What's on your mind today?
9 replies (most recent on top)
I was impacted, laid off and or fired however you want to view it. I am relieved its over and have had many friends reach out to me to coordinate interviews and connections at companies they are at. I am confident in my ability to have something by the time my severance dissipates.
Having been around NetApp since 2008 I was excited with the SolidFire buy and it offered hope of a fresh line card. Alas NetApp has dusted off Dave Hits whom I respect a ton and is a genius to go promote this. Problem is they are going about selling SolidFire wrong. This whole dev ops , test kitchen super cool whiz bang Facebook data center they are selling it to is so wrong. They are confusing the sales reps, limiting the scope of the customer they are going at when the Sad reality is SolidFire should be our mid market play as well. Set it and forget it
Oh well I guess putting a message like that on twitter just isn't cool.
NetApp has one identifying trait through all their culture....over complication and over engineering and now they are just doing the same to SolidFire.
Getting laid off s---s and I am not bitter , Ive made my living off NetApp for 8+ years. I do see NetApp needs acquired and folded in somewhere. NetApp execs need to do one of two things
1) Contract and just go sell AFF in the Enterprise and be a profitable 3B company
2) Get rid of the old guard and go grow...look up alcoholics definition of insanity and that is what NetApp leadership is
Sad because it could be so much more, and I will miss my friends
To those left behind this isn't the end of the RIF, sleep with one eye open
Ladies and Gentlemen. Former NTAP family, i agree with about 90% of what everyone is stating across all messages on this site. Very saddened to be let go, after 10 years. I spent all night, preparing turn over documentation and gathering information to my friends that would survive the layoff. I call it firing, way back when you got lay 'ed off but were called back. Termination or just plain firing is what i call it. My director never mentioned getting let go. i brought it up in the first seconds of our conversation. The conversation lasted exactly 30 minutes which he had reserved. I was never told thank you or i understand and thank you for your service. Why because he had no understanding, respect, or any insight into what i had done over the past 10 years. I loved my job, and the people i worked with were like family, had great managers whom are lifelong friends to this day. The company is going another direction, low pay SE, literally no PS, outsourced support, and everything PS to partners. I did not quit or give up on NTAP they gave up on me, simply based upon my pay grade. No harm or foul, or malice. Its horrible what the company has turned into. But 30 seconds after getting the 1:1 meeting last minute I was immediately relieved. No more bi annual purge. I have slept like a baby for the first time that the K man took over. I loved the company, and the people i worked with some of the best in the industry. All good things come to an end, i was brought on by 3 good friends, they went out of the way to express why i should come onboard, sad every example they gave has vanished over the past 4 years. Turn and Burn, is the new mantra. Sorry to rant but it was a GPTW, just not now. I received 4 calls from internal friends and 2 externally. I expect an offer letter by Tuesday. So go on, and forward. Life at NTAP as i said it my first day, its all down hill from here, because eventually they will let you go. Best of luck to everyone who was let go I am sure we have worked together in the past or at least crossed path's. And it was an honor.
A fool’s errand is all this is. Every time, right as the wounds of a rif start to heal, the usual cabal of jet setters revert to their wasteful shenanigans.
Managers in a non-sales org make four weeks of abroad travel to give presentations to colleagues in the same department, a chore that av conferencing could've been used for. Director’s who fly willy nilly to come meet teams who aren't in their reporting structure. Every average Joe wants to partake in the yearly pilgrimage to Insight with little to no consideration as to why non - essential and non - sales org personnel couldn't make do with the live Web events and excellent after - event videos.
The savings that the powers to be are trying to squeeze on the balance sheets with the culling of all this talent is put paid to by wasteful expenditure by a few.
This group as it always has, will lie low and wait out this rif too only to start packing their travel bags in a month or two, spend like there is no tomorrow, drive up expenditure on the books only to have our dear leader announce yet another “difficult decision”.
It's easy to get mad about what has happened but, as @KcWSOX9-hjh said, it is mainly just sad. NetApp was a great company. I worked hard to change careers and was ecstatic to be hired. I thought I had found a home. I couldn't believe it when I was caught in the March 2016 RIF less than 2 years later. Some time and distance later has provided a little perspective if not wisdom. NetApp simply became too enamored with their flagship DataONTAP. They didn't want to shift with the market when it started moving to cloud storage and away from large, expensive, equipment purchases and even more expensive service contracts. They never could get their support model right and kept changing it. Add to that the all-flash debacle plus rise of the hyperconvergence market and NetApp found itself chasing an ever receding finish-line while others were moving in different directions. Despite all the leaders purporting great changes, the truth is, NetApp has made almost no substantive changes in the past 20 years. The product has simply become bigger and more cumbersome. The underlying strategy has not changed and the buyers of this type of product are becoming fewer. There are better, less expensive and less complicated solutions out there. My real opinion on how this has happened? I think the leaders of the company allowed DataONTAP and the NetApp name to become so tightly bound so that one could not survive without the other. That to change their model was to change NetApp's very nature which they seemed loathe to do. So as obsolescence sets in, NetApp simply fades.
As a former NetApp employee i'm saddened by what has happened to a once great company.
NetApp is collapsing from within because they are not really trying to change. There's quite a bit of posturing, promises, and marketing but in the end the strategy is intact and hasn't deviated much the last 2-3 years other than loud marketing attempts which are easy to see thru.
NetApp needs a strong experienced leader from the outside who has the know-how in turning companies around and does not believe in the proverbial secret cows. The people who brought the company in this position are all still there including most board members and so it's difficult for the same people who created the problem to also solve it.
Best wishes to those who have been impacted and remember THERE IS life after NetApp. In fact, in many cases there are better opportunities out there.
Take care
Definitely leaving as soon as it's viable for my family. I don't know about the other locations, but HSG is dying slowly and painfully. The product is good, but they don't sell it correctly and they don't innovate. Leadership is a joke on that side of the house, spending an incredible amount of time and effort on things that don't translate to profits, and then blaming everyone but themselves. It's humorous how some of the top level leadership in ICT have openly joked about how MBAs are worthless, and yet it's their leadership and complete lack of business sense that is running the product into the ground.
Still wondering if i should stay or leave, if there will be anything positive to come out of this... i was once proud and happy to work for the great company NetApp was, but today it's a complete different story...
@kfl, must be our bad luck.
How much it appears that Wall Street loves layoffs except when it's NTAP. Should have unloaded those shares earlier in the week.