Thread regarding Pearson PLC layoffs

If you have to ask questions right now, you must have your head buried deep in the sand.

?

Put a fork in Pearson. It's over. What a catastrophic week for the company and its only Wednesday. This will take pearson higher Ed a decade to overcome. Customers will never believe anything Pearson says again after this. And..... not one word from upper management. Unbelievable. Or par for the course, not sure which one.

2017 should go much smoother since they will no longer have to worry about having customers.

Senior management book people who have no clue about technology, trying to run a technology company. Country club for managers with no accountability. Office politics and scapegoating anyone attempting to improve or change things for the better as book people cling to their fading roles. VP of custom digital products who really has no technical chops reports into a SVP (or at least she used to be an SVP) who is even more clueless about technology. Blind leading the blind.

Will be interesting to see how they handle 2017. Already outsourced alot of work to vendors or offshore. Already cut alot of worker bees. Kilburn shuffled to a side role. But will they replace the useless management structure that protects itself at the expense of those who actually do work.

The brand is getting damaged and going down the toilet.

A company doesn't recover from this kind of incompetence.

So who's getting fired? Someone is responsible for the worst back to school start in the history of Pearson. None of our technology works and customers are sitting on the phone waiting on tech support for 2+ hours with no answer. Departments are humiliated and are dropping is like hot potatoes. What will be left next semester? There will be no wooing customers back after this abusive, now 3 years in a row, of massive tech failures. These products costs students $100+ per semester. This is inexcusable and down right unacceptable.

No, they won't get it right - they aren't programmed that way. The most recent I've heard is that Finance took a hit - I know 3 great employees that are being let go to send their jobs to Belfast, Ireland.

People are leaving of their own volition in droves ... regardless of if they have another job lined up. I've heard of 4 just this week (and it's only Tuesday). It is beyond sad.

Budget cuts. Hiring freeze. $200 million in the hole just in HigherEd. Change is a coming. Will they finally get it right this time?

Ouch!

In response, on July 29, 2016 Pearson stock plummeted by 10% on the London exchange. Pearson was the biggest loser on the Financial Times Stock Exchange 100 Index. In a show of corporate desperation, Pearson fired its senior North American division leader, moved him to a “senior business development role,” and replaced him with Kevin Capitani, a former tech exec with no education experience, who had basically been unemployed for the previous two years, “Taking time with my family.”

Thought Kilburn was untouchable with the performance and profit of his PLS division over the last decade. Looks like no one is safe!

The Pearson brand is so damaged at this stage, I can't see how one saves this ship. Pearson is known for shoddy technology products that routinely break and disappoint customers. People with tech chops are leaving on their own. Book people with no tech chops still trying to run things.

Still lots of useless dead wood protected by upper management. This new guy will really have to objectively clean house at the management level. I predict more losses and an eventual fire sale to a digital company that can actually execute digital.

I hope walking on water was part of the interview process for this chap.

Yay!

It's crazy it's taken this long for major change to occur. When you are down over $200 million during what should be, your most profitable time of year- you can only hope a LOT more change is on its way . A major sell off of our course materials on Dec 31st, 2016 won't be saving this sinking ship. The ship has sunk.