Thread regarding Target Corp. layoffs

@c7 MM was a great leader. He would walk the floor and talk to people - especially during peak when we were all huddled in a conference room monitoring the screens.

If I survive all of this, I honestly want the chance to email leadership and give them a break down of why they have the engineering problems they do. I just suspect it would not be well received, or fall on deaf ears.

@ae well-said. There hasn't been competence in tech leadership since MM left. He righted the ship and left it in a great position for success and then subsequent leadership has just reversed all he did. A shame.

We tried the contractor model already, and last time we did, there was a huge hack of customer information! #redBadgesOverBlackBadges

@ae agreed. we are on a sinking ship at target. we should all be trying to leave soon.

After working for many years in Target tech, I have come to the following conclusion: The higher ups do not understand technology and more importantly have no interest in it.

Worse, some have misconceptions about technology - for example, the recent obsession with AI from leaders who drank the cool aid but actually don't understand how it works.

I think they just see technology as a black box that is an unfortunate but necessary expense. There is no effort to understand how best to organize teams. They create ineffectual engineering positions such as enterprise architecture and principal engineers that never produce anything of any merit. In short, leadership just see engineer counts and $$ counts, and do not have any insight on how to create a world class engineering organization.

This is why, even if I survive Tuesday, I am on a mission to move on. If they haven't identified these problems by now, they are not going to. I have zero faith that things will be any different moving forward. I hope I am wrong.

@ac How exactly is Target controlling expenses by replacing U.S. team members with TII?

Sure, the pay rates are lower in TII, but where is the proof that it is actually cost effective overall? When the result is double work, confusion, and added layers of communication, that is not efficiency, that is waste.

We have created a model where people spend more time re-explaining, re-doing, and re-checking work than actually moving the business forward. In many cases, no one even knows who is responsible for what. TII partners are often MIA on Slack, deadlines slip, and accountability gets lost.

Just because someone is paid less does not automatically mean we are saving money, especially when the overall output and productivity decline. At some point, cost cutting on paper starts costing us more in reality.

@ab my sincere apologies. Backfilling with TII helps control expenses. Once again, my sincere apologies.

@aa okay. You still failed to answer my original question. If you’re going to be a condescending tw-t. Perhaps answer my actual question.

@OP …let me give it a try. Just type the following search in Google:

what are the basic fundamentals of retail business

The retail business is very simple. Offer products that consumers want, at a price they are willing to pay. Controlling business expenses is extremely important. Gross Margin, Operating Margin, and Net Margin will indicate how well a company is controlling expenses. As you can see from the MacroTrends link below, all three margins have been trending downward for some time.[1]

[1] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TGT/target/profit-margins

The expansionary economy is dead. All corporations will need to rightsize continually to adjust to this reality.

There are a few sharp TMs in TII but maybe due to poor competitive pay in Bangalore, the quality of TMs is very poor. There are a few old timers L8/ L9 who “run TII” and they need to go. And many of L5 and under need hand holding.

Neither US nor TII has been trained well to work with each other (friction due to differences - cultural, time zone, routines, no in person face time so no trust). This working model is doomed to fail unless Fiddleke invests $$$

TII is supposed to “help Target grow” because on paper they can supposedly do the same amount of work for significantly less cost. Target leadership for a while has been hyping up TII as core to the company strategy and snubbing their US based employees at numerous company wide events.

@a1 it really is. They can’t even explain their projects.

no literally. anyone that actually works with TII understands that they are creating so much more workload and time on everything they touch. it’s exhausting.