Too many managers who do nothing but go from one meeting to another to discuss things they discussed five times already in the same week are still here, and too many good employees who did important work that contributed to the company's bottom line are gone. How is this a good thing?
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My opinion is that seagate has sooo many meetings because 1. The Orgs change and R&Rs are not always clear. 2. The executives don’t define clear metrics for the year 3. They dont delegate and empower the lower levels or don’t trust them.
truly, most everyday decision making shud be done at the Dir level. Then dont neeed Snr Dir level or keep it only as holding pattern for VP. VP shud be involved when issues can’t be resolved or are very novel or urgent or have a large impact. Meeting culture is toxic but employees love showing off their busy calendar…it’s a male ego thing and ONE of the executives is known for showing off how hard he works from 4am to 1am….and everyone celebrates him!!!
Wow, really? Engineers—you gotta speak up if you’re really spending all that time in mostly valueless meetings. I’m shocked. GMO radically slashed meetings to the bone several years ago and is kicking a-s, very productive. (After firing a key GMO exec whose main contribution was to vastly inflate the meetings culture!)
Seriously, I do not think constant meetings/statuses/presentations is the vision our CEO would support—especially among engineers whose work is central to any continuing future success. If nothing else, a bunch of you should send him anonymous but helpful emails about this problem.
Is this NEW? Absolutely NOT!! Anyone with drop of common sense could see this coming 10+ years ago. Instead of whining - you should of taken the opportunity to move on to better opportunities while the labor market was tight. But I suspect many fear change and prefer the comfort of repeating the menial tasks they've become accustom to. You are your own advocate - do something about it!!!
They have meetings about meetings.Hurrying from meeting to meeting with their pieces of paper trying to look busy and important. They have an easy life in seagate.
Meetings. Always ask to see an agenda. If no agenda, refuse to attend meeting. Always question if much of it can done in an email. Always provide a choice. Do I attend this or get x,y,z work tasks completed today instead? If in a meeting, always keep asking what problem is being solved and what the actions are. Keep asking during the meeting what actual actions came out of it. If none, challenge why it exists. Every....single...time.
Seagate has so many meetings that there is no time to do work. They could reduce meetings by 50% and reduce the engineering/management workforce by 20% and this would lead to a 20% increase in productivity. It is ridiculous that engineers have to be in meetings 7 out of the 8 hours. Management rewards having useless meetings that could have been an email. This is driven by directors that cannot innovate or think outside the box.
Yes I agree. Upper management is stuffed full of Directors on up. My group laid off three techs. These are the same people they required to work all throughout COVID, and the company insured their attendance by instituting a time card system, first time.
The company has old and archaic promotion requirements which eliminate the possibility of a non-degree employee of EVER rising. Locked in for 42 years with plenty of experience to qualify otherwise.
And you wonder how does this make sense?
The company is full of yes men. Otherwise, you've been laid off or will be next. If you call management out and point out their short comings you become a target, a mel content.
Layoffs at this company are going to be constant, as has been the case for all my 42 years of employment here.
HR head is spewing a program called Discovery, which is meant to allow employees to cross department help on projects. BS I tried it earlier in the program, cross divisions, it was Hatfield vs McCoy.
There are multiple divisions in the company and they all operate in their own way. Their own set of rules and expectations.
Exempt employees enjoy so many more perks than the Non-exempt employees do. Yet the company touts inclusion among the values they live by. It's so obvious.
I was an employee who cared to get it right first time, my mistake.
The company will pigeon ho-e you into certain tasks and responsibilities, and once this happens, and magnified by further RIFs I expect this behavior to continue.
I see nothing good coming for Seagate in the near future. Good luck to those who remain.
Their test system capabilities for heads going forward is an absolute train wreck.
I hope management can sleep better at night now, knowing they just eliminate a mess of people who don't have anything to do with the direction the company is going.
Keep up the good work Alan and his minions!
If some of these managers just roll their sleeves and do real work along their direct reports, we can execute so much more! Or at the minimum stay out of the way of the worker bees that get SH!T done! I'm an experienced engineer, expected to deliver so much in such little time with such little resource, and yet I spend 80% of my time attending meetings, writing presentation about a status for a status, and appeasing the status report machine! Open up my time and let me execute where it matters!
This company has a bizarre obsession with meetings. I rarely see my manager because they are in meetings every waking hour of the week...And nothing gets done.