Thread regarding Dell Inc. layoffs

This is what happens when a small petty cheap fish tries to swallow a grouper whole by borrowing someone else’s teeth. Dell acquired too much debt by bailing itself first and then by buying EMC, was probably considered a good business move but buying with borrowed money in B’s is one dumb a$$ move. The private investors are probably in a crunch and want their $$ back, hence forcing MD and JC to make business decisions to get their money back. Bottom line is Dell is a cheapo and it will always be a cheapo. Dell always paid 80% of market rate to its employees and want more for less. End of the day, you get what you pay for. MD and JC will one day wake up to realize all the good performers getting fired now end-up going to competitors and are going to come back to take down Dell. I don’t work for Dell, but what I wrote above could be deduced by reading between the lines or simply following the news. Dell made a mistake by selling its soul to private investors and they will probably never going to get their souls back. Many employees in good standing are probably waiting for the economy to bounce back so they can go as far as possible from Dell. Good luck MD and JC, for not just screwing up one company but two.

Beth is start on the org chart in a different role.

We arent toppling geniuses here, we need to thin the numbers of enormous salaries. Customers are not buying fleets of hardware and datacentres of storage anymore.

This is a slow strategic retreat

Beth Phalen was let go back in April, Joyce Mullen resigned last month.

Someone said no big names-just engineers!? Lol. Beth Phalen (no backfill) Joyce Mullen (no backfill), every speciality sales manager demoted to individual contributor, DMs reduced to Individual contributor. Specialty Sales VP- punted. VP of NSP - punted. I could name more personal contacts in high positions but don't want to reveal my identity.

Quite simply, even without Corona, there was way too many sales staff as for years and years we had pushed more and more duplicated sales team into patches, halved the patches again and again in a quest for growth. It went too far and we were left with tiny patches needing to do numbers every 3 months that were completely unsustainable.

You would hit once ever couple of years but the rest of the time high paid sales people would have a staggering miss just so a manager can have an empire on paper. The bad way we roll numbers created a fantasy that every year the same thing would happen again and again. Corona meant that all caught up very fast.

I havent heard Dell networking got impacted though

2nza, dudedell - ditto here. 🙂

Dudedell - you are spot on. I had the highest salary and OTE on a large sales team and was the one let go. My performance was good and I had far more experience then anyone on the team. They are shedding salary and looking for cheaper and younger salespeople.

Anyone from dell networking got impacted?

Big names, such as? The only ones I saw being cut were sales engineers.

I don't know if it was only sales people, I do know one of the considerations was how much a person was being compensated. It's well known most sales people earn a lot more than other areas of the business. Especially like to see people that have been earning a lot for many years. I was blown away by some of the big names that were cut last week. Performance didn't seem to play and to who was axed.

EMC is a high-touch, low-volume business that used to be full of cash cow customers. Dell’s low-touch, high-volume mentality is shredding the relationships that they bought 4 years ago. Dell doesn’t get the level of care required to sustain the truly high-value relationships. Ultimately, customers will tire of being just a number. That white glove approach can actually nurture $$$ accounts while the economy goes to sh—. But no. Dell just wants to sell more stuff to companies that need partners, not just vendors.

Wow this is bitter. EMC v Dell sales people is not the issue, the issue is what is happening in IT right now, the rush to cloud and the issues with Corona. You could put the best sales people in the world on this and the issue wont go away. We need a pivot to something more than "we are a big tin company" and fast.

The management at Dell are really good people, I work with some of the nicest customers and staff that you could ever meet. Everyone cares about our jobs and our lives. Dell is a good place to work but somewhere the vision gets lost in "the number" and the way that gets rolled, which disincentivates having good customers and having good sales results or selling smart new innovation. We have to do the same thing as we did last half same product, same mix again and again as if nothing has changed in the last 5 years. Thats the issue.

EMC bred top caliber sales people and maintained a culture unmatched by other large IT companies. While Dell has some good sales folks, it's just a tech company and doesn't value its' sales force in the same ways EMC did. The Dell methods being implemented to "save money" on paper today will cost them in the long run.

It's sales. The EMC management think that their sales staff can take over from the inferior Dell teams. Unfortunately it will bite them on the a**e, the Dell people have been selling solutions for years, the EMC staff only know how to sell storage. It was inevitable that this would happen when Michael made the mistake of putting EMC management at the top of the tree. Their business had stagnated under their leadership whilst the Dell business had grown.

Is this a Sales re-org only or deeper ?