Thread regarding FactSet Research Systems Inc. layoffs

They spent your bonus money buying CUSIP Global Services so that they could move beyond fu--ing just you, and fu-k the whole industry.

No raises? Can someone corroborate?

Ironically, FactSet’s spiel of “great culture” rests on the idea of work life balance which is quite skewed in some teams/regions. Each SBU looks to gain prominence and replicated several roles without having depth of experience. As a head of risk of a premier client said,” I don’t need more lunches with FactSet or your specialist playing golf with me, I need someone who can tell me how I can use the product with all its features without passing me to the engineers who then tell me to go back to my account manager” By restricting HC, not having 1 central ops view, its easy for cronies to have the backs of people they “like” regardless of the business value they may/may not create. It’s easy to blame Sales, but can most people in HR/L&D give an elevator pitch on the current key features of PA - our bread and butter? Of course, salvage the peanuts by restricting promotions at L4-L7 while having multiple expensive sales managers focused on BRGs/Culture Committees rather than actually selling. How many deals did the prev CRO actually influence to close? How is CH influencing diversity and inclusion while creating meaningful HR policies- that org has become power hungry rather than business centric. It’s a shame to see so many people’s efforts going down the drain thanks to ill timed, haphazard, thoughtless change initiatives.

There are a few different levers available to reduce expenses. One of them is being tightly controlled (salaries) while another has seen a significant increase (cloud/technology costs).. Making it hard to get backfills, not paying for performance, reducing means to get promotions despite excellent performance, people doing multiple roles for months on end.. this will sustain while economic conditions are tepid. These individuals will be the first ones to leave when the market changes. The shareholders trust the company to spend on the buckets that will yield better return on investments for the future. It’s clear where FDS is focusing on. That’s the financial engineering which lies in the hands of ELT. As was the decision to undermine regional sales leadership by giving them targets which they thought were too optimistic, insisting on changing several well set engines which were paying off at the time without sufficiently onboarding / offering employees support to understand the rationale for the changes as suddenly and drastically as they were made. It seemed like people were expected to do a whole lot more but weren’t offered the means to do so nor the appropriate remuneration for it. There are multiple overlaps in some product lines which could be optimised further and certain regions/ functions that are over staffed. Given they have a majority of leadership protecting their buds in those positions, those inefficient expenses remain.

Employees are not being paid because the company missed its FY24 sales targets by a lot. With weakness in the top line, expenses have to be reduced to deliver the margin and EPS targets, or investors will dump the stock. This is not financial engineering - it is delivering on commitments made to shareholders despite the top line being reduced three times throughout the year. Employees should read all the analyst reports to follow the issues, and understand how bonus targets are set. In short, the targets were set too optimistically last year and the miss was dramatic.

It’s one off T&E vs. recurring operating expense. If you look at the earnings calls all throughout the last fiscal, the story is “efficiency” and higher profit margins even though growth has flatlined/tapered. It’s prudence if one believes in the management vs financial engineering to make the company look attractive for investors if one is skeptical of the management. Some analysts have picked up on this theme of low growth but high profitability while some haven’t yet.