When Chip Perry was CEO of AutoTrader he used to call us, the employees, the "secret sauce", but Chip was the secret ingredient in that sauce, and once they drove him out it went down hill fast. Back then you could just walk into his office or talk to him or any of the upper management as you passed them in the hallway. But once AutoTrader became a huge conglomerate after dozens of mergers and acquisitions it became little more than a sweat shop. And everyone that had been at the top of AutoTrader either retired, transferred to other parts of Cox Automotive, or found better employment elsewhere. It became a mad struggle to find anyone to manage the company. One of the reasons for many of the acquisitions was simply to steal their managers to fix our mess. Every few months a new group of directors and VP's would be introduced at our company meetings, with big promises to "listen" to us and solve our problems, but six months later you never heard another peep out of them. Once they became "vested" in Cox Auto pension plan, many took early retirement. One of the reasons for this recent round of layoffs is due to all of the new Cox employees being automatically vested in the pension plan. It's a huge drain on profitability. And to compensate every single benefit to working at Cox Auto, including the pension plan, has been taken away. Not even Spark points remain. They have succeeded in running this place into the ground. In the past year they have laid off their entire QA department, except for QA automation, all of their BA's and PM's, and they just laid off their entire mobile department of 30+ people, including developers, QA, designers, DBA's, and managers. 950 full time and 250 contractors in this most recent round. The last round they escorted everyone out of the building like they were criminals. This time they dragged it out for several months then finally told us and let us "work" until the end of this month though they took all of our laptops and equipment and took away our network access. So we're just sitting at home waiting for our severance to kick in while we look for new work. No mobile team. Is this the 21st century or what? I guess AutoTrader is planning on going back to magazines and fax machines and pagers. Mobile is just a fad. It will pass. People will shop for cars on their big honking PC's at home. Nobody shops for cars on mobile devices. These relics from the stone age with their fake comb over hair running the company probably still use flip phones and Blackberry's. Innovation is dead. I feel sorry for the people still there. It's been a nice two week vacation so far. Good luck everyone!
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Chip was heart and soul, when he left then Alan and a few others left it started downhill. I liked David Pyle alot but he had no chance as sales started to succumb to competition from Cargurus and anyone else that set up a server in their garage.
Sandy was more interested in empire building than creating sustainable business models. A few years later my VP was gone and replaced with a completely ineffective leader (Southeast US). I think Stephane got pushed into a side venture after he blew the layoff meetings in 2017. Next you had
RSD's more interested in DSM's and making notes in salesforce.com than spending time with customers in the field. It's a real shame what Cox did to an American Icon like Autotrader.
It's been three weeks now of my "vacation". I wake up whenever I feel like it. And the best part is not having to go to that abysmal place anymore. I was perfectly fine with spending the rest of my working years there, but since I was laid off I feel nothing but relief. There was no joy or excitement working there. Going into that building every day was a soul s---ing experience. I felt like I lost 30 years of my life there in only 10 years. I drove into Atlanta the other day and I thought about the people still in there and I felt sorry for them. They are trapped like I was. They have a pension. They have medical benefits. They can't leave. Every time they think about leaving they weigh the benefits of going somewhere else to the benefits they still have and it's not enough to push them over the edge, so they just sit there on the fence waffling like I did. But for someone new, less than 5 years, there is no pension anymore, and no other benefit to staying. I don't see any reason why they would want to stay. And like you said the car market isn't quite what it was 10 years ago. Millenials don't want to own a car. They want Uber and Lyft and public transportation. And before long cars will be a service. You rent one when you need it. One comes to you automatically, you take it to work, and another one comes and picks you up and takes you home. And buying a car will soon not be the same experience for those still interested in owning. Instead of hunting online for days or weeks at places like AutoTrader or dealer sites for the best value and options you'll just order it online, directly from the manufacturer. exactly the way you want, for the best price you can get, and it will be delivered to your door. Cutting out the middleman, and the auto listing sites that take a cut off them. Imagine how much money dealers pay in advertising to newspapers, to AutoTrader, to Cars.com, and all of the other online listing sites. Add to that the dealer commissions and costs the dealer has to pay. Imagine not having to pay any of that to buy a car. You'd probably save 20%. My biggest fear working at ATC was not getting laid off but the company going out of business before I was ready to retire.
Awesome post. This is why I keep visiting this obscure website.
Kudos OP, right on target
Selling cars using loose credit like never before in history, combined with 8 year leases is all that kept this bubble up as long as it has lasted.
Over 100 million people with a new car, half of them will be screwed when they find out they have negative equity upon trade in.
The future of the auto industry is beyond bleak, mark my words.
Amen Max - a perfect post