Thread regarding Riverbed Technology Inc. layoffs

At the heart of it's fall from grace, the RVBD CEO is MIA

former employee, had a great time working there. however, after Elliott made his initial offer to purchase RVBD, egos got in the way of the fabulous reputation that RVBD had built up over the years. At our annual SKO, on the day the RVBD CEO declined the Elliott M&A offer, the CEO gloated that he waited until the very last minute to decline as "sometimes making your opponent wait is the best revenge!" For a full year, we would receive these great TED-like speeches telling us how great we were, lets keep up the good work and cries of "Let's do it for our CEO" were our daily mantras. for a full year however, the CXOs became less engaging, they hired more EVPs, they issued more stock to the managements teams and then..in Dec '14, the axe started to fall.

in a previous week, they brought sales teams together and told the 'they were the engine that drives this company" and then on the following Monday, the layoffs began. Just a few weeks ago, RVBD promoted a ISR teams to Territory Sales Managers and then let a lot of them go. Today, with RVBD going Private, it's not so much that that's the way the world works in tech. Rather, what could have been a great chapter in technology, what could have been the elegant transition from technoogy life cycel to another, things merely turned into a textbook example of misleading people, good people, putting in 12 hours days "...for our "CEO", and things nosedived into an "everyone for themselves" goodbye! We all drank the Jerry-juice. Too bad.

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Post ID: @OP+Ba5UKZX

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Of course they issued more stock to senior mgmt. They were looking forward to cashing out today on their immediately vested options and RSU's.

Now that this is done, any reason you see for them to stick around? They need to now go and spend their money which was earned by the rank and file who will get next to nothing.

It's the current state of affairs in the corporate world.

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Post ID: @A5J+Ba5UKZX

Yes, me too, former employer. I know only too well Jerry's speeches and Dave Peranich's speeches of how great they were, Jerry auctioning off the jacket of the pilot who had landed the jet on New York City's river etc. How Cisco is "dead", Silverpeak is "gone" and yes Bluecoat, another Thoma Bravo acquisition, is "history". As per Wall St. rumor, Juniper, Cisco, HP...all made offers for Riverbed before elliott moved in. At least those were tech firms and one would hazard a guess would have more respect for techies than a hedge firm. They were turned down because as per Jerry's SKO speech, Riverbed is the "next Cisco" and he will never sell it. What was he smoking?? And what were WE smoking to believe that rubbish?! As Steve McCane, the founder CTO left in January 2013 with a platoon of key, energetic, dynamic people following him to Jut, a bunch of incompetent, political mid-managers were hired here in EMEA to form a layer of "managers" so that the directors they report to could profile themselves to upper management in US. In the mean time there was no sale strategy for Opnet, the regular quarterly hits on stock prices got the management's focus off the core products and now its a sinking ship.

Jerry and his bunch of cronies kept getting their executive stock options of millions of dollars in the mean time for doing a lousy if not irresponsible job of managing a company and more importantly, future of employees who have been loyal and worked 12 hours a day for Riverbed.

Jerry loves cars and has a collection of Lamborghinis. Now that he has milked the Riverbed work force to the maximum for his stock benefits, he will probably buy a couple more Lamborghinis. Enjoy the ride Jerry. Last I saw you, you were in your grey Lamborghini.

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Post ID: @7HJ+Ba5UKZX

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