I see that this email is published in full on the business insider website - but is posted as premium content that requires $ payment. Can someone share the same in comments? The last post with that email was deleted
5 replies (most recent on top)
Macy’s Decision To Close Its San Francisco Office Is The Scary Last Nail In Its Own Coffin
by Chris Walton, Forbes Magazine
https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherwalton/2020/02/11/macys-decision-to-close-sf-office-is-the-scary-last-nail-in-its-own-coffin/#2856a14b3a94
Also, if the CTO is reading this he should read Venmo’s CTO remarks (below), as he can learn from it. I can’t tell you how many meetings I was in where he Was so rude, he was the opposite of Macy’s culture; took away summer hours, work from home policy and then rudely uninvited women to meetings. Asked managers to leave in team meetings in front of their staff, telling them they knew nothing. Some say leave if unhappy but others need to stand up to this bully! Good luck to those left! Reading this made me think of the new leadership at Macy’s in the negative way:
I continue to be amazed by how many people managers still don't understand that today's workforce no longer responds to a “top down, I tell you what to do, you punch a clock for every task and I micro-manage your work and you'll like it” style of “leadership”.
The culture and dynamics of people leadership have completely changed. It's now an equal partnership of supporting common goals and bringing people along. It's about showing people that they are not disposable objects, and that you genuinely care about them as human beings. It's about being transparent, genuine and kind.
And most importantly, earning trust. Earning trust by not breaking your promises. By not being abrasive, crass, callous, vulgar, violent and rude. By not misleading or lying to your people, hiding things from them, or operating with alternate objectives and hidden agendas in mind.
As more and more "new-school" leaders and companies emerge, the "old guard" of management drifts further into isolation and irrelevance. Learn to lead from a place of honesty, transparency, and kindness. From first principles. Or you'll find yourself "leading" shrinking teams, diminishing companies and eventually being replaced by someone who gets what leadership really means.
You are right. POS issues need resolved immediately. They don't realize how valuable system knowledge can be. I would not be surprised if they get burned.
Basically we are getting rid of nearly all of our Stores, dotcom, and app knowledge in order to move teams into a central location. Who will train these new people on store systems as the entire Lorain building was let go? Who will research, validate, and fix and POS production issue? A contractor with no knowledge. This was a bad business decision- and they will suffer for it.
Team,
As you know from other communications, today we launched the Macy’s, Inc. Polaris strategy. I want to share more detail with you on how this impacts Macy’s Technology.
Over the past year, we’ve made good strides in establishing strong tech operational muscle to support Holiday peak volumes, getting the foundation for cloud enablement developed, and starting on our common services journey.
In looking at the future, our goal is to have modern technology tools and platforms with lower total cost of ownership and higher productivity. In the coming months, we will empower our front-line colleagues with tools to make their jobs easier. We will modernize our technology platforms to support growth and profitability initiatives, and simplify infrastructure to reduce costs.
To get there, we will need to make some significant organizational changes. While this is where we need to go for the business, this is also very difficult because the changes we are making impact our colleagues.
We will close our San Francisco and Lorain offices, and the Macy’s Technology operations within our MCCS facility in Mason, OH. We will also refine the organizational structure of specific teams in Johns Creek to better align to our business strategies. The result includes the departure of many valued colleagues who have made many contributions to the company. I would like to thank our departing colleagues for their contributions and dedication to Macy’s.
Atlanta will become our technology center with offices in Midtown Atlanta and Johns Creek. The work from our closing locations will now be transitioned to Atlanta. This expanded technology hub will allow us to leverage great technology talent and streamline development and support accountabilities into a single VP role. In addition to consolidating support and development responsibility, Senior Director and Director roles will be expanded to include both delivery and operations.
Our refined team structure and geographically-consolidated technology hub will position us to better support the organization by eliminating redundancy of work and providing clearer role responsibilities; enabling us to make decisions faster and operate more quickly; and reducing total cost of ownership.
Additional important details around these changes are as follows:
The new Atlanta office will primarily house our Digital Platforms, Store Systems, and Cloud Platform Technology teams.
The Johns Creek offices will continue to primarily house Compute & Operations, Corporate Systems, Supply Chain & Algo-Retail, Store Systems, and Common Services.
Our support and functional business partners from Product, Enterprise Security, Finance, HR, Corporate Communications, and Procurement will also reside in our Atlanta and/or Johns Creek offices.
The integration of development and support will reside within each of the Technology VPs listed below. This revised structure will provide many colleagues with the opportunity to become full stack engineers.
- Technology Operations, Data Centers, & Infrastructure
- Merchandising & Corporate Systems
- Supply Chain, Algo-Retail, & Contact Center (interim) Systems
- Digital Platforms, Marketing, Common Services, & Store (interim) systems
- .Stores & Contact Center systems
Additionally, Portfolio/Capital Management for Technology will move from Product & Digital Revenue to Technology, and the Capital Planning and Technology Governance will be led by Senior Director, and VP
As part of the refinement of our team structure, several teams and many colleagues will change reporting lines, and move to another Sr. Director and/or Director. These colleagues have been notified and we’ll provide more details in the coming week.
As a result of all the changes announced, there will be more than 500 open jobs in Johns Creek and Atlanta. These positions will be posted in the coming weeks.
In 2020, our company will increase capital investments in Technology, and we will initiate new initiatives based on business value. To provide our Technology colleagues the time and opportunity to work on these new projects, we will continue our journey of converting some work to a managed services environment. We will continue to leverage our vendor partnerships in key areas, as the organization is established in Atlanta.
Next week, we’ll come together as a team and I’ll share further details on our revised structure, primary focuses for Q1 and Q2, 2020 goals, and upcoming initiatives. I’ll also answer any questions you may have. In the meantime, your leaders will be connecting with you to share more details on the specific changes to your teams.
I am confident that together, with our refined structure, centralized technology hub, and intense focus on customer experience and platforms modernization, we have set up our Technology team and Macy's, Inc. for success. I appreciate your support as we make these changes and transition into our new responsibilities and structure.
Thank you,