Thread regarding Seagate Technology Inc. layoffs

It's part of the ISO compliance organization/program. ISO 9001, and other standards. Yes, it's a costly racket. Seagate has bought into the certification racket and it costs a ton of money to put a global system in place and meet all the increasing bureaucratic "regulations" imposed by these systems. It's kind of like being in the EU. That's part of it.

Business Excellence is a pseudonym for shadow G&A organizations, i.e., IT, HR, Finance. Drop in the bucket on expenses compared to CEO's training wheels of excessive use of PwC and McKinsey.

One is sox compliance and governance, the other is a boondoggle. Quality VP was laid off, like that makes sense with all of the quality issues we have been having.

Is business excellence the same as the quality continuous improvement or internal audit departments?

That excellence department probably has a budget of 10 million per year. Talk about wrong priorities.

What the hell is "Business Excellence"? Do we really have a group that size focused on something so general when we cannot get a product out the door and we are third at 14TB?

Do not worry, the SVP of Business Excellence will solve with the cadre of 25 staff and excellent business processes and playbooks.

The HDD technology is failing, the markets are moving to SSD, Seagate does not know how to sell systems, and now that tough decisions are needed for the future of the company, we have the wrong leadership. Leaders who cannot make decisions.

Ha! This set of executives is more likely to sent out an employee survey and ask us what the strategy is and why we haven't told them what it it's yet! Let's look at the CSG group. I've never once heard a single goal or market strategy for that whole thing. I've never even been told clearly what server products we have or are planning to sell. Why is our product going to be chosen? Have you? How about SSD? What is our strategy to succeed there and get more revenue from the products. Hell, you'd barely even know we had SDD products or what they were after 5 years of all hands meetings pretty much ignoring them. So, now let's look at what they do laser focus on....capturing the growing cloud HDD market. So, how are we going to stop losing market share there? What's the strategy to have a better product, or lower cost one? Or, what? We are going to win with a customer relations mastery and defeat SSD titans with it? Has anybody explained why our cloud drives are not leading the market and how we are going to fix that? Oh, that's right. It's the employees fault for not figuring all that out and telling the executives what products to make and for who.

All good ideas, Seagate will never do any of it without a couple of years of discussion

I agree and see it firsthand on a daily basis. The company operates like a cornered mouse and does not know the direction to move. It has squandered opportunities by not having a strategy, spent billions on acquisitions over the last 10 years that do not add value to the company or for life after HDD, keep promoting HDD as if the business will grow revenue with HDD only, and keep taking on debt including to pay dividends.

What is a good leader to do? It may be too late, but...

1. Set real priorities, not the generic ones shown at every all hands meeting. It is embarassing for us and must be for the CEO and other execs to show the same goals over and over that have no tactical plans to achieve.

2. Be honest with the employees. HDD is dying quickly and cloud will not make up for losses in notebook and other markets.

3. Get rid of the execs that do not add value. They are just a distraction.

4. Come up with a real strategy and share with the employees, we want to know.

5. Cut to the bone, cut deep. Be smaller, more nimble, and not have the constant threat of RIFS every 6 months.