Thread regarding Macy's Inc. layoffs

I think should be investigated is the DaaS SF team. For the above situation. I knew many in that team who got to work at 10, left at 4, took 1+ lunches, wfh on Fridays year-round, with very little work getting done.

Agree – Data as a Service (DaaS) should move to Atlanta completely. Who is the "Product Owner" for DaaS – that person should be contacted first on value delivery effectiveness (for Data as a Service). Again the conclusion remain same:

Mediocre talent pool from San Francisco is NOT needed
(since tech is fast moving and SF is not able to catch up)

That is also true, but not exclusive to the SF office. Many leaders in different locations are hiring their friends/family regardless of skill level or interview results. This causes bloating of teams, as additional engineers need to then be hired to shoulder the actual work. I’ve experienced it in many teams at Macy’s. The next part of Macy’s that I think should be investigated is the DaaS SF team. For the above situation. I knew many in that team who got to work at 10, left at 4, took 1+ lunches, wfh on Fridays year-round, with very little work getting done. Those are part time hours getting full time tech lead salary.

The cost of San Francisco labor does not justify the mediocre returns. There was a lot of process fudging going till the Chief Product and Revenue Officer arrival and subsequent unmasking of level of ineffectiveness. Naturally Portfolio / PMO / Platform and Enterprise Architecture was let go ...

I wonder what Atlanta was doing before the SF office opened. If they were doing a decent job, maybe there wouldn’t have been a need to seek SF talent. Clearly, the Atlanta office has always done a subpar job at delivering tech. They have usually just copied what the SF teams were doing, creating duplicate effort, while blocking the SF teams from gcp security clearance and whatnot. Btw, Atlanta delayed gcp security clearance for over a year and no team could use gcp in production. That was total sabotage. For a whole year, we had everything ready on gcp, but had to copy data in the final step to onprem for deployment. Because we were blocked by the Atlanta team not giving gcp security clearance. So don’t even start with the whole Atlanta vs SF bs. Clearly, Atlanta had always been the problem and SF was a solution, until Atlanta sabotaged it.

"Macy's Tech in San Francisco had 19 years (since year 2000) to become competitive – current CTO is now in retrenchment mode."

Shut down the white elephant in San Francisco!! Save money to save Macy's ...

Macy's Tech in San Francisco had 9+ years (since year 2000) to become competitive – current CTO is now in retrenchment mode. Current CTO is doing the right thing by gradually shutting down San Francisco presence – the mediocre tech delivery can be fully carried out from Atlanta.

In this day and age, any company that is not pushing its tech boundaries is going extinct. The new CTO is WRONG to reduce macy's down to bare bones. Tech makes a company more competitive. Brick and mortar stores are going extinct, while Amazon and many ecommerce companies are thriving. We needed a CTO to put macy's tech in the right direction, not like what either the previous OR current CTO have done. But, at least the previous CTO was more in the right direction.

Grid Dynamics engineering excellence made no difference since Tech Strategy was not aligned with Revenue accountability – lot of high rate consulting dollars down the drain. Multi-Cloud strategy pursued by last CTO is meaningless/hogwash. Macy's is not a Tech company and thus a conservative bare bones tech posture is the best service to the enterprise. The current CTO is doing the right thing by slimming down San Francisco with three India based outsourcers.

Grid engineers actually get things done. Don’t know about the consultants, who are usually just trying to make work for the grid engineers, but compared to “engineers” from gspann, Tata, etc, Grid engineers have done so much more.

Have you watched the movie "Inglorious b–tards" – that is what comes to mind looking at SF Digital investments versus returns. It is a giant scam ... this operation should be shut down. Enough already – paying high rate consultants like Grid Dynamics.

I do not know about the layoffs - I am hearing that the Digital team is getting promotions and hikes.

If you Macys was a home improvement store his strategy might work.

Macy’s was on the verge of considering itself a tech company before he came and ruined it all. Now we’ve gotten ourselves into using as little tech as possible. As far as your bullet points, which are quite meaningless (but I’ll humor you nonetheless), he’s failed on all points. Even with reducing costs, he’s driven Macy’s into deep deep technical debt.

"What is the point anymore? The current cto has flushed away any tech innovation Macy’s has ever had. He has no regard for “tech.”

Here are the CTO function where ranking / comparisons can be done:

• Identify new technologies
• Exploit new technologies
• Integrate new technologies
• Leverage technology across business units
• Drive the business strategy
• Drive Revenues
• Reduce costs
• Enhance client relationships
• Build out or leverage existing IT infrastructure

What is the point anymore? The current cto has flushed away any tech innovation Macy’s has ever had. He has no regard for “tech.” He only wants what is the cheapest, while helping out his fellow people (you know what I mean). I have seen absolutely no “tech” guidance from him. He merely manages the part of Macy’s that works with computers.

Sounds like cto wrote the above trying to save his job.