Thread regarding Hitachi Vantara layoffs

In response to ‘Who is BH?‘, it’s referring one of HV’s two CEOs, Brian H.
Let us not forget HA, an incompetent and highly insecure former legacy HCC CEO who led the company to its spectacular demise.

Who is BH?

It is probably the worst company I have been in, when it comes to Management. The Management had no idea selling Software and Consulting, they all had long HW background. The culture was a HW culture, with no understanding of the different sales process and the patience for building a solid SW culture was not existing. Disrespectful and demotivating Execs that gave each other jobs, they were not qualified for, and thereafter the results were just horrible. The HR department was so weak, and allowed the disrespectful culture to continue, and nothing was done about it. Very disappointing. After being in SW and Consulting for 20 years, I have never seen anything worse than the way HV was managed. I cant believe that many of the Top Execs are still there, they should be fired, all of them. I have never seen more a– kissing in my entire career, and many in here indicate, time after time the wrong decisions were made, without holding the VP’s accountable. Pentaho was bought to a significant too high price, and the Management had no idea and experience how to bring that into the market, in the correct way. Coming with ideas and experience how to do it in different way, was punished hard and without respect. At the end of the day it is a HW company with a HW culture, and as long as the same people are running it, it will never be better. End of story !

v that was beautifully summarized of what happened v

To the comment below about how an HR guy becomes COO and leads a "Digital Transformation? It's actually quite genius:

1) HR guy realizes that he'll only ever be an HR guy. He needs a promotion. Ah ha! Convince BH that Hitachi Data Systems needs a transformation after he read a book about it.

2) Recruit Deloitte Consulting for a really expensive, long term engagement to plan a digital transformation and get Hitachi Ltd. in Japan to pay for it.

3) Part of the transformation plan is to move the HR guy to COO while bringing in the COO from GE Digital to be Chief Product Strategy Officer the Deloitte team knew from their failed transformation project at GE Digital.

4) Uh oh, consulting is expensive! Need to show results. Start gutting teams and saving money, particularly the Lumada IoT team in Seattle. Chief Product Strategy Officer takes over Lumada, Pentaho and storage lines. Bring in more ex-GE talent to mop up. BH reads another business book and shares it with the company like he's leading a book club.

5) C-ap! The ex-GE talent didn't understand enterprise selling, engineering work flows or product strategy while Chief Product Strategy Officer spends more time in Japan s—ing up to execs and stunning them with amazing power point decks. Kanpai!

6) Now the company is losing serious business. Layoffs are minimized because smart employees are voluntarily leaving in droves. HR literally can't keep up with the backlog. Revenue drops but so do expenses. Engineering team turns into "Lord of the Flies". It's every man for themselves now as they scramble for an NVMe strategy.

7) COO (former HR guy) boasts of transformation success but Japan pulls the ATM machine for consulting costs. COO pulls out the knives on fellow executives who ask too many questions. More cost savings. BH is reading another book and making power points about "data being the new oil". Sales leaders driving millions in revenue know the gig is up and start leaving.

8) Japan steps in. Scratches their heads about all the losses. Shrug.

9) COO (former HR guy) literally can't find any more execs to whack so Japan decides to whack him. BH reads another book, creates a new deck about "the power of data". Japan decides to double down on losses and folds in Hitachi Consulting and fires a massive number of people in what can only be described as a dumpster fire of misery.

10) Adults from Japan step in. BH and CPSO get demoted. Former HR guy is reportedly looking for a consulting gig.

TL;DR: HR guy manufactured a digital transformation strategy which only served to get him promoted and it tanked the company. BH is rumored to be writing a book about it.

Regarding an earlier post about ‘Japan top leaders should also take full ownership on this HV/HCC performance disaster’, I think most of this is due to the Japanese culture of saving face. They are terrified of admitting publicly failure for investing In the wrong people and things. As such, they keep investing more resources desperately hoping they would get better. I fully agree those failed leaders (HCC and HV) should be thrown to the curb for their abysmal failures (any other American companies would have done so without hesitation and be done with it).

I can't get over how the person in charge of our "transformation", our former COO, was just a HR guy. Can someone explain how that makes sense

Japan top leaders should also take full ownership on this HV/HCC performance disaster. How do they even select these people as leaders? Real problem is the ones who select and promote them.

Ltd is also culpable. All subsidiaries are ultimately just staff for Japan. If Ltd doesn’t wake up and solve (aka lay-off) surplus, less skilled, non-digital teams in Japan, the subsidiaries outside Japan will all take a hit - even if it is top talent that has to be fired. And let’s not talk about the virus debacle that will only make things worse for Ltd. For gosh sake, think like the multinational you claime to be Hitachi!

HDS was for a long time a cash cow for Hitachi Ltd. with very little to no investments (great engineering). Since it awoke to the importance of IoT, Analytics and other IT's competitive advantages the management embarked on the transformation ) bandwagon (project Mirai, with a name change to HV and mostly failed mergers and acquisitions. The largest and the oldest part of HV remains to be the old and worn out HDS which continues in its core to be very conservative, indecisive and a clustering of small middle management fiefdoms frozen in time and incapable of contributing to the IoT and Analytics transformation. At the top, very obvious is the lack of bold vision coupled with no execution skills. Indecisiveness at the top and the bungling of pretty much all new initiatives, including the launch of the newest enterprise storage are at the heart of its downward spiral.

I see most comments are related to legacy Vantara. I’m from legacy Consulting, and we also had an naive and inexperienced CEO who knew nothing about the consulting business. How does one run a consulting company to the ground and brought us to our knees in just 4 short years during an economic boom?

The Japanese are not without sine here, how can they have let BH do this to such a great company. They have some explaining to do also.

Bottom line is this. The company existed for the last 5 years selling a single product in declining market to too few customers.

Customers are loyal based on the quality of the product and support service, but support has been quietly cut for years and there is no more flesh on the bone yet the cuts continue.

HV are even more exposed than a one trick pony one product storage company, because they are pouring money into ventures they cannot execute on.

Every acquisition made has failed. Pentaho is noise, only achieving growth when sales folks gave it away in deals, funding it with hardware product margin to customers who did not even know they were getting it. REAN - some smart people but a value proposition largely based on smoke and mirrors which cannot scale to enterprise customers, run by folks who are not fit for purpose post acquisition.

They cannot attract quality external execs so the same old faces keep popping up in new roles, despite track records of continued failure, or worse track records of being invisible.

This used to be a great company. The people on the ground are fantastic but unfortunately this is just the start of an unsustainable company circling the plug hole - disappearing down the drain within 3 years.

Not a surprise honestly. Not because of people on the ground, but because of poor leadership. Almost all operations are ad-hoc with no planning or standards. Hopefully our colleagues in Hitachi Consulting will survive this mess.

Hitachi Vantara and Hitachi Consulting have merged just on paper. The sad reality is every bit of what’s going to emerge is 2 separated lame forces using a single visiting card and neither wants to talk to the other to leverage anything

Lay offs have been occurring (I was impacted). Can’t say we didn’t see this coming. During the same week, the company is having a fancy global boondoggle at Dallas G–lord Resort (leaders flying From all over) for QBR. Shameful.

With morale being down, how do you encourage the remaining individual contributors to stay on? This can only mean that it is only going to get worse. Better being laid-off and be paid rather than looking for a job after the ship has sunk. All Brad did for the first year is to have confined himself with training and travel and delivering his "blind" vision. He has the gift of the gab by spinning wheels nothing more.

Hitachi Vantara is a ship without a wheel house heading towards an iceberg which will ultimately sink it. There is no leadership. There is no vision. There is no future. Brian and Brad wax each other’s carrot and buy non-profitable software companies. The Jupiter product is what Steve Jobs would say (if he was still alive) is ‘DOA’.

You don't get where he is without promising the world

Brad Surak is a talker and politically savvy but can't really do work. His MO at GE was the same. Not surprise its occurring here.

Glad I got out when I did... sinking ship!

id–ts. Spent an hour this morning on a new brain surgery training (Kimble) to track time so the nitwits who don't understand their business can metric cases "better". Hey Francesco this means you!

If they looked at talked to my customers rather than their stupid bean counters they wouldn't be in this hole. Fired a stand up guy in support today. Tomorrow at 915 Eastern they will be whining for a s—er to take his cases.

Who would be a great leader for Hitachi Vantara? Some much potential.

the buzz word MO runs my entire
Unit .... I have never seen it done to such an embarrassing degree ... after our layoffs today ...unfortunately ..it will continue because the main culprits of that STILL ARE SOMEHOW EMPLOYED ?!??

Brad Surak and Brian Householder are the two most incompetent people to be leading this company. All they do is talk buzz words and pretend. They have no respect in the company and their incompetence is not news to anyone.

what teams were impacted?

Most of my team was let go today. Moral has been down for the past few months between key players leaving due to anticipated layoffs or those riding out the storm. More layoffs to come this week. Not sure the storm will be over anytime soon. Too many people in certain positions were cut due to execs/upper management not understanding the importance of these roles. Those of us who choose to stay are going to suffer big time.