Contractors: Yes Bella did hire a lot of contractors when she started. RJ had close to 500 contractors and majority of the developers were from Russia. Paul was concerned about 100 profitable quarters of profitability, but the 110 million IT budget was blow out of the water with Bella’s arrival. RJ was spending 3-5 MILLION per month on contractors…yes that is per month and I know it had been going on for at least 12 months.
Management: There are good people in both St Pete and Memphis, but it appears that senior management like to keep around the village idiots (Maybe the good people leave and the people that can’t get jobs stay). In IT I believe they keep around the idiots to ensure that no one can call out the incompetent Senior management. Look at some of the IT management…David S –No experience before coming to RJ and is a VP. I guess it pays to be play tennis. MEC…not sure why people let her stay and destroy the culture…poor management decisions I guess. Now they moved Scott Z to senior IT management …he is a nice person, but NEVER managed a team directly. Now he is the Senior VP with groups of people reporting to him. Pays to be someone’s buddy. Someone mentioned Kevin E…that guy is a piece of work. He never delivers projects and lies to senior management. I am sure he will move up to senior management. His current team thinks he is a useless….and I would agree.
Overall…I would say RJ is moving away from caring about people which happens. I think it is really frustrating that Senior management is making so many bad decisions. Scott C (RJFS), Bella (IT), Paul R (Has anyone seen him on CNBC? He does not know anything about the business….