This is hopefully not just a rant but a reasoned view.
I have been in and out of Teradata for almost 15 years finally leaving some time back.
This is what i see is wrong , in no particular order.
- You can't tell someone they're doing it wrong if what they're doing is making them money.
If my car is running fine, a mechanic telling me about my messed up gear alignment and replacing the clutch pressure plate thats 'about to die' isn't going to convince me to spend $3543 in parts and labor.
The warning signs have been there for a long time that Hadoop and its surrounding technologies will eat away at the core of the Data Warehousing business. The Teradata senior management chose to ignore it and still chooses to do so in the interest of short-term profits and that has brought a once proud company to this position.
- Middle Management
Teradata is filled with middle managers whose sole contribution is survival.
There is no accountability for screwing up.
F---ing up products badly, no problem , suggesting the wrong solution, no problem, bad sales decisions, no problem, hiring the wrong people for the job at high salaries, no problem.
F---ing it up has never gotten any middle manager fired., ever.
- Share Price
As in not caring about it.
Why does share price matter? It affects your company both internally and externally.
Having a rising share price means you can play a different game than the rest of your competitors.
Internally it helps hire and retain good employees. Externally it lets your customers know you are doing good.
TD management has never cared deeply enough about share prices.
- Engineering
In technology, once you have bad programmers, you're doomed. I can't think of an instance where a company has sunk into technical mediocrity and recovered. Good programmers want to work with other good programmers. So once the quality of programmers at your company starts to drop, you enter a death spiral from which there is no recovery.
Anyone who has worked in TD for more than a few years knows the quality of our Engineering has dropped every year.
Products do not deliver what they promise or worse are not delivered at all.
The less said about the newer products built or acquired , the better.
And that's my take.
I will be checking the site and am happy to answer any questions i can.