Email from the CEO Jack Lynch talking about restructuring. How many were impacted and what locations?
81 replies (most recent on top)
@se agree with this but the sad reality is that these mo--ns have got to where they are by having no shame and no shyness. Their golden parachute will be a he-l of a lot fatter than the salaries of the people they lay off. We’re the losers here.
Very soon HMH will be THE company profiled on how good company’s were destroyed by a combination of pure greed and buying Microsoft’s A.I. sales team bullsh*t..
I had a golden retriever that could run the technical service group with more skill and precision than VJ, it’s astounding how bad this technology leadership are at their job in every single way, it’s like being managed by kindergarteners who haven’t had their nap.
Advice to management: please retire and move on, you have failed. Learning hasn’t learned, and neither have you, we’ve had enough now. You’ve gouged enough cash and have had enough Michelin star meals from you staffs efforts at this point - we sincerely hope you choke on your next fillet mignon, we’ve heard enough of your bullsh-t and seen enough of our friends and their family suffer through your self serving nonsense.
We are not on your side, we are sick of listening to your bullsh-t, we are the actual humans that care about our customers of educators and students and you have failed all of us and it’s time for you to go.
There is no coming back from this. We expect your resignation by the end of the year or there will be repercussions.
You may think you have the power. Veritas may think they have the power, Veejay (laughably) may think he has the power, for someone that has no education tech experience at all 😂;
I used to be #️⃣ HMHProud. I’m now genuinely embarrassed to work for HMH. The company are throwing away amazing talent and are showing yourselves up as ignorant and arrogant fools.
You may think you can rehire these amazing humans that you’ve devalued over the past years, The truth is we’re gonna thrive together while watching you fail. 👋
@r4 So I don't doubt you on that, but do you have proof that Veejay is self dealing?
@OP
HMH should no longer be able to label themselves a US based company. They are actively shuttering and firing all US employees.
We are being replaced with India based people who know nothing about our business, do not even bother to pretend to learn, but who are being touted as better than us merely because they can hire 3-5 of them to accomplish half the work that one of us is capable of doing.
Everyone affected by these layoffs should file a class action suit against VJ and Veritas over this outsourcing.
Everything about what he’s doing with Pune is dirty. His family’s business is directly involved with and benefitting from the new center in India.
Add all that to the fact that they no longer even fake a moment of empathy about layoffs says everything we need to know. ELT no longer even needs to pretend because no existing employees will be around long enough for those opinions to matter.
Veritas Jack and VJ ran this place into the ground.
They fired and abused amazing employees who had dedicated decades of their lives keeping this company running without a moments thought.
This is the death throes of HMH.
@n2 I don't know why Jack talks anymore. When he does he's just wasting peoples time. There is nothing he says anymore that has any value.
@n2 He is a hostage..a very well paid one. All he is now is a Veritas flunky. Riding the wave until either the company is sold off, or until he gets his parachute money. The rest is him just burning time until the inevitable.
So glad I was out of there in 2017. Landed a way better job for more money.
@n2 What you expect him to deliver that plan live? He was probably up all night trying to get that triangle animation just right. Power point is hard.
The 7 minute prerecorded message from Jack was pathetic. It lacked anything of substance. He showed absolutely no empathy. He was reading from a script, and poorly at that. Given how many times he has led large company layoffs I would think he could recite this sh-t in his sleep.
The pre recorded message looked more like a hostage video than anything else. Like, he couldn’t even be bothered to deliver it live?
Second what previous poster said. I would work overtime, deliver wild amounts of work in a single shift, and in general deliver way above my pay grade.
In the end, Jack, Jim, Jean...none of them give a sh*t about you. You are just a number.
Take a longer lunch, set boundaries, have a work life balance.
Oh and if anyone asks you if you are using AI. Always say yes.
I refused to use AI for design and today I paid for it.
Spoke with some of the folks in India and they were told to say they were using all the AI tools by their SVP just to make Veejay happy, but they are also working ridiculous hours and every day of the week to hit deadlines but they are doing all the work manually. So its all just a farce.
@mf It's not about AI... it's about IL.
Indian labor
Looks like another great bunch of people were tossed away and disposed of, again. I was let go last year after 13 years. I wonder if my negativity and constant questioning of AI on every call I attended or my refusal to use any of those AI tools they pushed on me helped me escape during round 1? Good luck everyone, I decided to just retire from it all.
Reminder to anyone remaining at the company - take that holiday, book that day off, go have that coffee, log off early. Because the message from management is very clear: we don’t give a f**k about you
Seems that HMH's workforce is moving to Pune??
The Indian teams are good. The Irish teams are very good too.
However, the AI-first approach, by Jack and VJ, will buy investors atm.
But, what about the people who give their human energy and hearts to HMH customers and products? This cannot be replaced by AI
From first hand experience, I don't believe AI can replace all the amazing, creative and dedicated people in HMH.
Just saying...
@md guess who... Yes, Jack
according to the SEC:
In peak years—specifically including his initial sign-on year and periods with major long-term incentive vesting—his total compensation reported to the SEC reached between $7.5 million and $8.4 million.
and the Employee survey says....... Better not complain or you will be moved to the front of the next list....and yes, there will be a next list. It's already in the works.
@hs 100% You are so right. I wish you all the best.
In the company a long time and always new there were insane politics at a certain level. I've seen my fair share of mass redundancies and always assumed it was like a well oiled machine.
It was my turn to go and my God was it a wild experience. Messy, cold and void of all compassion.
Im glad I'm gone. Best of luck to everyone still there. AI is taking over.
Impacted as well. It’s a sinking ship and leadership cares about no one but themselves. Jack is probably on a yacht today instead of delivering a live update to the company he runs. I’ll take bets on him retiring in the next 6 months and the company being either disbanded or them placing a conservative Christian nationalist as CEO.
Wait so apparently Jack's all hands meeting today was not only ~8 minutes long, but also a prerecorded message?? Damn. I'm sad I'm out of a job because obviously, but I can't say I'm that upset about not working there anymore...
@kt That was the worst one yet. Jack can't even fake caring or spend anytime on a plan. We all know that the real plan is, Jack and the other higher ups will retire with huge payouts. Veejay will move to some other Veritas owned company because of "all the good work" he did here, and his pets like Uday will just follow him there.
Jack's meeting just now was him looking gleeful and spouting a load of stupid buzz words and vague bullsh-t. I'm even more pi---d now. My colleagues deserve so much better.
I can't help but wonder how the management team looks themselves in the mirror every morning. Oh wait, they are practicing all of the gaslighting speeches they are getting ready to put out into the karma verse.
@hs AI didn't replace you. Several things are occurring at HMH. https://www.spglobal.com/ratings/en/regulatory/article/-/view/type/HTML/id/3601573
firstly the Private equity factor and management... and I quote the ratings agency.
"Governance factors are a moderately negative consideration in our credit rating analysis of HMH, as is the case for most rated entities owned by private-equity sponsors. We believe the company's highly leveraged financial risk profile points to corporate decision-making that prioritizes the interests of controlling owners. This also reflects private-equity sponsors’ generally finite holding periods and focus on maximizing shareholder returns." That's a politically correct way of saying that Private equity has leveraged the business as much as they possibly can and that is now has resulted in an "unsustainable" capital structure.. there words not mine.
secondly as part of that leveraging the need to reduce costs which for the most part is not being accomplished by leveraging AI but instead is being accomplished by simply laying off US, and IRL labor and moving it to India (about 1/3 the cost).
AI is just the window dressing so that management doesn't have to publicly say what is really occurring. As you've see on many other posts, AI isn't doing the world, people working seven days a week are doing the work. Now that they are getting laid off, the house of cards is going to fall apart. HMH is now a "private equity zombie". That rarely ends well.
I am deeply disappointed in the direction HMH has taken over the past several years. Mass layoffs have become an annual occurrence, and this year I was one of the many employees affected. I truly loved my job. I believed in the mission, cared about our users, and regularly gave weekends and holidays because I genuinely wanted to build a better product.
What I struggle with most is the contradiction. A company whose mission is education should understand the value of knowledge, experience, and people. Instead, I've watched experienced employees leave year after year while more work shifts toward AI. AI should help people do their jobs better. It should not become a replacement for the people whose expertise built the products in the first place.
I sincerely hope HMH succeeds because educators and students deserve great products. But I also hope leadership reflects on the path they're taking. You cannot build a company around the value of education while simultaneously treating the people who create that value as expendable or easily replaced by a bot. People will begin question the point of learning, because why learn if AI can do it for me? HMH should be setting an example on the imporance of learning, but I suppose cooporate greed is a powerful force. I believe that eventually customers will recognize the difference between products built by experienced, passionate people and products built by replacing that expertise. I hope HMH chooses to invest in its people before that happens.
@h8 It takes an uber level of incompetence to destroy a nearly 200 hundred year old company. Jack and Veejay own that too.
@h4 Well Veejay and Jack couldn't avoid the credit rating being lowered to junk rating. They totally own that one. That will look awesome on Veejay's resume.
@g1 I think it is a stretch to call the AI dashboard numbers statistics. They are pure fabrication. To those let go, take solace in the fact you won't have to have Jack and Veejay blow smoke up your a-s tomorrow. It might not feel like today, but soon you will be thankful.
Everyone needs to tell the truth about the AI tools. Say it in every meeting with any kind of leadership. "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." The statistics are telling a story that isn't true.
@f2 Veejay's core skills are: laying people off, blaming other people for his own failings, and using AI to create executive power points. There is a reason why Jack likes him so much. They have a lot in common.
@er and that narcissistic CTO, Veejay, claiming all the credit for himself and his AI strategy when it was really built on the backs of employees pulling all-nighters in breach of employment laws.
At least I won't have to read any more of his AI-written "motivational" emails.
Anonymous email sent around Dublin office when he was vising a few weeks ago:
"Hello Everyone,
To be honest, I am not even sure how to start writing this email with the state I am in. I barely slept a wink last night after overhearing a conversation in the office yesterday.
Uday was speaking with some of the SLT crowd, and from what I gathered, there is a serious push this year to cut down the Dublin staff significantly. Apparently, if it was left entirely up to Veejay, he would wipe the slate clean altogether. According to them, the Dublin employees are supposedly the worst performing TSG staff across all of HMH because we have “a lazy culture.”
Hearing that coming from Uday, a man who has not the technical knowledge to speak with authority about the work any of us do, and who only seems to have his position because of his connection to Veejay, honestly made my blood boil. I wanted to lamp him there and then. But after sitting on it all night and thinking it through, I felt ye all deserved to know what is being said behind closed doors.
The crowd that have come over to Dublin recently are, in my opinion, here to gather as much information as they can.
For the last three or four months, we have all been flat out, working weekdays and weekends without a proper break. First off, it is illegal under Irish law to have people working continuously without at least a 24 hour break. Then on top of that, they have the neck to claim most of the work and code is being done by AI.
If the HMH executives had an ounce of sense, they would be asking a very simple question. If AI is supposedly doing all this work, why are people being driven into the ground working non stop every day of the week?
At this stage, I honestly cannot tell whether Veejay and his little circle are outright lying to management, or whether the executives themselves are fully aware and just do not care about deceiving us.
So what do ye reckon? Do we keep the heads down and stay quiet, or do we stand together and say something about this carry on?
Cheers"
Every layoff, Every restructuring that Jack oversees, is just another personal and professional Jack failure that hurts customers, employees and investors. Eventually the investors will realize that Jack is not the solution. He's the problem. Deep down, even he knows it, if he's being honest with himself.
@c6 it’s being infiltrated with more AI tools. Don’t know how much cheaper they are though
I think their biggest regret is selling their trade business that was making money during the pandemic. They bet their business on a product that they were expecting a lot of revenue from. Unfortunately for them, it’s not happening and that market is being infiltrated with cheaper and more advanced ai tools.
If they kept that trade business, it could of sustained them during these tough times.
was part of the layoffs in 2019...was a massive gift from God to leave that dump. wonder if the same finance goons are in place
@OP They have been "restructuring" once or twice a year since Jack took over the company 9 or 10 years ago. that's a euphemism for "the company is in a period of long term decline". This isn't the beginning of that, nor is it the end.
Some genuinely brilliant designers and researchers lost their jobs today. It's hard not to feel like this all comes down to greed and a complete lack of planning. From where I'm standing it looks like the strategy is to train people move the work elsewhere and hope for the best. The hardest part isn't losing headcount, it's losing people who know the product inside out, who ask difficult questions, challenge assumptions, and genuinely fight for users instead of just delivering whatever lands on the roadmap. It's such a waste of talent. This company feels like a sinking ship, run by someone too incompetent for politics and too clueless for tech.
@ae I'm so sorry. I enjoyed working with you guys. Breath of fresh air.