In the first week of August, 75 employees in the US were whacked. The rumbles I'm hearing is that more to happen for the rest of the month. There's no question Sungard AS is dying. For five years, sales haven't met its target. These are unrealistic targets. But long-standing customers are leaving.They can't stand the poor service coming out of Costa Rica and India. What's left of product development is just weak. For example, the automated recovery tool is essentially dead. So now you've got executives bailing from the organization. The reality is, good people are gone, products are just languishing without solid progress, customers are frustrated, and the company is adrift without purpose except to RIF employees to make the numbers look good.
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Signs of collapse (and by no means is this a complete list):
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HR eliminated the long-standing policy that allowed employees to roll over vacation hours into the next year.
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Long-time customers leaving in droves as if Sungard AS is some kind of pandemic. Then again, if you're a customer and dealing with the astronomical prices that Sungard AS charges, you wouldn't be happy when you call tech support and realize that somebody at the other end, in India or Costa Rica, hasn't even experienced being in a data center and has serious language issues.
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Supply vendors no longer accept orders because Sungard AS doesn't pay Net 30, as stipulated in contracts.
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Upper management crumbling because executives have started to bail from the company
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Consistent layoffs
Fully agree with everything said above. 100% accurate. Despite the 75 RIF'd, this month, I'm expecting a SIGNIFICANT GLOBAL (US and UK) RIF very soon after September 1st, maybe right after labor day. CEO has scheduled all-hands meetings for early September, most likely to explain the RIF and continual team consolidation of those left standing and dismal numbers. (Same pattern as the January 2017 RIF). Leadership (VPs and Sr. Dirs.) have been consolidated at a rapid pace over the last 60 days. Somewhat due to execs and VPs leaving at a rapid pace. Most of these leaders will not be replaced. Leadership consolidation means team consolidation and therefore RIFs as less leaders are needed to manage less people. CEO still hasn't met his unrealistic numbers set by his "yes-men and yes-women". The CFO continues to slash and burn with the CEO's blessing, but she is destroying the core of the once well respected company in the process. There are rumors that the company is not paying their bills, but I cant substantiate these rumors.
The automated recovery tool was a FARCE developed by KR and his cronies to advance themselves, which has worked quite well for themselves. The true success numbers were always cooked for KR and his reporting to the leadership team. Anyone reporting the true success numbers was fired for failure, hence the India based RSAs cooked the books to keep their jobs. There was far too much leadership reliance placed on "the numbers" and nothing spent on training or developing the talents of the RSAs. Did anyone actually believe that the success numbers were actually 5x to 10x the industry average?
Sungard AS leaders will eventually, and probably very soon (maybe in a year or less?), RIF themselves completely out of business. Once that happens, Good Riddance to bad leaders and a once good company!