Cost Cutting

Yesterday, I watched a steady trickle of former Symantec employees carry their belongings to their vehicles, turn in their ID badges, and drive away.  Yes, Symantec “downsized” another group in the Lindon office.

It’s just plain crazy.

How crazy?  Well, I came up with an analogy that might explain the situation a little better.

Laying off employees–especially the employees that actually create and produce the products that the company sells–in order to cut costs and please shareholders is quite a bit like opening your carotid artery because you have very high blood pressure.  The “cure” will certainly work in the short term, but it will cause other, more serious problems in the long term.

A friend that I worked with in Symantec’s American Fork office (incidentally he’s an American ex-patriot living in France and still a Symantec employee) had the following to say on the matter:

A long time ago, “good” companies figured if they kept their employees happy everything would work out better for everyone.

Then someone got the bright idea that “the customer is always right” even though that often caused bad friction for employees.

And now, supposedly “good” companies care only about their shareholders, which leads to decisions that are often bad for employees, products, and even customers.

Ironically, since you can never guess what’s going to make shareholders happy, it’s all a crap shoot anyway.

That makes a LOT of sense to me.

So now that I’ve said my piece, I think I can leave this alone.  The one thing I have HATED about working for Symantec is the constant laying off of good people for business purposes.  I don’t expect my new job to be perfect, because it’s still going to be a business and it’s still going to be full of imperfect people and the politics and issues that inevitably arise in interpersonal business relationships.

I am NOT going to miss watching good people leave the business for the good of the shareholders.  I am not going to miss watching my company bleed itself out to solve a high blood pressure problem.

Goodbye, Symantec.  And in this particular sense, good riddance.