Maybe a lot of people disagree, but I think DG has been doing pretty fine. We caught up in technology in both Nand and HDD, and balance sheet is much better than before. We probably already bankrupted if the previous CEO/CFO didn’t step down.
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Our hyped rebranding efforts are making waves, but the return on investment is as clear as mud. Who needs results when you have flashy, right?
@OP+1lZmnDIP an executive in sales made comments about older employees has kept their job with the irony that employees can soon expect to loose their jobs to low sales
All in all, it's been a stellar three years of head scratching decisions that have left us all wondering what's next.
@7ult+1lZmnDIP Tools are down longer, shop floor systems have more frequent outtages and response times have increased from hours to days. The lack of competent factory IT boots on the ground hurts recovery time and stunts any future proofing. By all means, they can continue using software from the 80s. The canned reporting systems are cr-p. Not sure why it now takes 3 month to change a query in a report.
What is happening with mfg support with the 30/70% change?
@5exm+1lZmnDIP, are you out of your GD mind? You must be new or stupid.
Siva is and has been, remarkably good at his job. His orgs are some of the most stable and productive in the company.
Michael and his org are the reason we are even still a company with all the legal craziness that has been navigated in the past 7-8 years.
Don’t attack pillars of the company without knowing what you’re talking about.
Sorry, but there are executives that have been with the company for ever and have brought absolutely no value whatsoever in their role (e.g. Siva, Michael R.) How have they managed to keep their position for over a decade or more?
Both HAMR and MAMR are liers and since 2012, STX was a demo machine on HAMR and leading the demo industry in the past decade.
Things are unlikely to change as long as WD continues to cut area that generate revinue to focus on zero revinue areas such as diversity, HAMR, & ELT bonuses.
Thers nothing wrong with funding these when times are good, but funding non revinue generators as number one, two, and three priority as money runs out is tough to watch.
I recall they used to show a slide showing how the price of SSD would continue to go down when compared to HDD. That seemed like a logical reason to buy an SSD company to me. Someone saw the writing on the wall. That said the Ultrastar brand, WD_BLACK, ePMR, NAND, etc., is the what is keeping the company afloat. The fact that we marketed backup drives over cloud was a huge risk. World Backup Day hack proved it. Hopefully we can come out of this tail spin, especially since our HAMR competition is still stick in 2018z
Snails are fast, relative to slugs.
That was legacy HGST management. Coyne was the best and board forced him out. Slow decline ever since.
@sly+1lZmnDIP has it about right. I will also add, the first thing WD did was to ki-l research in YB. And let's not forget the ActiveScale waste. Once it became clear HAMR wasn't going to happen since basic research was lacking, they pivoted to MAMR claiming HAMR wasn't necessary based on nothing more than snake oil from a certain CMU professor. Over paid for SD. No, the previous leadership was basically a bunch of sales people who didn't understand tech. Current leadership also don't understand tech. It's good to be a duopoly since it covers many sins. In other words saying B is better than A when A sucks, doesn't say much.
I’ll be deciding depending on whether or not I lose my job or get a well deserved raise.
Still total shutdown, now David is bored. Go to bed David! It past your bedtime.
Lol, that's cute. I've had the opportunity to watch the company from earlier IBM days where their executive team sold hard assets and got rid of sites and people to artificially increase the stock and later retire. Then HGST came along and made the site profitable again right in time for WD to aquire, make poor business decisions, takes steep loans in an attempt to diversify their portfolio with a lack luster company and then float them with revenue from HDD causing the HDD business to fall behind competitors. Additionally, their wise decision to offshore IT with their 30% US and 70% Asia ratio is obviously paying off this week. Manufacturing support is suffering as a result. The executive team is riding the short bus.
Nice try Dave, now off to bed and dream of money saving actions. We are counting on you ya big lug.
To me, the real capable CEO who had saved the company is someone like Hock Tan from Broadcom.