Thread regarding Riverbed Technology Inc. layoffs

With all due respect, the Cary office culture was/is much different from that of Bethesda. When OPNET acquired Make Systems in Cary, it was devastating because many of the staff were axed (sound familiar?). There was a series of adverse events that followed the acquisition that didn't help Cary's morale. The anniversary bash was initially a way for the Cary office to blow off steam and to build bridges. Over time it morphed, but it was never ever regarded as a "suck-up" event. The bash was organized by a committee of people in the office, for the whole office. Everyone participated in some way. When a enough time had elapsed after the Make System's acquisition, the anniversary party was discontinued.

Talking about suck ups: Cary office hosted anniversary event yearly. AC, PS, YG would drive down. There would be games for only these 3 ppl and all the other poor employees watched the rich highly paid upper management have fun, and by watching them, the Cary employees filled their heart with joy and felt blessed! Easy guess as to who in Cary was responsible for that decision!

Is this a done deal?

No sane engineer who has any self worth would want to work for that egotisical bastard PJ. You'll love PJ's "style" if you want to be treated as a slave, with no clue where your product is headed and no clue what you are supposed to be working on or why. If you love a schizophrenic person barking out random orders out of the blue and changing your product direction based on some new random fad, PJ's your guy. Contrary to the BS AC spewed, PJ isn't even a good engineer. Just ask the people who had to fix and maintain his garbage output.

AC dodged a bullet when he sold this thing to Riverbed. It was a piece of sh*t then and the profitability was clearly on the way down. I hate to admit it but AC and MC were the smart ones who conned all of us and then conned Jerry and made out like bandits.

I agree that PS probably angered folks who were not invited to his annual "close knit" parties. I worked under PS and I secretly longed to work under PJ after seeing his style. I think had I the chance to work under PJ, I would have soared. Under PS, I literally worked 10% of my true capacity and still got raving reviews. It was a joke. Some of the manual and repetitive work could easily be done using scripts which very few people under PS had a clue about. It was a sweatshop in the truest sense.

Also, AC was the founder of the damn company! Anyone criticizing him here need to be real. AC was smart, sold it at the right time, cashed out and seems to be pursuing the 21st century business models. PS and his group is stuck in the 1990s products that came out of AC's bachelors thesis.

Agree with the posters about PS & PJ and sucking. AC was the real technical vision behind the OPNT's $1B ceiling. And, though I hate saying it, MC was the business and money vision, and the whip who drove OPNT's slave machine. Also agree that PS was nicer to his "underlings" - but that's the key word. You had to declare yourself an underling and get you nose all nice 'n brown. But if you did, he would invite you to his annual new year sub-party.... Jeez what a sweatshop it was.

Let's be honest here. Aside from being good engineers, both PS and PJ are very political and sucked Alain's d$ck to get where they were. And PS was really obvious about it too, probably because it is more acceptable in his culture. That said, PS did care about his underlings and seemed like a better man than PJ who is all for himself, so I wish PS good luck. He can probably just chill at this point and doesn't have to work any more.

Mike, why are you keeping PJ? This man is a cancer that will bring down the company! You need to do everything you can to keep Pradeep. He is the HEART and SOUL of our team. You backed the wrong engineering lead!!!!

Jerry, why are you keeping Mike Sargent? This man has no leadership skills! He has no idea what he is talking about, just a mumble jumbo of corporate speak and garbage he read from analyst reports and rehashed strategy from his failure at CA. I have waited patiently since the acquisition for some real strategy and when Mike was brought in I had hope but those are all clearly gone now.

I wish I got laid off, now I guess I'll just walk out on my own without a severance bonus.

Customers won't notice anything! Modeler is a dead product that no one cares about anymore. Why didn't we shutdown Modeler and the rest of the Cary office? They are dead weight dragging the rest of us down. We need more investment in AIX but instead we got heavy cuts and they keep the dead weight products. Mike S. needs to explain to us what our strategy is and make better decisions or else he should go. Why has he gone silent and MIA?

you are entirely clueless, pradeep and yeb were both ALAIN's LAPDOGS! but PJ had a clue and singlehandedly keeped OPNT relevant. pradeep and yeb just did alain's biddings and did whatever crazy whims. PJ had the strong vision and will to drive the team and create great products. pradeep is a political beast who ousted PJ from management role which signal the downfall for me while yeb just want to run back to alain and be his bitch. PJ is only one who sees product trends and has the guts to stop development midstream and change course. he did this multiple times guiding us towards the future while pradeep toils on that crappy legacy product suite the market no longer wants or needs. PJ management style may be harsh and not always professional but mostly it is because some of the engineers are weak and cannot take direction from an intense personality. all you pradeep lovers are full of it!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA stupid to let Pradeep go but keep PJ. YOU KEPT THE WRONG P JERRY! Good luck my ex-coworkers, your going to need it!!!!

btw I tought Cohen brothers worst management ever but this tops that!!!

Is the entire Modeler support group getting the ax?

pradeep is gone

This thread is about PS, who has been confirmed to have left OPNET (I refuse to call the 7255 location Riverbed). As for PJ, I honestly do not know how he ran his team. About YG, he has joined forces with the founder and former CTO of OPNET.

Over the years, I have seen a fair amount of attrition in OPNET. It somewhat picked up after OPNET was acquired by Riverbed. Many of the senior contributing engineers were going/gone. In a way, OPNET was stuck with a legacy product base for a really long time. They should have offered their products over the web, in virtual environments, and connect the network analytics tools to real networks and managed more of the real data. The ARX team did that (managed by PJ) and that was why OPNET had a ceiling of $1B back in 2012.

OPNET had cool products that fewer and fewer people wanted! That was its problem. Still, OPNET was profitable, and with a change in its vision, most of its products could have transitioned over to the new world of web and data analytics. Too bad, an incompetent management killed this opportunity. All of the long timer OPNET folks simply did not deserve to meet an end like this. This kind of layoff happens in terminally ill companies, and OPNET wasn't even sneezing.

Possibly the OTHER P? As in not PJ, but Pradeep?

Who is this thread talking about in that case?

This thread is not talking about PJ.

R u kidding? PJ is the worst manager ever! He drove Yev away and destroyed what was left of opnet with his incompetence and political games. I'm no longer there as it is a clusterfuck but for my friends who are left I am glad PJ is gone!!

It's incorrect to say OPNET was just getting by. OPNET was doing fine before the acquisition. Its growth rate had slowed, but most of its products were profitable. OPNET was nowhere close to a failing company...not even remotely close. Acquisition by Riverbed botched things up for OPNET.

OPNET was just getting by, it certainly was not the company it is being made out to be.

Now that he's gone, I'm glad I no longer have to pretend to tolerate the great, shitty Riverbed. They took a beautiful thing (OPNET) and this beautiful man and destroyed them. What the hell was the point??

The fact that P is gone tells you they are done! How sad to have worked for such a great company, OPNET and to now have this happen!

Woha. If P. is gone, I think OPNET is officially done. RIP.

P. resigned

If you know OPNET, pick your most-feared loss on the staff. It shouldn't take long.

Do you know the name of who resigned?