In keeping with the leadership's repeatedly stated desire to be "transparent", as well as previous input from others here on thelayoff, here are notes from the tech town hall held on 4/12.
tldr: mostly fluff. some news about outsourcing, return to office, and some turnover in senior mgmt.
Soy starts the meeting (two minutes late)
Paul talks (hard to understand his accent).
3 months I've been here have gone so fast!
Trying to go in the right direction.
Need to articulate to people what a "great strategy" is.
Lot of cheerleading talk.
We need governance because of risk.
VDI images will all be the same, data centers don't move.
He hasn't had a laptop for 10 years. He's excited to have one now. Great experience.
He's used to using biometrics at former jobs, not passwords as is the case at WF.
Collaboration is exciting. Small chats with people. Likes honesty.
People admit they are afraid. We must be willing to take risk to move forward. That's ok, but we should eat our own dog food.
End users don't trust us. They remember and amplify stories about bad experiences. We are honest and know we can't be 100%.
We have too much duplication across applications.
Management is transparent and listens to it's people.
Recognition - Soy talks again.
200 people celebrating milestone anniversary.
4 people reached 40 years. (that's like double the amount of time you get for 1st degree mruder)
Shoutouts to 4 gals, 3 PoC's, and one whte guy.
Another guy with a brit accent talks.
Strategy stuff has taken an army to deliver. Lots of socialization.
(Talking really fast and is very hard to understand)
Issues with Azure. Working with 3rd parties to move workloads.
Looking for synergies and controls.
Applications have been "lobotomized". Was not part of our strategy. We need to modernize.
Too much duplication.
American guy talks.
It's all about the data. How did we get here? It's not intuitive.
Targets: Shoreview, NOC, St Louis, Tempe, Phily, Oxmoor, Silas, WEC, CIC. Consolidate all these into just 4 (didn't say exactly WHICH four).
The fangs are out (huh? what does that mean?)
We currently constrict ourselves, and need to get away from that.
Want single design, and single experience.
We want more scalability, less expensive, more sustainable.
Collaborate with 3rd party providers.
Rome wasn't built in a day.
All the swim lanes need to be in alignment (sounds like a good idea for a Dilbert comic)
Need to be spinning up and pulling out all the stops.
Train leaving the station! Need to be on the tracks! Exciting!
(I went to get more coffee while he continued with lots of meaningless Dilbertesque buzzwords)
British guy talks again.
Need to break some eggs to make an omlet (we've heard this exact phrase from Saul too).
(lots of generalizations about the cloud, but nothing specific).
We're duplicating too much, and we're too far behind the times.
All the ships in the harbor must rise together. (where do these guys get these oddball phrases?)
We need to improve our communications.
More Soy talk. Questions.
Main topology guy left the company.
Challenge for us is access, and how to get to the data faster.
Need new topology to do that.
We need to be able to fail over with no impact. Can't do that now, we can't bend physics.
OUTSOURCING We will be outsourcing cloud stuff to the experts.
Lot of regulatory focus on internal stuff. Moving to cloud will help us get out from under that, and serve customers better.
Groups must coordinate with their replacements when the app they are supporting moves to the cloud or goes end-of-life (this sounds like some people will have to train their replacements).
Everybody must rise to the occasion.
New training is being made available in Develop-You. Don't use your WF accounts for these. Use your personal email address because you may not have access to your WF email address. This is being made available for your own future careers (this sounds like they're already offering "job training" to people who may be targets for future layoffs).
(Brit guy #1 again)
Mgmt suprised at the size and scale here. This place is really big.
Big challange about culture change for the upcoming transformation.
Mgmt team must enable change (more Dilbertisms. yawn.)
We must be transparent. It's strange that we have not had candor (this was a discussion topic at a meeting with Chuckie).
It all starts with trust. We have to be careful. Can't ignore history. We have some non-winning things in our culture. Need to drive in different direction.
Return to office.
Planned for September, per Saul.
Called "The Next Normal". Immediatly following Labor Day.
They think we work best when we're physically together. Ideas come from random encouinters in hallways and at coffee machines.
Different solutions for different groups.
Will share with people when we can, so employees can make plans with their families. (this sounds like they've got bad news, but are not telling anyone yet).
Location Strategy.
"Return to Office" vs "Work from Anywhere with VDI". Seems like these are opposing strategies?
Core population will be in office. VDI won't matter in strategic markets, with a blend of flexibility with time in office and time out of office. (she was very uncomfortable with the question).
Brit guy: VDI is not about seamless operations. It's about security. Don't confuse the two. VDI can be an enabler, but that's not the purpose of it.
We like Teams for collaboration. Carbon footprint is reduced (what???) (More Dilbertisms).
Maybe we will use holograms for collaberation in 5 or 10 years.
Automation is like pre-pandemic radar at JFK. Everybody trying to land at once.
Need to focus on end-to-end automation. May need to circle around for a while.
Don't want lots of automation crashing into each other.
Need to set expections. Need to stop things from falling over.
Brit guy asked for a loginID so he can play with stuff.
Biometrics rollout starting in July.
Scrum teams not happy with current tools. More news to come after contracts are finalized.
You are a key part of the culture change and stragegy that is underway.
Soy says "Big thank you and Goodbye, as I move into the next stage of my career" (she is leaving WF. Wow!)