I was able to break free from this troubled mess Teradata has become. I did not realize how depressing and dysfunctional Teradata is until I got hired by a healthy, growing cloud company. Databricks, Snowflake, AWS, or innovative startups can all leverage your expertise. Go find a better company!
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Great commentary.
I was a huge investor and pulled out.
I wish you all well.
Agree, good luck
Good Luck
I start in a new role soon. My job will to go after Teradata customers and take workload off the platform.
They hired me for this very reason as I know the customers well (even attend family bbqs with some), so it will be game on from day 1 in the new role to take customers left, right and centre off teradud. Payback mode engaged, ready for take-off!
I left Terrordata last year, in the summer of 2023.
When I think back to some of the toxic things that transpired while I was there for 4 years, part of my mind is already having difficulty believing anymore that it all actually happened!
My manager (who was a passive-aggressive little schitt going through a divorce), once gave me the "he's not going down alone" speech during one of my 1-on-1s.
I was a lead engineer in my area of expertise. My director would always overrule me regarding technical matters that neither he nor the rest of my chain of command were qualified to know anything about. And when it would invariably cause things to break (as I told them it would), I would be scapegoated into owning those end results too. "It broke, because XXXX 'changed the config' from what it was" (tried to fix a long-standing suboptimal TD kludge).
They would not listen to the vendors or their experts either. I once had to sit on a humiliating call with my manager until 11 PM, so he could yell at a vendor for several hours, for their product not supporting a feature that their documentation has always CLEARLY stated does NOT support that product. But since my manager had already budgetted around making it work-- we had to try and make 2+2 = 5 that night. I think that was when my first stomach ulcer started!
Our culture was so toxic at Terrordata, that we caused technicians who worked for 3rd party partners to quit their jobs because they did not want to work on a project assigned toTD and our management chain anymore!!
We once spent MILLIONS on an IT deployment project, got TWO YEARS into deploying it-- before my management team finally listened to the engineers and figured out that our existing infrastructure did not even meet the minimal prerequisites to run that solution!!!
I always say there are at least 5 sides to every story. But Terrordata was the most grabastic, disorganized, incomptently-managed operation I 've ever imagined was POSSIBLE. As a privately-traded company-- they do not deserve to stay in business. I just feel bad for all of my former colleagues and friends who are still trapped there.
I just got a new job today. Been looking for a while.
During one of the interviews the Tech Manager after looking at my resume asked if I knew anything about Data Lakes (because they use Databricks). I can't decide if Teradata's poor marketing or poor product are the reason they didn't even know what Teradata does.
But, who cares I'm out. It no longer affects me.
I hope the lawyers sniffing around get their way and ELT / the BoD get nice long prison sentences. Couldn't happen to a nicer group of people.
Take me with you, I've been looking