Thread regarding Seagate Technology Inc. layoffs

At least you all WOK, per company standards. I left 1 year ago. The world is nice outside Seagate.
Keep you chin up, if you hang in there. There are opportunities out there. Make the move if you want to.

30% revenue and growth from China are gone forever thanks to BD.

You say it is inexcusable that we don’t have a successful SSD business. I’d say top management never had the kind of commitment required to develop an SSD business. I’m talking about dollar commitment, not nice words in PowerPoint.

The company has been returning nearly every dollar in cash flow to shareholders. You can’t create a NAND business without huge instrument dollars. “NAND agnostic” that’s always been a stupid expression. What that really means is, “we aren’t spending any money on NAND”

What NAND agnostic really means is we are dependent on the kindness of NAND suppliers to sell us NAND even though we never committed any dollars to NAND development. That guarantees our products have old technology and we can only ramp volume when nobody is buying SSDs.

Out SSD strategy to me is no different than out HAMR strategy. Nice slides in a PowerPoint without real financial commitment to make it successful. Both developments are more about buoying today’s stock price than about positioning the company for success. More spin than strategy.

I have a different take on SSD when it comes to Seagate. There was never any chance in h_ll that they could ever be viable in that market. Simply put, you are already competing with established memory chip players who run their own billion dollar foundries. The ONLY chance would be if Seagate designed the fastest, highest density chips and somehow cut a deal with a high volume foundry to produce the chips. That assumes we had the critical talent to design those devices (we didn't) and those established memory companies (Micron, Samsung, Intel, TSMC, etc) will obstruct any attempt by a new company to sign deals with any volume foundry in a NY minute.

My POV is they could have already been cranking out HAMR at huge capacities today if they had diverted even a modest chunk of those stock buybacks and dividends into engineering reliability and manufacturability (low cost volumes) starting 5 years ago. I think they drank their own storage growth koolaid and never imagined any disruptions like a pandemic, China and failing banks. Unfortunately the people who got rich off the cash flow are the same folks who made those decisions. Now they are scrambling to stave off bankruptcy instead.

Buying all those companies, only to stunt their growth, was a puzzling strategy. I like the theory that it was simply for Wall Street window dressing.

Nothing wrong with our top management

I've been with STX a very long time.

Here's what is wrong with top management. It was clear 20 years ago that SSD would quickly emerge as a viable replacement for certain HDD applications, and as the technology improved would eventually replace all HDD applications. STX had at least a decade of advance notice to develop an SSD strategy. Over the years I saw many projects funded and cancelled, I saw us acquire what was left of Sandforce from LSI, and I saw us make multiple ineffectual supplier contracts. We are left with no strategy except to be lower tier storage that will battle for market-share until the inevitable day when Si replaces spinning FeO forever.

It is inexcusable that STX isn't a leader in SSD when it was obvious decades ago it would develop into a HDD replacement. Now STX is a "storage company" with no presence in 60% unit volume of the storage market.

"Nothing wrong with our top management", are you kidding me? It's run by a lot of yes men and fake it till you make folks, who still don't know what they're doing.

Luczo was hack, talked about how we're family and not just a number... right. All he did was focus solely on making the stock look good even though the company still had no direction. He acquired a ton of companies which none have panned out, just a waste of money to once again boost the stock. Then he left right before his squandering showed itself, and left Big D holding the bag, not that he's any better either. Luczo was smart in knowing how to profit for himself and had someone so eager to take over the reigns that Luczo could just walk away and once cr-p hit the fan, all fingers would point to big D.

Big D shouldn't be running this company at all, but the mismanagement by a greedy Luczo already had written everything we're dealing with in stone.

True that the current administration sucks! But this company is being run into the ground by greedy execs! No doubt about that!

Suppressing Chinese companies wont work in the long run. We must admit the blockade is not about fair competition, but a violation of market principles and WTO rules

The US has been browbeating relevant countries into economic decoupling from China, imposing sci-tech blockade on China is mother of the problem affect the semicon and seagate

Post from TheLayoff.com

Who Is Winning the Trade War?

Nothing wrong with our top management, but the jokers combo of Biden & Powell is definitely a recipe of disaster.

It is the execs hypocrisy which really rubs so many people the wrong way, remember their mantra “Our focus is on the employees”? Well, yeah, to lay them off!

When all your C-Suite larders ard millionaires 10x over…. Why would they care about working families? It’s a money grab and the biggest bank account wins. Thanks Dave for taking $14M in comp last year and… giving up $500k this year making it look like you are taking no pay for 6 months… Would take me 5 years to make what you give up in 6 months??? You bankrupt our company, took all the money and stock and will walk away set for life while destroying so many families??? Sleep well Seagate Bernie Madoff! If you had a soul, you would give back all your stolen stock and deferred compensation.. But thanks for the $500k…. What a sacrifice!!! CE.. Go and take your toadie CFO and live on your island…

You might want to throttle back on the brew a bit.

I actually like most of my coworkers, think my boss is great and generally enjoy work.

If it wasn't for how specialized this job function is I'd likely just go down with the ship here, but the last couple months have been a big wakeup call that I need to start looking hard at alternatives.

I built this organization from the ground... it lacked proper leader's intent. Most of the people on the org chart would be giving out grocery carts at store entrances if it was not for me. This is my cost center!! King Kong does not have anything on me! Time to board Air Frost One.

I am sick and tired of managing up! ...and tired of my manager kissing "__ss" to make himself look good while I did all the work. Never mind how toxic the top level manager is. JUST BULLY! She should had been fired years ago!

I totally agree that top management are greedy SOBs, but the problem is deeper than that.

So many layers of management doing little to nothing. No vision, no thinking about how to keep this company viable.

Just maintain the status quo even if it was clear years ago that the status quo end in tears. Too many groups not thinking about the big picture but just fighting for turf at a declining company in a dying industry.

This is the rot that has set in. I’ve been in multiple organizations now where no one above me did anything but attend status meetings. Everyone is constantly statused about everything, but ask a boss to help with getting priority with other groups or coordinate the strategy between groups and you get no where. Well before covid I’ve had multiple bosses that were never in the office in a Friday - and if the weather is good, never on a Thursday either.

When you are run from the top by people that don’t actually care about the company or the people this is a cancer, and it spreads.

I do hope MGMT monitors this site and get to see how they are really impacting normal people and their families due to their selfish greed!

At least we can all agree that HR is a joke at this company

Kick yourselves. ESG, DEI, shutdowns, free money, VAX mandates, sanctions, and cash for clunkers (Ukraine). You've made your bed. Burn in it.

Well said.Good honest post.

Great post! Makes me wonder if some of the negative attack stuff isn’t paid management trolls. Please stay focused on your family and coworkers. Let the Cali Executives pound sand! Best of luck fellow Gaters!

Don’t waste time on trolls. They just enjoy provoking people.

My sentiments are the same! Greedy execs are the root cause of these problems! We should all leave if we have the means to do so and see if the execs can do the job themselves!

After a longtime a honest post I should say