Dell tells staff: If you haven't got stomach for private era, leave | Hacker News Reader

Dell tells staff: If you haven't got stomach for private era, leave

channelregister.co.uk

28 pointsnpalli46 comments

If you believe it's about "the mission" I have a bridge to sell you. When management offers a buyout, it's about to cull the workforce. It's a go-to private equity trick. Silver Lake probably realizes that Dell can do just as much with a lot fewer people, so getting rid of the excess workforce will result in an instant shot in the arm for profits.

That said, offering buyouts can be risky. On one hand, they're better for morale than just firing a bunch of people. On the other hand, anybody who has any sense knows that buyouts means that layoffs are imminent, and so the ones who have the most prospects elsewhere (i.e. the people you want to retain) will be the first ones to jump ship.

the first rule of employment: If someone offers you free money to leave? you take it.

You'd take the $2k vs. working at Zappos, or does the money have to be a material amount?

I don't think I'd walk away from Tesla or SpaceX for $100k. (I might walk from Tesla for "a Model S", IFF I thought I could still go back a few months later, but that's just gaming the system.)

not op, but "You'd take the $2k vs. working at Zappos, or does the money have to be a material amount?"

Isn't that part of the Zappos standard procedure and not an "event" like this? If I read lsc correctly, then if some event occurs where the company offers money / severance to leave, you are better off leaving. I don't know if anyone has stats on this scenario, but I'm inclined to think the recovery is the long odds bet.

Yeah. that's pretty much it. If they are offering people money to leave, they are doing layoffs, but instead of firing the low-performers, they are getting rid of those most able to get other work.

Now, sometimes it does work out for the company; if you've got no other options, sure, you will put up with worse treatment and do more work.

either way, it's a pretty strong sign that the company will very shortly become a place I don't want to work.

I would /pay/ $2k to avoid working customer support for zappos. I'd pay rather more than that, in fact. Have you worked phone support? I only did so for a month, and it was probably the least pleasant job I've ever had.

True, true. I had a job where I essentially did nothing but customer support. It was actually pretty fun doing "field" support, and I like doing high-level support (remote, even; pre-sales is more interesting, but "fix this actual bug no one understands" is cool too), but doing first line phone support was hell. It was funny that the company was paying me $absurd but viewed it as "sunk cost" so something a $50-100k/yr person could have easily done became also my job description at times.

Working for Zappos, at least based on their offices and culture, also appears to be a unique form of hell, but those attracted to the company probably would like it.

I think it's more that voluntary redundancies tend to foreshadow compulsory redundancies, and indicate that the company thinks workers in your area don't make as much in money as you cost in salary. Given that you'll end up unemployed anyway, you might as well get some cash out of it.

When you and your co-workers are being offered voluntary redundancy and sites other than yours are being closed is also a good time to make sure you have redundancy insurance on any loans you have; to check your CV is up to date; and to make sure your friends at other companies still remember who you are.

You're exactly the kind of person they are trying to get to leave -- someone who is only in it for the money and doesn't believe in the mission.

In other words, the smart person who is not gonna stand for bullshit, and who is a professional that knows the end goal is creating value, not some BS "mission".

Yup, and if you want to play mind games with your employees, and pretend like it's not a monetary relationship, then the feeling is mutual. I provide enough real value that I can get an employer who respects me enough to be honest and up-front.

We aren't family. Both of us are going to break off the relationship if we see a better deal.

If you want me to stick around because I think the company will be better X years from now? Give me a significant amount of underwater options, and a position where I have a chance to move the share price.

However, more relevant to this situation? Who do you think is going to take the cash and leave? Probably the people who can most easily get new jobs.

Now, I'm the first to point out that your ability to get a job does not 100% correlate with your competency, but there is certainly some correlation. Your company is going to be dramatically worse off if the people who have other options leave. If you have to let people go? you want to get rid of your bottom performers, not the top performers.

>> Your company is going to be dramatically worse off if the people who have other options leave. If you have to let people go? you want to get rid of your bottom performers, not the top performers.

This is true, IFF your voluntary reduction process is indiscriminant in whom is approved. In the case of the Dell program, you have to "apply" for the voluntary layoff. In January they'll take all the applications and choose whom to let go. If they have no intention of reducing headcount in your group, you won't be accepted. If they do have intentions to reduce headcount in your group, but you're the best worker in the group, there's a strong chance they'll deny your application.

I would love to hire people like you... people who are willing to take a paycut and small stock grants in order to fulfill my grand mission: to make myself as rich as possible.

I would usually just upvote, but this is such a spot-on, perfect comment I wanted to say, well-said.

Why does not taking this offer imply taking a pay cut and small stock grants?

Because usually if they offer this is because they want to get rid of you and your team.

And if they do, there's not much do there anymore.

So unless you're there solely for money, you won't stay there any longer and take the extra (assuming you feel you can find a better than gotten rid of job)

Everything is about the money, from top to bottom. You lose sight of it, you're going to get played.

You could indeed employ me with a paycut and small stock grants - if only I could believe your mission. Sorry, dude.

That's one way to put it. Another way to put it would be that they are someone who understands their value and understands that their own personal identity and success in not tied into that of their employer, and that an employer who doesn't want to pay competitively won't have a mission worth believing in anyway.

Either way, of course, you can see why a company might want to get rid of that type of person.

Why would taking this deal imply you aren't getting paid competitively?

Because it's a layoff. Even when done right, when the company lays off people in the bottom 25%, there's still just as much work and fewer hands to do it; If you aren't cut in the first round of layoffs, you will end up working much harder than you were working before the layoffs.

Usually, layoffs also imply that the company is in poor financial health. Companies in poor financial health tend to be stingy with raises and bonuses.

I would argue that because they are doing layoffs wrong, they are very likely going to endure even worse times; It implies they have unskilled management, and they've got to get along now without the employees who had other options who were encouraged (!) to jump ship before things got really bad.

Few things are quite as frustrating as putting in heroic hours only to watch that work be wasted because your management isn't very good.

If you thought you had to work more after the first round of layoffs, boy howdy; after round two, you might as well park your cot in the office. Worse, in round 2 and 3 the severance packages get smaller and smaller.

> If you thought you had to work more after the first round of layoffs, boy howdy; after round two, you might as well park your cot in the office. Worse, in round 2 and 3 the severance packages get smaller and smaller.

Because the people who are left are stupider and more desperate for a job.

>Because the people who are left are stupider and more desperate for a job.

No, it's because by round two and three the company doesn't have as much money and isn't as concerned by the bad press that comes from layoffs without severance. You could say that people /stay/ because they are desperate for a job.

Re-read the sentence you quoted.

I can't bear to vote you down Luke, but you just said the exact same thing as the parent.

My reading of rayiner's comment was that the severance packages were small because the employees were desperate and stupid.

I'm suggesting that the size of the severance package is divorced from the quality of employee. The severance package has to do with how much money the company has and how concerned it is with publicity.

Yeah, I read your post wrong. I read it as the size of the incentives to stay, not the severance.

I think you skipped the word 'are', in the phrase 'people who are left'.

Regardless, you both appear to agree that the layoffs who pass on the earlier, more attractive offers are likely to get the least attractive severance packages.

Edit: Not it appears that Rayiner agrees that he's wrong, which makes me wrong by proxy, which is confusing, since I can't find where you two are in any disagreement.

Just pretend I'm not here, I guess.

Actually in many cases the people laid off were doing work that didn't need to be done at all. Stuff that has to get done, stuff that's adding value... you keep the people who do that.

>Actually in many cases the people laid off were doing work that didn't need to be done at all. Stuff that has to get done, stuff that's adding value... you keep the people who do that.

Unless the company is getting out of a certain business and laying off an entire department? yeah, you are going to cut off some working hands. The best you can hope for is to mostly hit people in the bottom third or bottom quarter of performance; better resolution than that is largely impossible, even for good management.

If you are 100% useless? you get fired before the layoffs. Layoffs take those perceived to be low performers, but people who aren't so bad that you want to outright fire them.

Everyone exists on a productivity continuum; few people are zeros.

That, and evaluating productivity is hard. Really, really hard, so mistakes will be made, and even good management is occasionally going to accidentally lay off someone who is very productive. And usually you get layoffs because management wasn't good. Bad management is going to make a lot of mistakes and get rid of a lot of good people.

I mean, I'm working from my experience on the ops team; going from 8 folks to 5 folks on the pager rotation is rough. Going from 2 to 1 is terrifying.

LOL. Mission? Believe?

Is Dell a religion or a mere money making entity which works, rightly, to enrich a few owners / share holders?

Look, I like Dell. A supplier of choice for me. Always been good to do business with. I would recommend them in many cases. But come on, its a business, not a not for profit, humanitarian, charity. All this "mission", "believe" stuff is just fantasy BS to make people work harder to make the owner more money. The only question for an employee, in this regard, is: does it give me what I want or need right now? If so, then work, and work hard for your money. If not, then bugger off.

Then, the very idea that its OK for a business to be in it for the money, which is what a business is, yet that its wrong for an employee, is frankly hypocritical BS. Any one who falls for this business BS is a simpleton mug.

If you want people to actually care about the business, give them a cut of the action related to profit. Because profit is the only think that matters. No profit, no point.

> If you want people to actually care about the business, give them a cut of the action related to profit. Because profit is the only think that matters. No profit, no point.

Hear hear.

Are you kidding? Everything is about the money, from top to bottom. You lose sight of that, you're going to get played, and looks you gave in.

Whatever the "mission" of Dell might be, it's hilarious and sad that some people think that's a cause that deserves sacrifice.

Only if you can get another job easily. And I don't think this scheme is meant for those people, those people may very well be excluded from the scheme altogether.

>Only if you can get another job easily.

Maybe. If you can't get another job, that implies you are getting paid above-market wages.

If the company is in trouble and you are getting paid above market wages, how many more months is it going to be before they ask you to leave without a nice severance package?

Well, note who is explicitly excluded from the buyout:

"People working in the Software Group will not be allowed to join VSP, neither will folk with vice president in their title, nor exec/ distinguished directors in engineering or employees in India or Singapore."

I don't know who's included in the Software Group, but it probably includes a lot of people like those who read HN.

I once worked for a company where buyouts were offered - we had seen the handwriting on the wall for quite a while. Engineers were excluded and I was an engineer. They came nowhere near their target buyout numbers and finally, grudgingly, offered buyouts to engineers. I took the buyout.

I wonder, does this mean software engineers are too valuable to let go so easily? Or would there be some other train of thought.

Dell Software Group is made of the many of the recent software acquisitions (Quest, KACE, Boomi, etc.)

The group includes everyone from the software engineering teams to the sales and marketing folks.

I can't speak to why they aren't eligible for the program.

Could be that they're too valuable to pay to leave. Could be that the thought is that enough will want to leave regardless, without incentive. Paying severance generally includes some terms including non-disparagement, so not offering a sep could backfire if there's particularly juicy dirt to dish.

Honestly, the "don't have the stomach for the private era" sounds completely hollow to me. This just looks like a generic cull that tries to masquerade as something else.

Dell has a software group?

So, if a company were to offer its employees $1 to leave the day before their options vested, you'd say they should take?

Why not a wedge of cash to stay? That's what happened in one business I worked in but got bought out like this.

We got told things would change, they needed our co-operation, it would mean possibly working a bit harder and getting used to new practices. So, here's a lump sum.

BTW, only a very small number took the money and left afterwards. Problem they had was that in the industry, the deal was well known. Apparently interviews for some other firms in the same sector were awkward. "So, Mr Smith, you took the hand out a month ago, but here you are interviewing for us. Please tell us your opinions on loyalty?"

The company probably just wants to downsize, in which case offering people money to stay would be the wrong incentive. Voluntary severance packages are often offered when a company wants to get rid of staff without overt layoffs. Sometimes followed by layoffs anyway, if not enough people take the offer. The phrasing here makes it sound related to post-merger culture, but that letter is written in Corporate Newspeak, a dialect of English that is sometimes tricky to translate.

I remember when my share options were worth $52.

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