Thread regarding Teradata Corp. layoffs

I suppose no one was thirsty, but my stout was delicious.

I'd love a beer - if SD, Monday night at Conference Room K?

“The doofus” that’s been taking some slings and arrows here. A lot of emotion from some these replies and a lot of assumptions about my work experience. I’ve worked for many companies over my career, pre-sales, post sales, engineering, Fortune 100 companies. No longer at Teradata but would never would have been considered an old timer.

The name calling and flex of “start-up for large companies” is sad.

I respect the recommendations made on the move to DevOps, improving QA etc. but my point was that even if you make those changes and improvements, it’s a challenge from a product perspective to sell VCL or Lakehouse to the installed base.

A checkpoint:
• How many customers of size where Teradata is mission critical, supports operations with tight SLA’s, have made the move from Teradata on-prem or cloud to VCL or Lakehouse? If not, why not?
• How many of have made the move to Vantage Editor? If not, why not?
• Should VCL or Lakehouse have only been for new green field prospects?
• Would it have been better to spin VCL/Lakehouse out as a start-up?

There are a lot of benefits of a “cloudy’ Teradata, but it needs to continue meet the requirements of the installed base and not take away features and functionality that the installed base relies on.

In summary, this site is probably the not the best place for this debate as there are so many dimensions to the discussion.

I’d buy you a beer and we could kick it around.

https://www.thelayoff.com/post/@w5+1jsq8gk26
I come here every couple of months because I knew I was right pushing for change. Unfortunately leadership thought they knew better which is why I was layed off. And now with almost 6 years of yoy losses and the stock price losing half it's value they have the receipts to justify their decision.

For me it's fun coming on here to see how clueless the people left at Teradata are.

Fun is good. Gotta have some fun. TD is a grind, or worse. We'll use this site instead. Grab a chair. It is never about the product. The people make or break a company. Go ahead, disagree. Your opinion has more weight than mine.

Fun thread. No one needs this product anymore that is all, the end. It’s no longer about culture, competition or leadership and engineering methodology. No one needs this product anymore.

Says the departure was not voluntary. Lack of closure, not having a proper sendoff is disrespectful. Dont know about you, but most people with day job don't end up rich. D-mb ideas like friendship, dignity, responsibility keeps us going than a bank deposit. Which helps very much BTW. There are many here, who used to carry the badge with pride. Where is your empathy @w5

@s0 stay or go is your choice. Free country and anonymous(?) forum. Have at it. With all due respect, can we skip addressing people as doofus? Hmmm. Wrong move. Someone is going to call me doofus now – free country after all.

Think about the difficult life of SM and RP and JW and the “fellas”. Quarter after quarter they fake, lie, and treat people as a number. Think they have it easy? Sir, no sir. Any number of drink is not enough no more. This power failure in EMEA will hit EBITDA this quarter, and the designated story teller is gone. Pity.

@s0+1jsq8gk26 If things have worked out so well for you since you left TD, why are you sitting here?

TD really needs to ditch the offshore devs. Literally the worst code possible. No testing, no doc. It’s miserable to deal with.

Haha I used to work at Teradata before getting layed off. Now I work as a consultant at a startup for some of the largest companies in the world.

Old doofus doesn't understand why he's wrong because he's never been outside the Terdata bubble. So he keeps doubling down on things that don't work.

Soon you're going to run out of legacy installs and ELT won't be able to cash their massively overpriced paychecks.

A lot of material here. But first thing first, name calling ain't no good, very bad, never ok – c'mon people.

I am confused with the “old” and “new”. Its possible the “Old timer” is actually a 32 year old who pulled his 58 year old neighbor into Teradata. Maybe a python swallowed his c++ finger, the reason does not matter, does it? May be TD was the first job after graduation for the 32 yo and therefore an old timer with clout to get the neighbor hired. The neighbor on the other hand, job hopped every four years, and therefore new to TD with outside perspective. Possible? No one ever called they are old or young by age. Also, this is precisely why tD calls their event “possible” – clear, good, thumbs up Eh?

Old person doofus here. A lot of assumptions in our post. You don’t know me at all.

You don’t seem very open minded, so I won’t sit down and shut up.

I didn’t do what you claimed at all.

Just pointing out that their requirements don’t disappear but ignore them are your own peril.

If you want to walk away from and ignore the requirements of the installed based that’s been paying the bills for years, go for it.

If you think the 50% stock price drop is because of old timer doofus’s like me , you’re a id--t.

Perfect example of why Teradata is failing. Young person sees all the issues and points them out. Old person tells them they're wrong + explains how things "really work".

Hey old person doofus. You've lost 50% of the stock price in a year. Sit down and shut up.

Unfortunately I know this won't happen. What will happen is if the new guy keeps speaking up they'll get layed off.

Oh my - a Layoff thread worth reading.

• Engineers own their code. Tier 3 support and robust testing are non-negotiable.
• Commit to deadlines only after engineering validation through PoC.
• Monthly releases do not hurt quality, they ensure consistency and quality. Only include ready features.
• Growth requires focusing on new customers.

must appease new and existing customers independently.

• Competitive products need frequent updates, even if existing customers don't demand them.
• Compete selectively against SF or DB in 1–2 strategic areas, not across all domains.
• Lake struggled because it lacks a purpose nugget than "me too". Can't sell just a Lake or Lakehouse.

Stay engaged—this discussion is drawing attention from decision-makers.

Interesting ideas. The new engineer and the old timer both scored points. How is the lake adoption going? And why legacy customers are moving then? Curious mind, that's all.
Or, is it a leadership problem after all? Rest my case. See you tomorrow.

Interesting POV and recommendations but I think it shows how little you understand the “legacy” installed based and their use case, workloads and their requirements.

I think it was unrealistic to think that a me too SF product offering could meet the requirements of Teradata’s installed base.

It’s as if there might be two completely different use cases and requirements

1. Support both analytics and tactical use case, can’t have much downtime either unplanned or planned, 3rd party too compatibility is critical
2. Throw away discovery use cases, AI and data science work. Ok with occasional outages. Don’t care about 3rd party too compatibility

What does than mean? Monthly SW upgrade drops etc. make the legacy customer base uncomfortable. They actually move much slower than you might want to move.

I would recommend some spending some time with Teradata’s current customers and get a sense of what their critical requirements are.

I’d add the two use cases I listed are most likely completely different business units so there’s a tension there.

Before you throw stones at “old timers”, I’d get educated on Teradata’s installed customer base.

Few years from now P/QR/F, IRobUMop, Chaos-Architecture will be the new norm. Some folks will not let go their CI/CD cap and their clout when time comes. A few will get to recite "change is difficult" s-b stories. Many will learn they ended up as a row in a csv file, while some one was perfecting their cost-optimization pitch. Happened before and will happen again to people and companies.

It is their fault, who were paid to manage changing market demand. Will they own their mistake? No. Will you own your mistake IF you were one of them? IDK.

if you are in engineering, you need to ask the engineering leadership with how comfortable they are in releasing every month. I personally has been pushing for engineering to do it and every single time its pushed back because they cannot assure quality if we release too often. There are too many monolith leaders in Engineering who does not want to take any risk and wants status quo. The whole engineering org leadership needs a big shake up with fresh blood (assuming TD can get anyone to join them now).