Thread regarding Sabre Holdings layoffs

US leadership should not need to travel to remote offshore offices.

It makes no sense for a C level exec to travel to an offshore office because it makes no sense for that offshore office to house anyone more senior than a senior developer or a senior manager. It's an unnecessary expense for the exec and it decentralizes the leadership structure that should be concentrated in one central location.

There should not be any senior VPs, VPs, senior principals, principals, senior directors, or directors offshore. If an offshore resource proves worthy of a promotion to director or principal then that promotion should require them to move to headquarters as US employees paying US taxes. That's what L1 visas are for. Then they can apply for a greencard after a year if there aren't any layoffs and eventually receive US citizenship too - if they want to. If they don't want to move to the central office then they don't get promoted.

@QGeqDh9-1jbu cannot agree more.

"local C level execs leading offshore SVPs who lead local VPs who lead offshore directors who lead local managers who lead offshore developers."

Sense less hoping on to planes.

Leadership from US goes to KRK(little understandable)

QAs from KRK come to US(why? Why? may be training)

Managers from KRK goes to BLR(non that useful, managers should be local guy).

PM from BLR comes to US(little Insane)

And they all fall sick after useless parties after useless meeting.

Look to nature. With few exceptions, the brain of an advanced animal is centralized in one place not distributed amongst its appendages. Its appendages are peripheral tools that the centralized brain utilizes to accomplish whatever goal it sets itself. Individual appendages are specialized for particular tasks like locomotion or feeding. The underlying form of all appendages all follow a similar structural pattern, 5 fingers/toes, or hooves, or retractable claws, or bony flippers, not a horrific Frankenstein's monster chimera of all. Each appendage is generally not unique but shares a similar fundamental structure with the others.

Don't outsource your central core, we made that mistake with EDS. Don't offshore products. Offshore only peripheral capabilities and simple reusable components. Assemble cheap simple components into complex high revenue products centrally and locally where those products are conceived and designed. Keep offshore skillset requirements concise and rudimentary so it is easy to cope with unplanned turnover and easy to quickly move from one offshore location to another or to grow or shrink and offshore location as needs or situations change. Separate the technical hierarchy and the managerial hierarchy so technical leaders handle only the technical matters and managers handle only the managerial matters. Local directors act as a managerial bridge between local vice presidents and offshore senior managers. Local principals act as a technical bridge between local senior principals and offshore senior developers.

It's all just "intro to offshoring 101" but we are failing that class royally.

We have local C level execs leading offshore SVPs who lead local VPs who lead offshore directors who lead local managers who lead offshore developers. It's the textbook definition of how offshoring shouldn't be structured. Whoever said that there shouldn't be anyone offshore above senior contributor or senior manager was absolutely on the money. The local hierarchy should be no more than 4 layers deep and the offshore hierarchy should be no more than 4 layers deep and there shouldn't be any local roles offshore nor any offshore roles local. Business strategy discussions should be kept local. Technical architecture discussions should be kept local. The local central core shouldn't need to hold high level town hall discussions with its peripheral offshore staff because they should be peripheral not central and realistically could even be entirely separate companies in many cases.

The problems are caused by poor leadership since the very start in 1999 and perhaps even back to 1996 with AMR Corp or even earlier with AA. We were never an IT company.

Software in Sabre was always allowed to be hacked together organically without any grand plan by little team fiefdoms that competed against each other instead of collaborating together. Ill conceived proof of concept ideas became core products. Now there is a huge mountain of code, hack upon hack, incomprehensible numbers of technologies, the same wheels reinvented dozens of times, the same problems solved dozens of times, understaffed teams of jack-of-all-trades-but-master-of-none fighting constant support and stability wild fires, developers drowning in dev ops instead or developing, non-technical managers making technical decisions, managers who don't even understand what the products they own are let alone how those products work.

Will the new development just be more of the same?

Huge organizational changes would need to be made to fix this.

Division between offshore IT teams is the sole ownership of the CTO in any company. If you have a CTO that knows code and fails at leadership this is the result you will get. This is a pure CTO / Product Development executive leadership shortcoming that any solid CEO and/or Board Members should be able to recognize.

You just described the ripe environment for a carve-out.

Stability is critical to retain current customers and to gain new customers / market share. Without the stability issue fixed, there will not be a Sabre going forward.

Now take a look at what's been done to fix the Stability issue in the past 5 years and the Results of those efforts.

The above will give the right picture of the direction the company is headed in and also the competency of the executives involved. (Most are not with Sabre anymore but have collected their millions of Option money and moved on) Unfortunately the folks currently heading the effort are equally incompetent. That's the tragedy for Sabre