve products (we don't). Eat your own dogfood is strictly being done to reduce costs at OT - so staff become accustomed to using cr-p software. It is hard to be inspired to innovate without real examples, without seeing what the most successful products are like - how will developers be inspired to innovate if they don't see any evidence of innovation in the tools they are forced to use on a daily basis? We need to look outward for ideas, not exclusively inwards. Look at the rollout of AI... we should be using state of the art coding tools to learn what's possible... not just relying on cheap tools, small models because MS is giving us a sweet bundle deal. OT shoots itself in the foot (again and again).
Yeah.
With sluggish workflows, legacy tools and techniques, eat your dog food concept, OT became a bloated hub of least marketable people. Instead of making machines to think like humans, the company adopted culture for humans to think like machines.
When AI expects extreme agility, the company struggling with its own conservative mindset and rigid, one man show kind of attitude.
This is end of 2025. Survived employees will be lucky, if this company lasts end of 2027.
Company will become much more horizontal. Executives can directly manage thousands of AI bots that don’t question anything and work 24/7.