In all of the replies from Aug 5th to the "good news" post I knew this day was coming. I was with Teradata for over 6 years and was blindsided by my Solution Engineering Manager and Director on Nov. 1st. The SE's on these major accounts not only knew the Product, competition, analytics but our "CUSTOMERs!" And Management went and RiF'd the non-DEI SE's and handed it over to the AE's and CSM's. You got me motivated again so thank you! But, I wanted to leave you with one remark. I was truly surprised at the lack of respect and support the VP of SE's and her management had for the Solution engineers that knew these customers. We were product knowledgeable and probably the most qualified to drive value. We bridged the engineering gap, did most if not all of the work on renewals and system migration design and walked the deal desk through a reasonable dollar amount. Customers trusted us even though they had to "play" to the AEs and sales management. The weight of customer success was on the SE's back because of the complexity of this solution. Yet, SE management did absolutely nothing to Promote the SE organization which is critical now to Customer Success and Coverage for not only 2024 but 2025. So it bought my managers 6 more months of paychecks and a lifetime of embarassment knowing they did nothing but watch their team implode and the company reputation destroyed. They had an opportunity, they could have promoted and fought for their team but the message was "hey, I had no say in this matter"! AE's get shuffled around and CSM's get hired off the street...and now another 9 to 10 percent reduction with a new SVP of investor relations. And it seems no one is focused on providing customer value or a game changing strategy of use cases. Instead, TDC spews buzz words about open table formats, Cloud Lake, AI, etc. but basics like Customer retention, Revenue, ARR, product demand and YoY growth are talking points on earnings calls with no factual metrics or reinvestment strategy. "So, Steve, what is the impacts of the restructuring efforts on account coverage?" - fake it till you make it, or not.
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The whole SE org is broken. Regional leaders don't hold leadership skills and have only attained their roles via staying around the longest. They don't inspire any of their team to actually want to do their jobs well or go above and beyond.
At the SE level, there are some really smart people. It's just sad they are so disrespected and undervalued. They know what the customers want because they take the time to listen to their customers. Their management just come in and think they can tell a customer what they need and that's when it all backfires
Glad to hear you are motivated again! Sorry to hear your Solution Engineering Management blindsided you. I’ve let too many people go, but my rule is that it should never be a surprise to you when I call you with that news. One on one’s should be regular and productive for both parties.
The solution engineering management lost their sight on the fundamentals of selling a technical product. Solution engineers can be sales machines when properly equipped and empowered.
Fundementals - "Tech stocks may simply be returning to trading on the fundamentals of their core businesses, rather than on the hopes of an AI future, now that the monetization potential of that technology looks to be at least a decade away. But those fundamentals are strong." “The two most important trends for Big Tech are cloud and digital ad spend, and both of them are running very good, essentially in line with expectations to ahead of expectations,” Zino said. - SM any Comment??? Oh, that's right TDC's Customer Experince CIM and Cloud ARR are either unsupported or underperforming. Awesome.