In the All Hands meeting this morning Matt dropped that there will be mandatory 5 days in the office starting in 2025. His good news continued with they will be having more employee events in the office. Yay!
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The London office is a ghost town these days. Can’t wait to see what September brings… surely nothing like layoffs or “strategic realignments,” right?
Recent proxy shows exec team paid mostly in cash. How is this company public? The stock is back to where it was in 2017 (IPO year). What a disaster.
Susie and Matt share a history—just look into it, and the ironies will become clear. For instance, how does a remote employee end up enforcing a five-day RTO mandate? The answer lies in their past.
A recruiter reached out to me today and said they are targeting current Appian employees who may be dismayed with the 5 day RTO policy. They are working with several tech companies that have opportunities in engineering, product management, marketing and sales.
Yep. The death spiral continues
Calling for 5 days in-office is a normal business strategy now to layoff employees without actually laying anyone off. People leaving is exactly what they want. They've said September because they normally do layoffs in July/August, right after the quarterly meeting and employee/Glint survey. They know they need to downsize and encouraging people to leave avoids them having to force people out and hurt their investor relations.
This absolutely does not seem like it’s coming from the CPO - It seems like the only reason she was hired and continues to have a job here is because the founders know she has no problem being a mouthpiece for their personnel decisions and won’t push back on things like the last HR head. This whole situation reads like Matt woke up that morning and decided on this, and now everyone is running around trying to implement it
I can guarantee this is coming from the CEO himself - just him and his perspective. Others are just executing on it
This! To emphasize an important point made below, it appears the Chief People Officer is more of a problem than many realize. She is driving these personnel decisions and for some reason Matt seems to trust her. She is woefully unqualified and lacks the experience and ability to be a real HR leader.
Keep in mind, HR is not there to help the employees, it’s main purpose is to protect the company.
Hey, at least we're getting a magician!
Executive team should publicly share their RTO metrics and working locations.
How does hiring globally and then requiring people to be in an office help with collaboration?
Meeting with team members in India at off hours and then driving in work to eat lunch with some other randoms in the department. Nice culture!
Good seeing people leaving this poor leadership team. Never forget what Matt published on Fortune.come recently, so much about ‘values’.
Appian’s CEO walked away from millions—twice—but the risk paid off: Now he’s now worth over $4 billion.
https://fortune.com/2024/10/19/matt-calkins-appian-ceo-turned-down-millions-billionaire/
“He said in the meeting this doesn't apply to remote employees. All the people you mentioned are remote, so they stay remote. HQ based need to go in.”
Herein lies the problem. Many people that have been partially remote and prefer that do not want to make the change, especially when they have been productive. I get that 5 days in the office is part of Matt’s strategy for the floundering company because he has to do something to turn things around but he’s underestimating the impact. He doesn’t really cares about people. Many good people are leaving and it will continue. It will also limit the pool of good new hires.
Sends a poor message when the CPO isn’t even in the office yet she is implementing this plan. You have someone sitting in their home telling a couple thousand people to get back in the office everyday.
The good ones are not waiting for improvement in the job market. Since the July layoffs, the attrition has been swift, much more than they expected so quickly. Seems that remaining employees see what’s going on and are running out the door. Even the CFO resigned.
He said in the meeting this doesn't apply to remote employees. All the people you mentioned are remote, so they stay remote. HQ based need to go in.
No chance this will be enforced to the C-suite. Any meeting you are on with Susan she’s sitting in her home. And Pavel lives across the country, no way he’s relocating.
This is a classic case of rules for thee but not for me.
Hope that the job market improves and people vote with their feet
The delivery of this was unbelievable for such a big change.
Does this mean the CHRO and CCSO have to come in 5 days as well?