I’ll sum the email up for you quickly:
“You American employees are too expensive and we need to make the stock price go up, we’re going to be spending the next 24 months laying off as many of you as possible to be replaced with AI and/or cheap India labor”
I appreciate the heads up, but a 2 year timeline is crazy.
@2zm With the change in focus to being an AI organization as released on the Town Hall last week we are boxing ourselves in to this one specific focus. This will make it much easier for us to sell. Don't expect roles to be backfilled when people leave.
They are trying to make the company even leaner for a future sale in the next 24 months.
The ELT all have acceleration clauses to ensure they are protected and incentivized to support a buyout. Just look at the details of Mike's contract extension.
wow
As someone who has stock, I hope the stock price craters before they can sell. I'm willing to lose money if it hurts the ELT members more. Fu-k them.
@1bh oh it will definitely be before our stock bonuses vest. But they won’t do anything until all of the ELT and board members can do their annual big stock sale. They’ll keep the prices up for them, then announce the layoffs right after any stock value adjustments for bonuses and before we can sell them. Between the Q4 report, their annual selloff and the coming layoffs, stock price will be lucky to stay above $59/share. He-l, might even see low 40s!
Have a strong feeling that a big wave is coming up here, before the next earnings call (possibly on the morning of, we’ve seen that before). The earnings will be some time during the 3rd week of Feb.
@zj - April 2025 - out of the blue. Retained existing shares, asked for but was refused early vesting for the Long Term Incentives and they were taken off me. I was with the Company 25 years in total, and got the statutory UK redundancy, which was initially calculated incorrectly and I had to advise HR of this error. I am bitter but things are getting better. I was able to get a new position fairly quickly (was offered a position in June to start in the August). Not to say I wasn't stressed out of my noggin, health went downhill and is still recovering.
@x0 can you share more details? and totally understand if you don'. Was it done in Feb before vesting?
@vw I was bumped last year, UK, minimum redundancy and no shares. I tried to fight for better but disappointment, shock and fear sapped the will to continue the farce. Best of luck to everyone, we all deserved better.
With Mike's email I think we know that they give no sh--s about us. I expect many people will only get weeks of severance.
@vp In the UK at least, the normal settlement figure is about 3 months (plus or minus one month) - which includes your notice period. Those that dig their heels in more and fight will typically negotiate more than this. But unfortunately for most people, 3 months is usually just enough to incentivize a quiet exit.
If you don't currently belong to a trade union, consider it before you're officially targeted.
@aj whether a laid off person gets their stock varies. Most likely varies this year on how much of that stock the ELT wants to keep in their own pockets. Typically they give at most, 6 months severance PAID OUT over 6 months. NOT a lump payment. They hope tha along with your non-compete will force you to keep your mouth shut about all of this. Mark this down… if I go, I will be their worst nightmare when I get the green light!!! I’m not a nice person when it comes to this, PERIOD!
Not trying to stir anything up, but it's kind of interesting how this played out. Big strategic decisions get made, they don’t work out, and the impact lands almost entirely on the people doing the day to day work. The decision makers stay insulated.
Situations like this are basically the textbook reason unions exist. To give employees some protection when the consequences of those decisions get passed down.
Food for thought. Seriously.
@a3 wow! Management? ELT? Or just a friend of them? OR… new to BB?
As was said below, the 24 month timeline was intended to expedite self-attrition. Yes, it was transparent, but anyone who quits is also a severance not paid.
Outside that, Blackbaud is following trends of general displacement throughout most financial industries - either due to actual AI efficiencies (which can be real) or by way of labor arbitrage by shifting costs to India.
No, it’s not due to a talent gap between domestic US and India.
Yes, this is cost driven.
And, yes, it’s from the same executive leadership that failed with the EverFi purchase and paid no price for it.
Just got to say after today’s call I am even further deeply disturbed by the recent reduction in force news and the decision to offshore even more roles. What hurts most is not just the loss itself, but the way it has been handled with hollow statements, rehearsed empathy, and a complete disregard for the emotional and financial impact on the people who have carried this company forward year after year.
The messaging has been especially damaging. Being told directly or indirectly that this is happening because we are “not talented enough” is insulting and demoralizing. It rewrites reality to justify decisions that are clearly driven by cost, not capability. Many of us have consistently delivered, adapted, and gone above and beyond, only to be discarded so leadership can protect margins and increase their own compensation.
What makes this even harder to stomach is the lack of accountability at the top. Instead of honest transparency, we are given narratives that deflect responsibility and place blame on the workforce. That erodes trust, dignity, and any sense of psychological safety that once existed here.
This process has left me feeling disgusted, disregarded, disillusioned, and genuinely border line depressed. It signals that well-being, loyalty, and human impact are secondary to short-term financial gain. No amount of scripted empathy can undo the damage caused by decisions made without care for the people affected by them.
If accountability were truly being applied, the focus would be very different. The damage done by poor strategic decisions, failed or poorly integrated mergers, repeated missteps at the executive level, and public embarrassments that have eroded trust in this company’s leadership has had a far greater impact than the amazing work of the people now being let go. Add to that the mishandling of serious issues like the data breach, which exposed weaknesses in oversight and leadership, and it becomes painfully clear that this is not a talent problem at the individual contributor level.
I needed to say this because silence feels like complicity, and pretending this is acceptable would be a lie.
I want to end by saying thank you to the individual contributors who truly made Blackbaud a special place to work.
It was never the branding, the slogans, or the executive messaging that made this company what it was. It was you. The people who showed up every day, supported one another through impossible workloads and constant change, shared knowledge freely, and genuinely cared about doing the right thing for our customers and for each other.
The talent, dedication, and heart I’ve seen among individual contributors here is something leadership can never take credit for, no matter how much they try to rewrite the narrative. You carried teams through poor decisions you didn’t make. You absorbed the fallout from mergers you didn’t ask for. You protected customers and each other in the aftermath of failures that were never yours to own.
Working alongside you has been the bright spot in all of this. You made hard days bearable, successes meaningful, and this place feel human despite everything stacked against it. I am grateful for the collaboration, the kindness, the humor, and the quiet resilience that never showed up on a balance sheet but mattered more than anything else.
No reduction in force, no offshoring decision, and no executive spin can erase the impact you’ve had or the value you bring. Wherever you go next, you carry that with you. And I hope you never doubt that you were the best part of this company.
They announce this like it's a "plan" but can't answer a single question about it, because they actually have no idea. They're winging it. They skirted all the big questions in the All-Hands Meeting, and wouldn't even agree to follow-up on all the unanswered questions. They treated us all like we were id--ts and had no idea what was really happening, ended the meeting abruptly, and that's been the end of it. They tell us to talk to our individual managers, who know absolutely nothing either. Except that they're probably all fine. It's the literal building blocks of this company that are being laid off. And they don't lay off based on performance. If you make too much and they can find someone cheaper, it doesn't matter what you do or how long you've been there or what a great hard working employee you've been. I say we cut some of those upper management "decision makers" and then there will be PLENTY of money to keep on all of the jobs, because what do they even do? They don't interact with the customers, they don't work on the teams, they don't make any of the sales, or retain any of the accounts, or listen to the escalations. They sit at their desks. They don't even write their own emails. I don't think for a second that Mike G. was actually the one that wrote the email that went out. Someone below him did, and he slapped his name on it. This company is all about fake rich people wanting to be more rich.
Welcome to the era of “Blackbaud AI” - short for “Blackbaud All India.”
We had an executive leadership call this morning, and it was painfully obvious how disconnected and dishonest the whole thing was. Our senior leader couldn’t even pretend to buy the talking points, which made the call awkward in the most revealing way possible.
If you’re paying attention, you should already be updating your resume and planning an exit. This company has shown it will cut people loose without warning, with minimal severance and zero regard for the real impact on employees and their families. Loyalty is not rewarded here, but compliance is, until it isn’t.
There is no transparency, no accountability, and no credible leadership. Just empty corporate language, self-congratulation at the top, and panic everywhere else. Work hard for yourself, not for this place, and get out before you’re discarded with a token payout and a handshake.
To executive leadership: you’ve earned the morale you’ve created. Enjoy it.
Where’s MAGA when you need them? Lindsey? Tim? Nancy? Are you aware of this? Publicly traded companies like Blackbaud should be held accountable for moving work to lower cost countries especially when new college grads in Computer Science have the worst job market in decades. If they claim “lack of talent” in the US they can apply for special H1B exemptions.
The lies about the benefits of India pi---s me off the most. True transparency would be stating that India is simply cheaper. Not this bullcr ap about how “India has a top talent pool we need to tap into!” Or “follow the sun”. While India I’m sure does have top talent (like every other country in the world), the India hiring that Blackbaud is doing is NOT targeting top talent. The salaries for the roles in India are extremely low (for India standards) and thus the quality of the candidates/hires is extremely low.
Oh, not to mention, the comments about AI alongside these layoffs are extremely tone deaf.
The poor people that make it through will struggle as well. Do you think at the end of 2 years they will magically be done with layoffs and offshoring the jobs?
With luck, you spent 2 years doing more work with fewer onshore devs, and then they realize they sc--wed up and hire new employees at more than your current pay.
I don't know if I want to be one of the few remaining or not.
2 years of wondering if you could be let go at any moment is crazy.
Treason.
Sedition.
HA the executive leadership at BB is a joke. I hope customers see this and run! This is an absolute sinking ship. They’ve been quietly letting people go here and there so it’s begun and that’s most likely why they had to say something. To tell people you’re gonna have to say goodbye to a great employee, wow. Why keep someone good when you can have cheap terrible employees? They should have let Clearlake buy us and clean house on ELT! But no way that’d happen. They need to keep their millions. Two year heads up though, I am so grateful.
I’m one of those people that always assumes the worst. Feel like I’ll be getting chopped. If they do it before stock vest dates in Feb do they usually let it vest still as part of your severance ?
What a day ! First the announcement about The CodFather closing, and now this.
@af I'd be surprised if they were sc ummy enough to do a cut on Valentine's Day again but shortly before, or any time between now and mid-Feb, is not off the table. Earnings call is coming up, I believe 2/17. A decent layoff wave and publicly stating what they had in the e-mail to investors could make the share price go green (that's assuming investors don't see right through this lame tactic).
Good luck everyone. Easily 90%+ chance of a large wave before the earnings call.
I would not be surprised if we see the first big cut of the year in the next few weeks. Historically, a RIF has occurred late January into February.
Another Valentine's Day massacre anyone ?
@aa It's called 'salami slicing'. Get rid of people little and often (ideally under an NDA), and avoid regulatory and legal thresholds being triggered so employees can't unionise / fight back.
They know how the game is played, but hopefully one of these times they'll get caught out and somene will fight back.
Blackbaud’s leadership has failed plainly and repeatedly.
Years of poor mergers, awful stock performance, and a massive data breach have left the company weaker, less trusted, and increasingly irrelevant. Instead of owning these failures and investing in real product improvement, leadership has done almost the opposite.
The products have stagnated. Customers know it. That’s why they’re leaving. And rather than fixing what’s broken, leadership’s answer has been blunt-force cost cutting and pushing a ~30% SPI increase onto customers who already don’t see the value. It’s not strategy — it’s desperation.
While customers churn and employees are asked to do more with less, Mike and the executive team have quietly extracted hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation from the company. That money didn’t go into innovation, security, or customer success. It went into executive pockets.
The most insulting part is the attitude. When concerns are raised, the response isn’t accountability or respect its dismissal, contempt, and sometimes outright laughter. Leadership hits paydirt while employees hit the breadline, and we’re told this is “good for the business.”
It isn’t. It’s short-term financial engineering at the expense of long-term trust.
Shame on the leadership team for hollowing out a company that once mattered. And shame on anyone still carrying water for decisions that have clearly failed customers, employees, and shareholders alike.
This didn’t have to be the outcome. It was a choice.
Why anybody should be surprised by this is beyond me. There's been annual or bi-annual layoffs for the past few years, as well as the targeting of various senior individuals in between. Anyone making waves simply just disappears (as quickly as the CEO's DUI charge in 2024).
When we continue to give feedback that 'we don't understand how decisions are made' and 'communication from the ELT is poor', this was not the solution we were looking for. Thanks for starting a 2 year anxiety attack for anyone deciding to stay. If you were looking for a sign to run...this might be it. Think Will in Stranger Things - 'RUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUNN!!'
Anyone else notice it seems they've been already trimming employees, but not enough to trigger any public/legal announcements of it? Seeing people disappear almost daily this month and in December as well. Not just contractors, but FTEs as well.
If you've been paying attention to job postings at BLKB for the last 12 months this workforce strategy shouldn't surprise you - they've been looking to cut US headcount for years. They're hedging for when their short-term AI-led growth strategy falls apart. Sad, but predictable.
You're getting down voted because you're "appreciative" to the people who have already gotten rich off of your work. They're going to go beyond that and hurt you, the customers and the future of the company to further line their own pockets.
@a5 Of course they would prefer if you left on your own.
I'm getting downvoted for reason I guess people would have preferred mass layoff waves over the next 24 months with little/no context.
Happy freaking New Year, indeed!
@a3 It's far cheaper to make people walk than to try push them out the door. That's what it's really about.
The email mentioned increased head count and performance. They're trying to get ahead of layoffs with messaging that suggests the customers won't be impact. They don't give two sh--s about us. They are worried the stock will dip.