There once was a time, not that long ago, when Teradata was revered. We were THE giant in the industry. Yes, we were considered to be expensive, but that didn’t stop literally every major retailer, airline, manufacturer, TELCO and bank for seeking us out. We stood our own against Goliaths like Oracle, IBM and others. We even had a CEO who knew EVERYTHING there was to know about Teradata, leave us to run HP and then Oracle; His bragging to “put Teradata in it’s grave” turned out to nothing more than hyperbole.
So how did we end up now literally offering to pay highly skilled and experienced employees to leave the company (and potential walk to the competition) before an impending RIF of those with less tenure (who may also walk to the competition)? In spite of the pandemic, it’s not the economy and please… DON'T BLAME THE RANK & FILE. Our situation solely belongs to our so-called leadership team (and I include our esteemed Board of Directors). Somewhere along the way, they took their eye off the ball. Some examples include…
Leadership hired an outside consulting/efficiency firm who knew nothing about Teradata nor our culture. These performance experts buried us in GOST plan processes and ludicrous “Elevate” contests and recommended that we only should have 500 customers - No more! -What happens to potential customer number 501. Do we send them to AWS or Snowflake?
With all of the smart IT guys in the world, our Leadership decided that a retired grocery chain CEO was a perfect fit to lead an Enterprise Data Warehousing organization. -Was this done on a bet, a grand experiment or simply helping out a friend/neighbor in Salt Lake City?
When the grocer didn’t pan-out, Leadership sent a techie off to a crash-course Ivy League CEO school and gave him the reins. -We all know how that ended.
Leadership k–led off the bulk of our once profitable consulting organization.
As noted by others on this site, they made vast sums in compensation while the company results and ultimately the stock sank lower and lower. Somehow, Leadership’s compensation isn’t tied to revenue, yet, the rank and file’s compensation is; funny how that works.
The outcome of these and other missteps have been disastrous for the company, our customers, our stock price and ultimately the rank and file that has had to suffer the consequences. Many sharp/talented people have already moved on while those left behind fear being RIF’d or plan for a buy-out.
Like a Shakespearian tragedy, Oracle, IBM, HP, Green Plum, SAP, Netezza, etc. could never k–l-off Teradata. Yet, Teradata is destroying itself from within.
My recommendation to the Chairman of the Teradata Board of Directors: Take the leadership and fire them all, then fire yourself. You (collectively) apparently don’t know how to run this organization.
- Considering where we are, what could it hurt?