Thread regarding Red Hat layoffs

Culture @ redhat

I've been at Red Hat so long now (12 years) that it can be easy to take things for granted, but the biggest thing is just how open and transparent a company it is. There's not a lot of silo's or little kingdoms fighting each other, we're all generally working together.

For example, we're a fairly large company (10000+), but we still have an all company mailing list. And it is used by anyone to raise a concern, talk about an opportunity, etc. And that starts a conversation with anyone participating. I am on the Services side, but there is no barrier in place for me to reach out to anyone in the BU, Engineering, Marketing, whatever. I don't think I have ever had to pass a message up the chain of command for it to be passed down somewhere else, I'm just allowed to communicate when and how I need to.

The other way it comes out is that open-source has truly warped our way of thinking about things. For example, there's not a culture of restricting access to our own documents, team drives, etc. One of my peers was working on a new slide deck on a team drive, hadn't really shared it with anyone, then found out that one slide was copied into a presentation done by an EMEA team a day later. That kind of easy access and reuse is just _standard_. It applies to code, but also everything else we do.

I've worked with lots of clients through my job, and it is always eye opening when their employees are worried about "sticking out their neck" or otherwise rocking the boat. Or companies where a developer trying to talk to the business would be an incident with your manager giving you a talk. This is just completely foreign to anyone at Red Hat.

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| 11186 views | | 8 replies (last August 4, 2020)
Post ID: @OP+13hlUJy1

8 replies (most recent on top)

I knew that was coming just a little later than expected. IBM is notorious to buy companies out, make promises publicly and internally then do the exact opposite. After the 33 billion RH acquisition last year, now ExCEO Ginni Rometty said they’d keep IBM and RH as 2 separate entities and will not intervene...... then the Dinosaur enters the room. They did it with SoftLayer, they doing it with RH and more to come.

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Post ID: @30zkm+13hlUJy1

I was at RH for more than a decade, from the Matthew through Jim, and I saw the changes coming when Jim came on board. He never really seemed to grasp was the core value was that Red Hat offered. He didn't use our products (used a Mac, along with other members of the executive management team), allowed RH to dump open source solutions for our own business to move things to Google's services (which is a huge message to our very clients of "we don't value or trust open source, so why should you?") and the top-down view shifted away from what made Red Hat special and valuable and more towards what would make us value to another company who would want to buy us.

IOW, something that would benefit the CEO, EMTs and shareholders.

But would ultimately cause the company itself to crash and burn.

The buyout by IBM, the culture change, and now the layoffs were all things I had expected. They came a year or two later than I expected. I'm sorry to see the company circling the drain now as I absolutely LOVED my time there, the people I worked with and what the company was at the time.

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Post ID: @1Ohrz+13hlUJy1

IBM acquires and then destroys companies. It's what they do.

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Post ID: @tltt+13hlUJy1

@qpal - sorry to hear that. If it's like the red layoffs from last fall, they are given a month severance and their access to anything internal is immediately cut off. All the while, management will claim "these people were given the chance to find new positions". They were? No they weren't. That's like being figuratively walked to the curb and being told you can't talk to anyone inside anymore. Funniest thing is that even after being gone 6 months, there are still working links that many have and some logins that IT forgot to close. I guess that's the obstacle when you let engineers build their own doors for a project.

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Post ID: @qdno+13hlUJy1

12+ people recently made redundant by Red Hat Management. As new VP at EMEA level took over the charge, his first action as to known to IBM management was to lay off people and ceased the department where the money isn't showering as IBM/RH would have expected. Irrespective of How much time and talent those 12 people have put forward to do the branding of the new team. So, it has started here at RH as well and will continue to grow, I mean lay-offs ;) because IBM wants to use their 60% non-productive resources to be consumed in a brand like RH. As IBMers says, A good engineer is replaceable in 3 months But a chicky manager, hard to find. :)
Good luck!

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Post ID: @qpal+13hlUJy1

Culture has definitely changed and I can agree that the new management from especially the most recent company (big blue) has changed things. There is definite drinking of the koolaid that is necessary and if you dare to state the obvious, you'll be quickly labeled and dismissed as no longer needed. As for "kingdoms", there is only one now and containers is it. Work even on the OS itself is pushed down to the bottom of priority. Long time managers are scared and running. This is actually good new though for other companies who need good people

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Post ID: @4uce+13hlUJy1

It is good to hear that you are still experiencing the meritocracy & openess that has ALWAYS been RH. I wish this was true throughout some of the other Depts.

Re-orgs are being conducted in other depts. by VPs & managers hired over the last five years from EMC, Docker, Net App, Cisco, HP, etc. They've seized the opportunity to create a top down management structure. Meritocracy is dead. Nepotism reigns supreme. The talent & innovative employees responsible for hybrid cloud are leaving.

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Post ID: @3wbs+13hlUJy1

Good post

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Post ID: @hjy+13hlUJy1

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