The stock is at a multi-year low today of $118.40. No leadership, poor morale due to no leadership and no competitive advantage. The best and the brightest are jumping ship to competitors or just outright leaving as they are making less money year over year. WTF are we doing? There is No Plan coming from the Executive Team. There is poor messaging coming from the Executive Team. The Executive Team has negotiated their own severance packages through 2029. The Executive Team needs to go now.
19 replies (most recent on top)
@20c
100%
Reinventing the wheel over and over.
We're a sales company internally and to customers, they just want honest AM's that get them what they need when they need it with honesty and consistency. I've had long time customers tell me they like our services but because of the time and red tape to get the actual work kicked off...that they couldn't come back for more due to the time frames.
SMB was celebrated years ago company wide when it achieved $1 billion in sales and then was gutted. People who built new verticals/segments were then moves to roles with not as much impact. Territory, enterprise, AE, CE, SCC, its like leadership has to do something even when things are working...maybe to justify thier own roles.
I don't think customers really care outside of the main reasons they've been using CDW for years.
Most people don't care as long as they're making around the same $ and they aren't hassled daily with internal issues but at this point...it doesn't seem like the people causing the issues want to admit to thier mistakes.
@1zq I don't see much of this shareholder value that we all seem to think CDW is providing. No one benefits when there's no accountability for employees or stock holders and we have quarter after quarter of bs marketing speak about headwinds and currency pressures. No direct answers on why we're losing customers and why we have new sales regions that are just like the old ones. So we slap on a new tag and think that makes some customers feel special? They're the same customer as they were last year no matter what label they have---we still aren't delivering and still aren't holding management responsible
@1zq criminals in chicago ...are they cdw employees or managers???? I don't know what rando criminals in any city have to do with our stock price unless they were planning on buying a boatload of laptops with excel to track their criminal actions. Maybe they're preparing ppt's to show the guys in prison how their pipeline is tracking. We have some wild belief theories on this board,who knew so many cdw employees only watch fox news for their "news". Our stock price is directly related to our complete lack of a cohesive strategy and no ability to execute anything. No one in the exec ivory tower seems to have a clue how to fix it. Here's an idea - lets get all new execs - yes all of them - clean house
@1z2
You should be more concerned about our current CEO blowing up our stock price and eroding shareholder value and coworkers pay.
As the stock drops...the coworkers become expendable.
American privilege gives you the right to speak...you should be glad you weren't born in another country where you get "terminated" permanently for your opinion.
Meanwhile you have more odds of getting a permanent vaca from work due to criminals in Chicago.
Didn't realize there were so many privileged coworkers...maybe things need to get wat worse before people realize how good of a company CDW was before.
@1z4
One person mentions politics and you mention race now...wow. Didn't know there were so many people at the company that had prejudice.
Here's an example of BS...if CDW has an HR dept with VP's and Directors and managers...why have a whole seperate entity for DEI with its own VP's, Directors, and managers (what a waste of shareholder value).
Politics was also brought into CDW when they forced everyone for proof of Covid vaccination just to keep the Govt contract $ flowing...keep that same energy as CDW is providing technology to the military industrial complex (bet those AM's love those accounts). They also provide tech to both Democrat and Republican parties.
Why work for a company that Krasny founded (a middle aged white man at the time).
Last time I checked....CDW is bleeding money...which is GREEN.
Everyone can say middle management su-ks without bringing color/race into it regardless of your d-mb political stances whichever side that might be on.
If I'm getting paid...I don't care which side the $ is coming from...afterall CDW is a SALES company. Would you not sell or provide your best effort service to a customer if you didn't agree with thier politics? Customers can see all these comments btw.
@1ps wth are you talking about? cdw issues are hardly political and look around dude- which billionaires are blowing up the world and controlling our money right now?????
The board is what democrats do. Take care of themselves while forcing the middle/lower class (employees) to follow their policy at their own expense. Truly amazing what happens when the bullsh-t becomes the face of the company
@ed He is. Do you have any commentary? I am guessing your experiences were not positive? Especially if you ever met with him more than once.
@g3
I should've left way earlier like you. After putting in years...had consistent established business but the new GTM was the nail in the coffin.
When a company starts treating its employees as expendable...what sign does that give to customers.
@dv the top performers are gone hence the stock price. Left December 2024 and have been watching the down fall ever since
@e9
Totally agree...
If the circle of service revolves 1st around the customer and the AM is the link/gateway to the offerings of CDW... emphasis should've been placed on streamlining the process for AM's to engage and set up meetings with services pro's. This whole process was made from the opposite end and then got more convoluted because leadership decided the company had to adopt Salesforce (another money drain since its subscription and not owned) to be the tool to connect AM's to Sirius or services specialists.
Then adding a service gate that penalizes sellers from day 1 until they meet that preset goal.
Why jeopardize existing business for a 5-10% increase in pay (once you are making over $100k... you don't double your pay when you double your sales or double your work). That's how leadership wants to drive positive behavior by punishing people up front? Never seen this in the past...before you'd get $$$$ for throwing positive weight behind company initiatives.
I'm just angry at myself for still holding all my shares instead of dumping (16.5% drop YTD and 32% over the last 365 days).
Procurement used to be ahead of buying trends as well utilizing the value of our warehouses....imagine being ahead of the surge in memory and buying up chips and DRAM in advance and selling at 50-100% buy cost.
CDW cannot keep top talent due to insane internal red tape, non-competitive wages for top performers, and a focus on buzz words instead of results.
Is michael drory still heading up the tragedy department?
Somebody said EC needs to be skeeted on lol
@e9 In 2023 we put Sanjay in charge of a team to identify AI's impact. That was a mistake that many of us called out at the time. The Executive Team failed to recognize the transformative impact this would have in both equipment sales and services, and while we had pockets of expertise, we had no one on the Executive Team who looked at it from a strategic innovation perspective. We are yet again a day late to and a dollar short for the party.
@dv And 5 years ago we claimed we had a Strategy, that the acquisitions , roughly one per quarter including Sirius, were designed to reposition the company as it transitioned to services versus box sales; yet here we are. That didn't work. Our customers don't see us as viable on the services side because we are impossible to do business with. And as of today our stock is now at $114, wiping out another billion in market cap from earlier this week.
@bh
It's actually so bad that there have been numerous coworkers that make well over 6 figures leave on thier own without having another job lined up.
If that's the case...how many performers are silently tweaking thier resumes and actively looking? This is the current landscape at CDW. The actual real leaders that can get things addressed are silent because if they gi against the grain...they'll be pushed out like so many others. Your post sounds like the response coworkers get from their leadership (acknowledge that there are some issues but it's normal as our nearest competitors are dealing with the same issues internally or with thier stock/share price). If we're saying CDW is better than our comp...why are we comparing ourselves to the comp?
The advantage of CDW was the AM/customer relationship and the ability to alleviate the day to day for customers acquiring tech...leadership is alienating the workforce...cutting pay and bonuses while touting free pizza and coffee.
Tech MFG's are all up in price for the most part (guess we're out of the loop on selling all the good stuff)
Okay there's a few things going on here with the stock price that I think we should include in your post.
1) Compare CDW to our competition. How are we trending vs. them? My comparative is Insight Enterprises (NSIT). They are a similar sized, lower revenue but big competitor...check out the charts. They are following similar trends as we are. Got any others?
2) Look at the market. Memory shortages. Tariffs. More emphasis on SaaS and AI (less on products that deliver immediate gross revenue). That affects everything too.
3) And CDW's emphasis has been on hardware for a long while. It's a tough boat to turn. There are a lot of very smart people and strategy behind things, and yes, that includes the Power Plays. Services development has come light years ahead of what it was when we bought Berbee.
Is there a plan coming from EC? Always has been. Does it always make its way through every department, team and coworker? Not always. And sometimes by the time it does, it's gone through so much iteration, it gets lost in translation unfortunately. But yes, there is constant change happening at all levels.
So am I optimistic about CDW's future? Yup. Does CDW have a way to go? Oh yeah. But that's part of the fun. And will the market disrupt things more? Oh yes.
And PS. I'm not a rose colored glasses person. This place has its faults...like any other.
The all weather executive team deserves a bukake shower