I've been let go, and it's not just the personal impact that's disheartening, but also the manner in which it was executed. The essence of their so-called culture has evidently eroded since Charlie took the helm. His challenges in both recruiting competent leadership and retaining them are glaring. It appears his focus is more on a personal financial windfall, which, at this rate, seems increasingly unlikely—humorous hat or not. Competitors like Vast are outperforming them, and there's a noticeable oversight in recognizing the significance of integrating File and Object storage solutions. Their reliance on FlashBlade, and even more so on FA-files, falls short of addressing the needs. They've failed to grasp the essence of serving enterprise clients, yet they've built an extensive sales network targeting this very segment, which ironically adds no value and instead creates barriers. The hype around their as-a-Service offerings, which is essentially just maintenance renewals, has led to internal competition that hampers customer decisions, inadvertently giving competitors an edge. Their premium Gold strategy is losing traction as customers realize the lack of tangible benefits, contrary to their claims of transparency and fairness. The situation in the US is chaotic, even more so internationally, with a misguided reliance on a handful of major clients. Open dialogue is discouraged, and any dissent, however constructive, is not taken kindly—so much for Niki's empathy. The rigid stance on remote versus onsite work is just a facade of flexibility, putting them in a worse light than even Dell, upon reflection. FlashBlade's scalability issues, coupled with the prohibitive cost per blade in terms of CPU/memory, render it non-competitive against alternatives from Vast, HPE, and NetApp. Cheers to the delusion, Charlie.
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They've surpassed their capacities and capabilities to manage this organization. Charlie merely serves as a figurehead, while Coz is the driving force behind everything, turning it into a technology-centric entity. However, the esteemed Coz finds himself overwhelmed in terms of leadership. The recent comment about achieving a pipeline target is a sore point. The leadership seems to be fixated on brainless and meaningless Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that are more "driven" than informed by KPIs. These leaders have orchestrated a KPI shell game, oblivious to the fact that success is not a precise science or a mere recipe. The workforce is now aware, and the facade is unraveling. As the job market shifts, more individuals are likely to depart from the organization.
I agree with the previous posters. Since the pandemic started four years ago, they have been getting rid of those of us who built this company to push their DEI goals, claw back outstanding stock options, and reducing their medical costs by laying off older workers. I also noticed in each layoff from the people I knew let go, they are not a company you want to work for especially if you are a white male over 40 years old. Age discrimination has been rampant in the Silicon Valley for years.
Charlie is weak there’s no question about that this is a house of cards.
Yes there are enterprise features in some areas of the portfolio but no this is not an enterprise class vendor.
They have an engineering strategy that’s guaranteed to destroy the quality of the products.
The HR legal person mentioned in a previous post is fostering a broken woke culture placing less value on people’s abilities than their ability to qualify towards a diversity number. Making many of their staff not in a special group feel invalid.
The SE’s have no idea which way is up, and the sales droids are pretty much spending their days trying to hit a pipeline target rather than selling.
100% channel focused, just don’t dare expect the sales teams to engage with the channel.
Sales leaders behave no better than frat boys typical US sales management and are upset that the days of people turning a blind eye to their expenses funding their party lifestyle. Funny how that happens when the money stops rolling in.
Vast will pass these losers by but the sad thing is that they will probably recruit half of them and wind up the same way