SJL...SOS...SJL...SOS...SJL...SOS
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Many replacements were hired but with only new grads. Now you have a double whammy of clueless engineering staff who need hand holding from the Sr staff. That only drags down productivity more.
I agree with the cutting back on tools. In their continuing shortsighted effort to cut down on expenses, good software tools and support staff went away. I now see engineers having to spend hours figuring out why their laptop cannot log onto the network.
It would be easier for engineering to be on time if it was allowed to hire replacements for headcount attrition, if it hadn't gone through waves of layoffs, if the software budget wasn't shrinking, if expenses weren't being cut everywhere.
Does it really make sense to tell a $100k/yr engineer she can't work on what she has been tasked with because nobody will buy her the $50k/yr piece of software required? Ansys, Mentor, etc, charge a pretty penny.
Engineering has been late to market on everything for at least 6 years except for notebook 1tb. Engineering is not going to grow the company. It will only grow through acquisition and the current execs do not want to acquire mostly because there is no vision and no plan for future.
Yah, no. Steve had the advantage of increasing areal density growth throughout most of his career, but continually bought companies that were either worthless to the long-term success of Seagate, like Quinta, or they couldn't figure out how to successfully integrate the company. DM wound up as the bag holder when Steve realized HAMR wasn't going to be the big success he constantly promised. On top of it all Steve hired DM.
A CEO does not have all of the answers but they need to make more good decisions than bad decisions. SJ had more good than bad by a long shot. We are all waiting for DM to have one good decision.
He got Seagate to be one of the last standing hard drive companies, out of the 200 that started. He created amazing shareholder value and Harvard business wrote about his achievements. He went out inking the Toshiba deal with bain. These are all huge. Who else do you think would even want to be CEO of STX?
He can come up with some financial engineering that can pull off a big m and a to make Seagate relevant.
DM will pull off the next hard drive capacity point that no one wants and bankrupt the company. All of his bad staffing decisions, look at all of the money he let ponytail blow on experiments and late to market products, a failed IT guy run strategy, and now a junior VP run finance. Quite the dream team.
Steve can do a lot better.
Well, SJL was also responsible for quite a number of the bad decisions that got STX to where it is today. He probably decided to step aside once he realised that STX is stuck with a soon to be replaced technology and has missed opportunity to be a major player in SSD.
SJL saw the handwriting on the wall and left before Seagate blows up. He's not coming back since there's no way to fix a technology that is mature and slowly being replaced.
Steve, come back and fix STX again! Only you can do this!