Dated Downsizing Info Part Two

Although this story came out this week, the events occurred some time ago.

In the early 1990s I landed a job with "Strat-a-Gee," a hugely successful VAR (value-added reseller) on the East Coast. Our growth was enormous. By Y2K we had gone from 100 employees to more than 1,600 -- and nearly a billion dollars in sales....

Just then, the owners handed Strat-a-Gee over to "Sam," a new Chief Operating Officer. Without any attempt to communicate his vision for the company (whatever it might have been) to the rest of us, Sam brought in a group of five executives we immediately dubbed "the suits."...

Within a couple of months, the suits had fired almost 20 percent of the staff. The worst part was that the firings seemed to be almost random. As far as I could tell, Sam's only agenda was to reduce staffing costs. Nothing wrong with that if we had been in the red, but Strat-a-Gee was raking in the money....

Then, one fine morning, the suits' plan was revealed. Or do I mean "exposed"? At a company-wide meeting, Sam announced that Strat-a-Gee was being sold to an organization from Hong Kong. The COO's vision had been all about boosting the company's on-paper value....

What happened next was predictable. With its staff decimated and morale at an all-time low, Strat-a-Gee's business revenues declined by nearly 50 percent. The new owners were left asking, "What happened here?" Or however you say "What happened here?" in Cantonese. One by one, the suits were canned as the parent company became aware of their shortcomings. Finally Sam got the boot too. The suits had devastated hundreds of peoples' lives and destroyed a hugely successful company.

downsizing

Sphere: Related Content