I left SF a year ago. I see many posts here that's bashing SolidFire. So, understand people that SF was a startup when it was acquired and the process that you have in ontap took years to be live. How can you expect a startup to have all the processes that you think is a must to have? The original SF leadership was amazing. Focus was on work quality and not politics/process. When SF was acquired, the leadership was changed by NA. Had it been the original leadership, SF would have achieved greater heights. I still recall most of NA folks wanted to join SF teams back then. And, when asked why they would say their work is not interesting and they have been working on the same c-ap for years without learning anything. Leadership matters!!! Change all the leaders/directors and everything will fall back in place. Don't blame the engineers for the mistake made by the leaders there.
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To be honest, most of the SF "talent" was long-gone already, with ex-employees having spawned Jumpcloud and Automox and cannibalized the talent. Most of the folks I knew still there after I left were collecting a check and watching the trainwreck unfold in slow motion.
One of NetApp's most toxic features is an inability to figure out how to use their own employees. Every time there was a new position, a new team, a new anything, they staffed it externally instead of seeking out motivated, engaged employees to take it over.
If you weren't buddied up with someone Director level or higher, you were persona non grata, and in a dead end job.
It’s time to spread the word in the market about the reality of this ‘great place to work’.
I heard the SF quality dir axed key talented members in her org especially those who had the courage to voice out their opinions that did not align with hers. Obviously difference in opinion caused them their job. Also, heard that in the next few months, she has plans to fill in for a role she axed with someone I m sure will be from her previous company :) How fair is that? Is this how Netapp portrays itself as ‘great place to work’? If you like your previous company, process n ex-colleagues, they should consider going back. Her boss is to be blamed for letting her continue with this b—s—
The death knell was when NetApp closed down their other Boulder location, laid off a bunch of people, and stuck the rest into SF. I'm not saying things were wine and roses before then, but they put some amazingly incompetent people into important roles, and left them there as their orgs crumbled under their mismanagement
The SF aquisition was to create an HCI Product. GK approached Dave Wright and asked for a feasability plan as part of the aquisition to cerate an HCI based on it. They commited to Element X in 6 months on white box hardware. That was why NetApp bought SF. That would have beat HyperFlex to market. with better features and capabilities.
Aquisition closed and it came out that Element X didn't exist, Element OS was hard coded to 2 rev back Dell Hardware, and 2 rev back RHEL kernel. SF was left alone for a year to deliver without oversight by corporate and little progress. Outside executives were added from HPQ, Dell and Oracle Storage to oversee, but lacked real experience in HCI. NHCI made it to market approx 2.5 years after plan and missed the window in the market. Execution after release was little better.
SF and NetApp people were let down by the failure to deliver. Dave Wright was added to the NetApp aquiisitions team, a bunch of people, but many SF members cashed out nicely while NetApp took the blame. GK made a balsy bet at the time just poorly executed end to end. Dave screwed GK, but GK should have been watching for it.
I was part of NetApp since 2008 to 2017. Saw the good times and bad times.
Management layer was gradually forged by deals between mutually protecting people. It became a gang of close knit groups pitted against easy other. Factions based on business units, geo, common previous employment.
Sabotaging good initiatives if you don’t get credit. Overall, a lot of infighting.
When repeat layoffs started, everyone wanted to play safe and be part of Ontap since that was/is a cash cow. This led to even more politics. Working for well connected directors became more important than working in teams with innovation and technically challenging work.
Depending on cash cow products will not take you far, it just buys you some extra time. I guess, that time is running out.
I worked for SF for a couple years until shortly after the acquisition when it became clear that things were only going to get worse with NetApp in charge. From an employee perspective, the rot started before the acquisition, when the company was struggling to get product out the door. A cool and innovative product with a great team that was really hamstrung by some lower-level leadership hires that showed up during the growth phase. Those hires were focused on metrics over reality, which resulted in stuff like lowering the severity of significant bugs so we could meet our ship dates. Oh, this sev 3 is now a sev 4 because we don't ship with sev 3 bugs. Once that kind of thing gets normalized, failure is inevitable.
I had hoped that the NetApp acquisition would result in some maturity, but what actually happened was we got saddled with a bunch of people who were trying to jump off the sinking ship that was the rest of NetApp into the new hotness, in the hopes that working for a successful team would work out for them. Instead of leadership telling lower-level management to shape up, they enabled it and treated their valuable ICs pretty poorly. Eventually most of the good people left. It's sad, because it was a great team of really smart, motivated employees.
How did your (former) Sr director survive the RIF? Wasn't she brought in by AG? (There's your sign.) How did other directors at SF survive the RIF? Perhaps due to the same "in" relationship?
Don't you know that all of the problems at SF are strictly due to the ICs–not to the directors & above??? Couldn't possibly have some serious management problems at SF...Nope. it's got to be all of those ICs.
Advice to execs & the board: Clean house, but not of ICs.
SF management was great before NA acquired it. I heard none of the directors were affected though there’s redundancy which I am not surprised about. I am glad I quit a few months back. My director(senior) had no clue what she was talking let alone guiding folks in her org. I had to somehow just escape from that sh–hole. Few others did too. How did she survive this lay-off is the biggest question I have had: Hmmmmmmm seriously no idea :) Maybe, folks on her team can help her survive a little longer. If this remains the standard of directors in NA it’d be garbage
Agree 100%. NetApp's management is completely rotted, especially from the director level up to the CEO. GK seems intent on turning NetApp into IBM. The company culture has turned to sh– under his so-called "leadership". Purge the senior management, starting with the id–t CEO.
Idk but what I’ve seen is SF ppl (managers and engineers) are not the netapp norm. They like to do stuff their own way, not like everyone else. Inconsistent and unpredictable just like the product. Tribal knowledge > documentation. The product gets released buggy and unreliable. Nightmare to support and maintain. This ‘imma startup and special rule apply’ mentality might be it’s downfall. ....no get with the system.
NetApp competitive intelligence recommended to not acquire solidfire. Interesting tech, but taking a storage approach to HCI is dumb, too many practical limits on the platform and, in hindsight, a really bad cultural fit.
Here here!