Thread regarding CDW layoffs

CDWs mad scramble before the separation date of January 2nd is humorous. They thought that the offshore “partner” could easily learn and take over handling what experienced, intelligent, articulate staff with years with the company handled. Hahaha.

As a "legacy" CDW person that got termed, I can't quite agree with your sentiment.

There is a massive disconnect between executive decision making and those actually delivering solutions to customers - a gap that has grown exorbitantly in the last two years.

The senior leadership team is stacked with a mixture of legacy dinosaurs who have no clue how to run an enterprise sized business, along with “fresh talent” brought in from outside the company (or the industry all together) who are completely clueless on what value CDW (or any solutions provider) is actually relevant to customers.

Welcome to being a big company where the growth strategy is now officially “acquisition.” Wake up. Management is not going to invest in building cohesion across teams, nor continue development of coworkers because they can’t grow organically.

CDW claims their “people” and culture are their biggest differentiators. But in real life they “take care” of their coworkers by paying them grossly below industry averages, while taking advantage of their good nature by fostering a “culture” where being a good corporate citizen = burning out. All while executive leadership calls them winey and selfish as they cash in their shares (shout out to Leahy and Corley giving themselves massive raises, making $4M and $11M last year)

Thanks but naw. At least people are being real about this place now.

I disagree with the user who stated that Sirius leaders are strong. In what sense? They’re totally clueless and ineffective.

Being honest: The Azure team was responsible for their own layoff. They chased the EA model then couldn’t pivot to anything valuable so they had to go. Their leader Richard was a joke and a clown that couldn't or wouldn’t evolve and is now being quoted on CRN because he had Cloud in his title. Goodbye. Let ‘s all hope the competition hires him. The new Cloud team Azure value is crazy good and customers like to be able to buy something that makes a difference to their business.

There is a clear lack of leadership and bloated management. At most of the lower levels of management there is very little strategy, poor communication and no vision. Managers can't answer questions about where we are going. Nobody wants to 'own' anything other than their small area. Most recommendations that people make are met with 'that's somebody else's job, stay in your lane'. Teams are painfully silo'd and management even admits that other entire departments are hard to collaborate with.

I was sad to see that the layoffs cut legacy folks. On some level I get it, but the party line from management was that CDW needed to bring in fresh blood. The problem is they aren't bringing in any fresh leadership to change the culture that they made that CREATED the people they let go. Not sure what kind of positive outlook there can be when the people that are failing to inspire and encourage are the ones still here. I fear CDW is going to get into a loop of hiring talent and burning them out with bad leadership and gone will be the days of people working here 10, 15, 20 years and establishing a legacy.

The CEO isn’t the problem except that she surrounded herself with Sr. leader-advisors who either have never been in this business and are clueless about how customers buy or they are dinosaurs who don’t see the writing on the wall while the market is changing to SaaS, cloud and marketplace. The Sirius leaders are strong but they cant figure out how to operate in the CDW closterfock. The Cloud team is strong but nobody who is in leadership understands what they do and it’s a small team plus we don’t know how we get paid on it.

The truth is more nuanced but, generally-speaking, Sirius fared well in the layoffs because they stacked the management jobs during the last reorg. The most prominent bold-faced names affected by the layoff were "legacy CDW" working under new Sirius managers who had no idea how much institutional knowledge these folks had.

Leadership is awful, the CEO in particular should resign. A company famous for not doing layoffs, doing two in three years.
Underperforming despite massive acquisitions, it's pretty embarrassing for her.

They laid off a bunch of the Azure team but kept a ton of dinosaurs from Sirius who haven't sized a system since working at IBM in 1981. What's the plan there?