Dell tells staff: If you haven't got stomach for private era, leave

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2013/12/04/dell_voluntary_redundancy/

by npalli • 13 years ago

28 46 13 years ago

channelregister.co.uk

lsc9• 13 years ago

the first rule of employment: If someone offers you free money to leave? you take it.

rdl2• 13 years ago

You'd take the $2k vs. working at Zappos, or does the money have to be a material amount?

I don't think I'd walk away from Tesla or SpaceX for $100k. (I might walk from Tesla for "a Model S", IFF I thought I could still go back a few months later, but that's just gaming the system.)

protomyth• 13 years ago

not op, but "You'd take the $2k vs. working at Zappos, or does the money have to be a material amount?"

Isn't that part of the Zappos standard procedure and not an "event" like this? If I read lsc correctly, then if some event occurs where the company offers money / severance to leave, you are better off leaving. I don't know if anyone has stats on this scenario, but I'm inclined to think the recovery is the long odds bet.

lsc9• 13 years ago

I would /pay/ $2k to avoid working customer support for zappos. I'd pay rather more than that, in fact. Have you worked phone support? I only did so for a month, and it was probably the least pleasant job I've ever had.

michaelt• 13 years ago

I think it's more that voluntary redundancies tend to foreshadow compulsory redundancies, and indicate that the company thinks workers in your area don't make as much in money as you cost in salary. Given that you'll end up unemployed anyway, you might as well get some cash out of it.

When you and your co-workers are being offered voluntary redundancy and sites other than yours are being closed is also a good time to make sure you have redundancy insurance on any loans you have; to check your CV is up to date; and to make sure your friends at other companies still remember who you are.

jedberg3• 13 years ago

You're exactly the kind of person they are trying to get to leave -- someone who is only in it for the money and doesn't believe in the mission.

coldtea• 13 years ago

In other words, the smart person who is not gonna stand for bullshit, and who is a professional that knows the end goal is creating value, not some BS "mission".

lsc9• 13 years ago

Yup, and if you want to play mind games with your employees, and pretend like it's not a monetary relationship, then the feeling is mutual. I provide enough real value that I can get an employer who respects me enough to be honest and up-front.

We aren't family. Both of us are going to break off the relationship if we see a better deal.

If you want me to stick around because I think the company will be better X years from now? Give me a significant amount of underwater options, and a position where I have a chance to move the share price.

However, more relevant to this situation? Who do you think is going to take the cash and leave? Probably the people who can most easily get new jobs.

Now, I'm the first to point out that your ability to get a job does not 100% correlate with your competency, but there is certainly some correlation. Your company is going to be dramatically worse off if the people who have other options leave. If you have to let people go? you want to get rid of your bottom performers, not the top performers.

steven2012• 13 years ago

I would love to hire people like you... people who are willing to take a paycut and small stock grants in order to fulfill my grand mission: to make myself as rich as possible.

mikeash• 13 years ago

That's one way to put it. Another way to put it would be that they are someone who understands their value and understands that their own personal identity and success in not tied into that of their employer, and that an employer who doesn't want to pay competitively won't have a mission worth believing in anyway.

Either way, of course, you can see why a company might want to get rid of that type of person.

alan_cx2• 13 years ago

LOL. Mission? Believe?

Is Dell a religion or a mere money making entity which works, rightly, to enrich a few owners / share holders?

Look, I like Dell. A supplier of choice for me. Always been good to do business with. I would recommend them in many cases. But come on, its a business, not a not for profit, humanitarian, charity. All this "mission", "believe" stuff is just fantasy BS to make people work harder to make the owner more money. The only question for an employee, in this regard, is: does it give me what I want or need right now? If so, then work, and work hard for your money. If not, then bugger off.

Then, the very idea that its OK for a business to be in it for the money, which is what a business is, yet that its wrong for an employee, is frankly hypocritical BS. Any one who falls for this business BS is a simpleton mug.

If you want people to actually care about the business, give them a cut of the action related to profit. Because profit is the only think that matters. No profit, no point.

rfnslyr2• 13 years ago

Are you kidding? Everything is about the money, from top to bottom. You lose sight of that, you're going to get played, and looks you gave in.

joonix• 13 years ago

Whatever the "mission" of Dell might be, it's hilarious and sad that some people think that's a cause that deserves sacrifice.

tspiteri• 13 years ago

Only if you can get another job easily. And I don't think this scheme is meant for those people, those people may very well be excluded from the scheme altogether.

lsc9• 13 years ago

Only if you can get another job easily.

Maybe. If you can't get another job, that implies you are getting paid above-market wages.

If the company is in trouble and you are getting paid above market wages, how many more months is it going to be before they ask you to leave without a nice severance package?

RougeFemme• 13 years ago

Well, note who is explicitly excluded from the buyout:

"People working in the Software Group will not be allowed to join VSP, neither will folk with vice president in their title, nor exec/ distinguished directors in engineering or employees in India or Singapore."

I don't know who's included in the Software Group, but it probably includes a lot of people like those who read HN.

I once worked for a company where buyouts were offered - we had seen the handwriting on the wall for quite a while. Engineers were excluded and I was an engineer. They came nowhere near their target buyout numbers and finally, grudgingly, offered buyouts to engineers. I took the buyout.

wsc981• 13 years ago

I wonder, does this mean software engineers are too valuable to let go so easily? Or would there be some other train of thought.

hkmurakami• 13 years ago

Honestly, the "don't have the stomach for the private era" sounds completely hollow to me. This just looks like a generic cull that tries to masquerade as something else.

thought_alarm• 13 years ago

Dell has a software group?

cbsmith• 13 years ago

So, if a company were to offer its employees $1 to leave the day before their options vested, you'd say they should take?

rayiner4• 13 years ago

If you believe it's about "the mission" I have a bridge to sell you. When management offers a buyout, it's about to cull the workforce. It's a go-to private equity trick. Silver Lake probably realizes that Dell can do just as much with a lot fewer people, so getting rid of the excess workforce will result in an instant shot in the arm for profits.

That said, offering buyouts can be risky. On one hand, they're better for morale than just firing a bunch of people. On the other hand, anybody who has any sense knows that buyouts means that layoffs are imminent, and so the ones who have the most prospects elsewhere (i.e. the people you want to retain) will be the first ones to jump ship.

junto• 13 years ago

I remember when my share options were worth $52.

alan_cx2• 13 years ago

Why not a wedge of cash to stay? That's what happened in one business I worked in but got bought out like this.

We got told things would change, they needed our co-operation, it would mean possibly working a bit harder and getting used to new practices. So, here's a lump sum.

BTW, only a very small number took the money and left afterwards. Problem they had was that in the industry, the deal was well known. Apparently interviews for some other firms in the same sector were awkward. "So, Mr Smith, you took the hand out a month ago, but here you are interviewing for us. Please tell us your opinions on loyalty?"

_delirium• 13 years ago

The company probably just wants to downsize, in which case offering people money to stay would be the wrong incentive. Voluntary severance packages are often offered when a company wants to get rid of staff without overt layoffs. Sometimes followed by layoffs anyway, if not enough people take the offer. The phrasing here makes it sound related to post-merger culture, but that letter is written in Corporate Newspeak, a dialect of English that is sometimes tricky to translate.

Dell tells staff: If you haven't got stomach for private era, leave

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