Thread regarding Macy's Inc. layoffs

Off-shore has a place for elastic capacity of well defined s/w development, issue triage and operational monitoring.

It is a strong lure when only evaluating it on a spreadsheet given lower rates and Finance has a lot of leverage at Macy's and little comprehension of technology.

Bottom line, Naveen is ill equipped for his role. He has had no comparable experience previously, he was Hal's 2nd choice and Hal only knew him as a delivery VP at HD. He has created a toxic culture, built an org led by people who look and behave as poorly as he does - it's an HR nightmare. He is unable to let people lead independently to achieve a desired results - there is no place for diversity of thought, appearance or style. Other than that he is great!

Hal has of course since left and that is MT's best hope for a replacement that has any ability to communicate & understands how to lead, motivate and improve a large organization.

If you think that tech's role is a profit center, then you want A players to be physically co-located so they can move as fast as possible.

If your tech is a cost center, then you draw up a spreadsheet calculating risk/cost ratio. Naveen may not be so bold to tell Jeff and Harper (his new boss) that peak holiday availability is realistically down by 5% but on the back of their head, they know what they're buying.

"The Indian workshop model appeals to non technical managers and executives who have no clue about software development."

I couldn't have said it better myself. The writing was on the wall long before I left.

My only argument with your statement would be that I don't believe they'll even make it back to square 1. Poor market adaptation, and too much lather/rinse/repeat.

I believe it was Einstein who said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.”

When I was working there, they'd basically try to assure the folks remaining after a layoff using verbiage like, "We're now positioned / aligned for success.." If you have to keep using those words after every mass lay-off, every year... well, we're back to either the Einstein quote or the lather/rinse/repeat remark.

Name one successful company that moved the bulk of their IT offshore?

Yep, none...

Having departments offshore totally makes sense, but this should be used wisely and tactically.