OpenText has spent almost 10 years building and running our FedRAMP environment. In my estimation, we must have spent at least $30–45 million on this entire exercise. And how much revenue have we generated? I will be very surprised if it is even $2 million in total. That also with our usual margins of around 30–32%.
Now you tell me, in which universe does this make any business sense?
But apparently, our great leadership looked at this fantastic financial performance and decided, why stop here? Let us take this same wonderful business model and expand it further! So we went ahead with IRAP in Australia and Protected B in Canada.
What a brilliant idea, no? If one environment is losing money, let us build two more. Surely three loss-making initiatives will somehow become profitable. Excellent strategy, sir. Absolutely outstanding.
And just when you think, okay, surely by now we must have learnt something, along comes Steven L and convinces our executive leadership that sovereign compute is the next big thing.
So once again, we are spending huge amounts of money, adding infrastructure, complexity, operational overhead and ongoing costs. Revenue? Profitability? Return on investment? Arre, why worry about such small things when we can put together a beautiful PowerPoint presentation about our strategic vision?
Now some of you may be thinking, why should I care? This is management's problem, no?
Unfortunately, no. It is very much our problem.
Because when these wonderful strategic decisions fail to deliver, who suffers? Certainly not the people who approved them.
Management has only one solution left. Cut people. Cut budgets. Stop hiring. And then tell the remaining employees that they must somehow manage everything.
Earlier, the magic word was efficiency. We were told to do more with less. Now the magic word is AI. Suddenly, AI is supposed to solve every problem, eliminate every inefficiency and allow five people to do the work of twenty.
Boss, please. At least give us some credit. We are not fools.
Call it efficiency, transformation, optimisation, AI or whatever fancy terminology is fashionable this quarter. The reality is the same. Management makes poor investment decisions, burns through millions, and then expects ordinary employees to compensate for those mistakes by working harder with fewer resources.
And the best part?
The same executives who approved these decisions continue collecting their big bonuses, stock awards and handsome compensation packages. Very nice.
Meanwhile, the rest of us are expected to be grateful for a 0–2% salary increase when the cost of living has gone up by around 30%.
Wah. What a fantastic arrangement.
The people making the mistakes collect the rewards. The people who had nothing to do with those decisions are made to pay the price.
And if you complain? You are not being positive. You are not demonstrating the right mindset. You are not embracing transformation.
Arre bhai, what transformation? We are simply rearranging the furniture while the entire building is on fire.
Management, seriously, wake the fu-k up.
First, please look at these regulated environments properly. FedRAMP, IRAP, Protected B, sovereign compute. Show us the actual numbers. How much have we invested? What is the revenue? What is the operating cost? What is the realistic path to profitability?
If the business case is not there, then why are we continuing? Just because somebody made a commitment in a boardroom does not mean the rest of the company should keep paying for it indefinitely.
Second, look at our product portfolio. We have so many products, platforms, technologies and overlapping capabilities that even internally it is becoming difficult to understand what we are supposed to prioritise.
Reduce the portfolio by 50–75% if necessary. Focus on what customers are actually buying, what generates sustainable revenue and what we can realistically support.
Instead, we keep adding more products, more requirements, more complexity and more commitments while simultaneously reducing the number of people expected to deliver everything.
How exactly is this supposed to work?
You cannot keep removing people from engineering and then act surprised when delivery slows down, technical debt increases, incidents happen and customers become unhappy.
And please, do not tell us again that AI will magically fix everything. AI is a tool, not some divine intervention that will compensate for ten years of questionable management decisions.
Those of us in engineering are already stretched. People are working ridiculous hours, covering multiple responsibilities and constantly trying to keep things running. And somehow, every quarter, we are expected to deliver even more.
Boss, there is a limit to everything.
We are engineers, not magicians.
And one more thing, which management really needs to understand.
Engineering is not your enemy. Engineering is probably one of the most valuable assets you have. But you need to know how to use us.
If you take a hammer and try to start a fire, or take a sc--wdriver and try to drive a nail, obviously it will not work. But then you cannot turn around and blame the hammer or sc--wdriver for being useless.
The problem is not the tool. The problem is the person who does not understand how to use it.
Give engineering a sensible strategy. Give us clear priorities. Give us realistic resources. Remove unnecessary complexity. Stop funding initiatives simply because somebody senior thinks they sound impressive.
And most importantly, listen to the people who actually understand what it takes to build, operate and support these systems.
We want the company to succeed. We want to deliver value. We want our customers to be successful. We are not sitting here looking for excuses.
But you cannot keep making bad decisions at the top, passing the consequences down to employees and then giving everyone lectures about accountability, efficiency and ownership.
Accountability should start with the people making the decisions, not only with the people doing the work.
Help us help you, yaar.
Because right now, management is behaving as if engineering is the problem, when in reality engineering is the only reason many of these questionable decisions have not already become complete disasters.
And please, for once, instead of asking us to do more with less, how about giving us less nonsense to deal with so we can actually do something meaningful?
That itself would be a very good start.