Bonum Certa Men Certa

Assorted Comments on Rumours of Red Hat Mass Layoffs

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Apr 06, 2024

As noted early in the morning, there is a strong suspicion inside Red Hat that McKinsey was hired to help justify a decision that had already been made. 12 months after the last wave they may be planned more layoffs and Red Hat's last CEO left the company 5 days ago.

Are these comments from Slashdot illuminating the playbook? Here are selected quotes:

"And now this. I feel so sorry for Red Hat, and also for Cygnus and other teams they swallowed."

"Here come more layoffs."

"What makes you think that it has anything to do with DEI? Looks to me like more happy-talk from management to try and calm the troops after joining IBM. I worked for IBM for about 6 years and I can tell you that nobody that got bought by IBM was ever treated very well."

"In other words, if you complain then we send in the layoff experts. Thus, you should have just shut up and smiled."

"Companies hire consultants like McKinsey when they want to make big controversial changes. Things like selling off assets, closing subsidiaries, or major layoffs. Full time executives don't want to take the blame for such major changes, so they outsource the decision to a consultant to take the blame. The consultant then moves on with a fat check."

"McKinsey is basically a way that management deflects responsibility. When what they do goes wrong, they say "we followed the advice of the experts". If you need consultants to tell you how to do your job, you should be laid off because you are redundant or incompetent. If you want your people to "focus on their highest value work", you do not need consultants."

"John Oliver on Last Week Tonight did a whole show on McKinsey. The service they actually provide, as has been noted earlier in these comments, is a way for management to deflect responsibility for what they were always planning to do, anyway, which is usually budget cuts and layoffs, and/or massive boosts to executive pay packages."

The EPO habitually does this to justify cuts, impacting salaries/pensions. The "studies" are commissioned by ruthless MBAs who don't even understand what the company is doing.

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