A lot of people have quietly started looking at options, just in case. It feels weird, like preparing for something we shouldn’t have to. Still, better to be ready than caught off guard when things shift.
27 replies (most recent on top)
@1za ....and then when someone from Services says this can't be done, or is harder than being presented to customer, they are immediately blacklisted. Shunned. Saw it dozens of times.
Sales and the truth are sometimes like oil and water.
Is this the reason the company is in trouble? Of course not, but try to be self aware and understand that your actions have consequences on many many other people.
@28s Good and I don't care because it means more territory and opps for me, layoffs occur largely cause management realised they have a ton of fat hanging off the company leeching money doing very little. If you were good at your job and putting up good numbers then you'd be staying. Also noticed a ton of comments deleted as well which su-ks, seemed like some people were getting really riled up and personal with the name dropping lol
So many comments deleted. I had three and two people I know had one each.
@1za are you aware that the layoffs started because a huge portion of sales people had been meeting 20% or less of their targets for some quarters?
@25n The 'fake' deals are just pipeline padding to make it seem like things are more busier than they are, strangely enough it works quite well since no one does integrity checks on the data
is Tuck being announced as CEO now?
I can’t believe they fired Ted but not our CPO. Ted was alright.
Any CS role in SaaS is going to be challenging and we aren’t unique in the space
Ted was an awesome person
There is value bringing CS and engineering together under a single org.
Two things can be true.
You should try and be a salesperson in this CCaaS space, walk a mile in the shoes of any of the reps that are out there grinding out numbers
As a sales person I disagree we were lunatics or deceitful by all means, we have quotas to meet and we did what we had to do to meet them (even if it meant stretching the truth or over promising). We get given a roadmap, GTM guidance and offered the future to customers to lock in some revenue, it is what it is. Seems like the issue was product and delivery.
@1vs EXACTLY. Ted was a good guy.
@1w0 Thank you - well said. The gig Ted had was one of the hardest in the company and I am amazed he didn't walk earlier TBH. He was a good guy working for an often bad company with lunatic and deceitful Sales people, selling vaporware that somehow, he had to support when it didn't work right.
Of course it didn't work right - it was half assed and mostly smoke and mirrors.
Imagine getting beat up day in and day out for 10 years? No thanks. Best of luck to Ted, one of the good ones.
@1we He probably got tired of defending software and features that you guys sell that doesn't actually exist and never will exist. That would get old for anyone.
Interesting burst in comments here in the last hour, and calls for removal of comments hmmm...
@1we I totally can relate to this attitude, as the situation in the company feels completely hopeless. From my POV, regardless of how hard I work, feature deliveries takes quarters upon quoters due to many reasons outside of my control. The only reasonable course of action here is rest, vest, accumulate cash and prepare for interviews.
And I feel many people around me also sharing the same sentiment, even tho not sharing it.
@1w0 I'm on the sales team and I can say Ted used to be great up until last year. Always willing to jump on calls and run through his support stuff, but since then he was extremely absent and ignored a lot of sales requests and customer escalations. Could be he was burned out, but he hung a lot of sales reps out to dry when we needed to give the customer the warm and fuzzies about our support and he would ghost calls.
Bottom line is, Five9 is trying to get itself sold. That means cutting the fat and a bunch of lean that happens to come off with it. Expect more of that when the company is sold. They will probably gut all the services orgs (PS, CS, TAMs, etc.) when that happens.
As for Ted, he is a great guy and led that org through growth and attrition. He did a great job and and anyone who wants to throw shade at him probably needs to check a mirror.
Ted did just fine, not sure why he’s getting all the hate here when he drew the short stick like the rest of us.
@1g3 Niki was a friend of Dan Burkland and thus extremely underqualified for the job. You could pick a random college student who took Marketing 101 and have the same result here. Plus, her big thing she did as a CMO was take the cloud off our logo.
@1m0 Toxic comment and nasty.
How do you know what he did and didn't do? He was there for a decade I think. You don't get to rise up in the ranks running one of thre hardest orgs in the compsny by doing nothing.
Take this nasty comment down.
@1m0 100% !!!!
Ted gone LOL? Maybe 4 years too late? When I worked with him I had no idea what he did apart from look at dashboards all day and then ping his subordinates and ask them "What is going on?"
Niki posted on on LinkedIn that Ted is awesome and will find a new role ASAP
Was this a one-off firing or part of some small layoff?
@1ea Ted was pretty useless to be honest
@1bz is that a good or bad thing?
Ted Jordan is gone!
HUGE changes coming for 2026. The company simply cannot compete any longer. There will absolutely be major layoffs, so prepare yourself now. The job market is a dumpster fire with heaps of dog excr-ment thrown in for good measure, so be ready for a very long break between jobs. I'm sorry to deliver such a glum message, but better to be prepared than clueless as to how difficult the next few months will be.
Happy New Year!