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

Privately owned Dell has told staff that might not share senior management's "passion and enthusiasm" for the next era that they better shape up or ship out… with a wedge of cash in their pockets. A Voluntary Separation Programme (VSP) was coughed yesterday as confirmed in an email from CFO Brian Gladden and Steve Price senior …

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been in that position before with another corp.

They came round asking for volunteers to leave offering a wad of cash. I said yes and took the redundancy. Then the second round of involuntary separations began and several of my friends got pink slips and two weeks pay.

Get out before they chuck you out.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I've been in that position before with another corp.

On the other hand, I was in that position and stayed on for another year and a half. Every six months there was a new offer, until it got round to over a year's salary, mostly tax-free, at which point I got a very nice exit. Still dicked me around for another month though and all they had to do was calculate the total pay-off and I'd be gone.

Unlikely to repeat that in the current business climate though. Yes, probably a good idea to take the offer and go. Especially if you're a long-standing employee - conversely you may do very well out of taking an early exit.

[Karlis 1]

Targeting by exclusion?

Nobody from India, nor from Singapore, nor from EMEA, nether anybody from Software group - who exactly is eligible then? A couple of janitors and the Hardware Engineering group in US only?

[Anonymous Coward]

Let the Dell headcount management spin begin!!

The fact is that the vast majority of Dell employees will not have their jobs directly impacted by the privatization of the company. If you were in sales, marketing, customer service, engineering, etc., you are pretty much going to be filling the same role you had before. The only roles that really will be substantially impacted in a direct manner in the finance and investor relations. There might also be a few old-timers with share options who felt that their equity shares were undervalued at privatization, and are miffed because of that. But there won't be many of those people in a mature company with a stagnant stock price like Dell.

Of course, with the privatization there will be a re-org, so there will be employees who get put under new managers or departments that they are unhappy enough to be looking at the door. But that happens in publicly-held company management shakeups too, so its not a direct result of the privatization

So my guess is that this "get with the program" program is really a harbinger of future headcount reductions, and "get out or get pushed out" cost-cutting is really the agenda. Being a private company, Dell can be much less public in performing layoffs than a publicly-held company has to be.

[Zacherynuk]

Judging by the amount of "Hi I'm your new account manager calls" I have been getting this has been going on for a while.

I hope they hire somebody who knows how to make their Sonicwall acquisition work.

[Anonymous Coward]

My Sonicwall is working a treat at the moment. It's under the leg of the bookshelf in my office to stop it from wobbling.

[baguar]

re: "Hi I'm your new account manager calls"

As far as I'm aware, this is standard Dell practice - rotate the accounts between AM's every 6 months or so.

NFI what the point of it is, as it just seems to piss the customer off!

[Anonymous Coward]

'leading supplier of end-to-end solutions provider'

Can a kind person from the plain-English-campaign tell me WTF that means?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: 'leading supplier of end-to-end solutions provider'

It means that they are increasing desperate to sell anything ....

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I will never forgive Dell...

I'm a corporate buyer. Dell boxes did what-they-said-on-the-tin for almost two decades. Over such a long time we built up huge trust in our reps. But in 2007, they shafted us big time. We learned the hard way that we live in an era of windows spin, with little good news coming for Users... OS Bloat, Change for the sake of change, DRM, Driver Issues... The ribbon and Win8 has followed and we all know where that's got us!

You can blame MS for Vista, but its key allies were a big part of the Vista-Ready 'sticker' Sales Deception process... I learned afterwards that our Dell team knew about all the problems but kept silent in meetings with us... So I say bye bye Dell, no matter how you reinvent yourself, even if you reach the dizzying heights of a Monsanto like phoenix, we won't be buying anything more from you! Microsoft helped destroy your brand, but you let them!

[Annihilator]

Thing is

It's usually the bright, re-employable ones that jump ship.

[Anonymous Coward]

The staff at Dell had to have a pretty strong stomach to begin with....they did work for Dell after all.

[capthowdy27]

Same thing was offered to some of us in 07 than two or three weeks latter 10% layoffs worldwide. A01 in Nashville never saw it coming! Personally I would take it in a heat beat if I still worked there.

[Anonymous Coward 101]

"It's going to take everyone's hard work and commitment to become the leading provider of end-to-end scalable solutions and deliver for our customers,"

How many Dell staff are thinking "End-to-end scalable solutions - that's easy. But 'deliver for our customers'? No, that is beyond my abilities."

[disgruntled yank]

Wonderful

If I'm a Dell employee, about now I'm thinking

a. They were willing to put the squeeze on Carl Icahn. Will they regard my interests with more concern?

b. Passion? Give me a C-level bonus based on the quarterly earnings, and I'll show you some passion.