VSI employee retirements

[Simon Clubley]

On 2023-01-09, Jan-Erik Söderholm <jan-erik....@telia.com> wrote:
> Den 2023-01-09 kl. 05:59, skrev Hein RMS van den Heuvel:
>> On Saturday, January 7, 2023 at 11:24:21 AM UTC-5, David Turner wrote:
>>> Just sent an email to VSI's staff.
>>> Got several emails back saying they don't work there anymore!!!!
>>> What is happening to VSI???????????????
>>> :0(

Are you able to say who no longer works there ?

>>
>> Happy Old Farts!
>> I believe several opted to finally retire for real januari-first.
>>
>
> Is this ?just normal" or is it worrying in any way?

It's very much expected and I am surprised it hasn't happened before now.

Don't forget that we are now 8.5 years (and counting) into a porting
project that was originally going to take about 3 to 4 years maximum.

These people no doubt want to enjoy the rest of their rapidly reducing
lives and it's a lot different to go back to work for a decade versus
just going back to work for 3-4 years to top up the retirement fund.

I just hope we have not lost anyone like John Reagan yet or any of the
other critical core VSI employees.

Does anyone know which VSI employees have now retired ?

Simon.

--
Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Walking destinations on a map are further away than they appear.

[John Reagan]

On Monday, January 9, 2023 at 8:12:14 AM UTC-5, Simon Clubley wrote:

>
> I just hope we have not lost anyone like John Reagan yet or any of the
> other critical core VSI employees.
>

Aww, thanks. I can only speak for myself. I'm still here. I'm having my
head transferred into a jar in the new few months. I hope it has a nice
view.

[John Dallman]

In article <3502b0f3-87cd-4c6d...@googlegroups.com>,

xyzz...@gmail.com (John Reagan) wrote:

> I'm having my head transferred into a jar in the new few months.
> I hope it has a nice view.

Whose jar will you be using to test updates to the control software?


John

[John Reagan]

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jzvcf1u7c0psnk0/john-head-in-jar.png?dl=0

[Simon Clubley]

On 2023-01-10, John Reagan <xyzz...@gmail.com> wrote:
> https://www.dropbox.com/s/jzvcf1u7c0psnk0/john-head-in-jar.png?dl=0

:-)

Simon.

PS: Your keyboard doesn't have a numeric keypad. :-)

[VAXman-]

In article <139533fd-834e-46df...@googlegroups.com>, John Reagan <xyzz...@gmail.com> writes:
>https://www.dropbox.com/s/jzvcf1u7c0psnk0/john-head-in-jar.png?dl=0

EXACTLY how I remember you. :P

--
VAXman- A Bored Certified VMS Kernel Mode Hacker VAXman(at)TMESIS(dot)ORG

I speak to machines with the voice of humanity.

[David Turner]

I heard from an old friend and Dealer in the VSI neighborhood that a few
more got their pink slips a few weeks ago.
This has got to be unnerving for the employees

Does anyone have any real idea of what's going on there?

DT

[Neil Rieck]

Not sure what is specifically happening at VSI but the number of layoffs in the whole tech sector are unnerving. Some claim it hasn't been this bad since the sub-prime mortgage scandal (2008) while others reference the dot-com crash (2001).

Neil Rieck
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
http://neilrieck.net

[Simon Clubley]

On 2023-01-22, David Turner <dtu...@islandco.com> wrote:
>
> I heard from an old friend and Dealer in the VSI neighborhood that a few
> more got their pink slips a few weeks ago.
> This has got to be unnerving for the employees
>

Ok, that's rather different from people choosing to leave and finally
retire. It's also a little worrying if true, because where VSI are
finally at with VMS means they should, if anything, currently be hiring
more employees to handle the workload from people moving to x86-64.

Do you know for sure that people have been fired by VSI or is this
really still people just deciding to leave VSI to retire ?

Simon.

[Simon Clubley]

On 2023-01-23, Neil Rieck <n.r...@bell.net> wrote:
>
> Not sure what is specifically happening at VSI but the number of layoffs in the whole tech sector are unnerving. Some claim it hasn't been this bad since the sub-prime mortgage scandal (2008) while others reference the dot-com crash (2001).
>

The other possibility is that the social media companies had _way_ too
many staff on the payroll while profits were growing and now that they
too are being affected by the downturn, the employee levels are moving
back towards the level they would be in more established companies.

It still sucks for the poor people being laid off however.

[Neil Rieck]

Well that is exactly what happened at Google where the world-wide number of employees rose from ~ 120k (pre-COVID) to the current level of ~ 180k. Other companies also over-hired during the COVID years so now need to trim the fat. No need to talk about what and why there were layoffs at twitter. No one is talking about the advances in A.I. which will allow companies to permanently automate some jobs.

Neil Rieck
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
http://neilrieck.net

http://neilrieck.net/OpenVMS.html

[David Turner]

I'll ask my friend up there
He is actually in NH and has gone hunting so I guess I will have to wait

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 1/23/2023 7:34 AM, Neil Rieck wrote:
> On Sunday, January 22, 2023 at 8:47:09 PM UTC-5, David Turner wrote:
>> I heard from an old friend and Dealer in the VSI neighborhood that
>> a few more got their pink slips a few weeks ago. This has got to be
>> unnerving for the employees
>>
>> Does anyone have any real idea of what's going on there?
>

> Not sure what is specifically happening at VSI but the number of
> layoffs in the whole tech sector are unnerving. Some claim it hasn't
> been this bad since the sub-prime mortgage scandal (2008) while
> others reference the dot-com crash (2001).

There has been significant layoffs, but it is my impression
that it has been mostly in some specific areas not across the board.

Most industries are not laying off but actually still hiring
(JP Morgan and American Express are examples of companies
actually hiring more IT people).

Everybody is nervous about the risk for a recession. Because
there has been so much talk about it. But it has not really
shown up yet. And if inflation keeps dropping and central
banks stop hiking interest rates then it may never come (for now).
But many are worried. What if inflation starts going up again.
What if the war in Ukraine escalate. What if China attacks
Taiwan. What if the house in the US won't raise the debt ceiling
and US federal defaults.

But some specific areas has been hit hard. I see at least 3 areas
having had to layoff a lot of people including IT people:

A) Startups without a solid business model especially
in crypto and other fintech. When interest rates
went up then their VC funding dried up and they are
toast.

B) Companies or parts of companies with specific problems.
Mortgage divisions in banks has been down-sizing because
number of mortgages are dropping due to high interest rates.
M&A divisions in banks and capital funds has been down-sizing because
number of deals are dropping due to high interest rates.
Facebook has problems because the Metaverse is not catching on.
Twitter has problems because of lack of relevance (everybody
talks about Elon Musk, but Twitter would have had massive
layoffs also without Musk - Musk buying Twitter just cause
it to be done "the Musk way").

C) Companies that has been on a non-stop hiring spree
the last 5-10 years. Amazon, Google, Microsoft etc..
Their business has not plunged into a hole, but growth
has slowed/stopped. And they need to stop hiring. And
they realize that during the hiring frenzy they may have
hired too many, hired the wrong skill sets, hired at the wrong
geographical locations, hired at too high compensation
level etc.. So they make cuts to adjust.

Arne

[Neil Rieck]

Adding to your points,

I thought it a little odd that Microsoft announced it was laying off 10,000 employees on Jan-18
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/18/microsoft-is-laying-off-10000-employees.html
then announced a $10 billion dollar investment in OpenAI on Jan-23
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-23/microsoft-makes-multibillion-dollar-investment-in-openai

While it might make sense to some, imagine how it affects employees (and their families) who just received a pink slip.

Neil Rieck
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
http://neilrieck.net

http://neilrieck.net/OpenVMS.html

[Arne Vajhøj]

> Adding to your points,
>
> I thought it a little odd that Microsoft announced it was laying off 10,000 employees on Jan-18
> https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/18/microsoft-is-laying-off-10000-employees.html
> then announced a $10 billion dollar investment in OpenAI on Jan-23
> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-23/microsoft-makes-multibillion-dollar-investment-in-openai
>
> While it might make sense to some, imagine how it affects employees (and their families) who just received a pink slip.

In Danish that is "føje spot til skade" - the equivalent English is
supposedly "add insult to injury".

But the (harsh) reality is that it is not unusual for a huge
company to shrink workforce in some divisions/departments while
grow workforce in other divisions/departments.

MS is not laying off people because they as a company
are loosing money - their profit in last quarter of 22
was 16 billion dollars.

Arne

[David Turner]

Not much to add. He knows him from the area and apparently there were
quite a few layoffs there.
I personally know that Terry Holmes has gone. Hardly going to damage
VSI. He should have gone long ago.
And Wayne is subordinate has gone too from what I can tell. Well, he
isn't answering any emails anyway.

Perhaps they are going to rethink how they sell licenses. Following the
HP model never worked anyway.
Buying a license key should be like getting a SSL cert. Fill in the
info, verify your email, and it lands in your email inbox 5 minutes later.

No excuse for the licensing debacle there....

DT

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 1/26/2023 10:16 AM, David Turner wrote:
> Not much to add. He knows him from the area and apparently there were
> quite a few layoffs there.
> I personally know that Terry Holmes has gone. Hardly going to damage
> VSI. He should have gone long ago.
> And Wayne is subordinate has gone too from what I can tell. Well, he
> isn't answering any emails anyway.

I do not recall exactly how https://vmssoftware.com/about/key-managers/
used to look, but I am pretty sure that the list was longer before.
So they may have slimmed down at the top.

> Perhaps they are going to rethink how they sell licenses. Following the
> HP model never worked anyway.
> Buying a license key should be like getting a SSL cert. Fill in the
> info, verify your email, and it lands in your email inbox 5 minutes later.
>
> No excuse for the licensing debacle there....

Buying licenses in a few minutes over the internet using a credit card
indeed seems like the way of this century.

And maybe they should take a look at the time limited licenses as
well - the concept is not popular in the VMS world.

Anybody know who John Ross (which seems to be the new guy in charge of
sales) are?

Arne

[Simon Clubley]

On 2023-01-26, David Turner <dtu...@islandco.com> wrote:
> Not much to add. He knows him from the area and apparently there were
> quite a few layoffs there.
> I personally know that Terry Holmes has gone. Hardly going to damage
> VSI. He should have gone long ago.
> And Wayne is subordinate has gone too from what I can tell. Well, he
> isn't answering any emails anyway.
>

Thanks for checking.

If they are firing the engineering people, that's a _real_ concern.

If they are firing the sales people responsible for the current
licence situation, then that may be something to welcome.

[Simon Clubley]

On 2023-01-26, Arne Vajhøj <ar...@vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>
> I do not recall exactly how https://vmssoftware.com/about/key-managers/
> used to look, but I am pretty sure that the list was longer before.
> So they may have slimmed down at the top.
>

It has become way shorter than it was.

At least Clair is thankfully still on the list.

>
> And maybe they should take a look at the time limited licenses as
> well - the concept is not popular in the VMS world.
>

Congratulations Arne, you have mastered the art of British understatement.

:-)

[Douy Xebis]

On 1/23/2023 8:09 AM, Simon Clubley wrote:
> On 2023-01-22, David Turner <dtu...@islandco.com> wrote:
>>

>> I heard from an old friend and Dealer in the VSI neighborhood that a few
>> more got their pink slips a few weeks ago.
>> This has got to be unnerving for the employees
>>
>

> Ok, that's rather different from people choosing to leave and finally
> retire. It's also a little worrying if true, because where VSI are
> finally at with VMS means they should, if anything, currently be hiring
> more employees to handle the workload from people moving to x86-64.
>
> Do you know for sure that people have been fired by VSI or is this
> really still people just deciding to leave VSI to retire ?

About a dozen engineers were fired.

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 2/1/2023 3:18 AM, Douy Xebis wrote:

I will assume that this is a made up name to protect the
identity of someone that actually knows.

This is bad news.

VSI really needs all engineers to proceed. There are still
stuff missing in VMS x86-64 not the least the native compilers.
Realistically there will also be bugs found when customers
start migrating to VMS x86-64. And probably a big demand
for consulting assistance during migration projects as well.
And then there is the entire "VMS modernization post x86-64 port".
Lots of work.

I obviously wonder why. I don't think there is a sudden decrease
in demand for VMS. VMS usage is I believe on a pretty steady
course. That steady course is a long term problem but should not
be a short term problem.

I wonder if VSI has loans with variable interest rates or if
Johan Gedda financeds his ownership of VSI with loans with
variable interest rates. As everybody knows then interest rates
has gone up significantly. Money has become expensive. This
is of course just speculation, but it could explain why
there is a sudden need to cut payroll cost.

Arne

[Simon Clubley]

Well, that's not a good sign. :-(

Are you allowed to say whether it was in an area that VSI has decided
not to proceed with or was it general cost cutting to get the expenses
down ?

[bill]

On 2/1/2023 3:18 AM, Douy Xebis wrote:

"Fired" or "layed off"?

There is a different connotation to those two terms.

bill

[Arne Vajhøj]

In the US. Many places elsewhere there is no such distinction.
In Danish both would translate to the same. Danish does have
a different term, but that is reserved for cases like
what the US military would call "dishonorable discharge".

Given the number and the times then "laid off" seems
way more likely than "fired". But the 12 people may not
even be in the US. And the poster may not be an American.

Arne

[bill]

I thought the person who posted the comment was from my side of
the pond where the distinction makes a difference. A person
who is "layed off" is considered to be out of work through
no fault of their own and is usually eligible for unemployment
compensation. A person who is "fired" is usually considered to
be responsible for the loss of their job and frequently not
eligible for unemployment compensation. Big difference.

bill

[Arne Vajhøj]

Douy Xebis <aa...@uodobdu.db>

??

> where the distinction makes a difference. A person
> who is "layed off" is considered to be out of work through
> no fault of their own and is usually eligible for unemployment
> compensation.  A person who is "fired" is usually considered to
> be responsible for the loss of their job and frequently not
> eligible for unemployment compensation.  Big difference.

I know.

But just wanted to point out that it may not be like that
where "Douy" is located.

US DK
headcount reduction laid off fyret
bad performance fired fyret
bad attitude fired fyret
bad/criminal behavior fired bortvist

I am not assuming "Douy" is in Denmark - I am just using Danish
as an example outside US - I don't know German or French well
enough to know how it is in those languages.

Arne

[Single Stage to Orbit]

On Wed, 2023-02-01 at 11:40 -0500, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> US DK UK
> headcount reduction      laid off   fyret redundancy
> bad performance          fired      fyret sacked
> bad attitude             fired      fyret sacked
> bad/criminal behavior    fired      bortvist sacked

--
Tactical Nuclear Kittens

[Craig A. Berry]

On 2/1/23 7:19 AM, Simon Clubley wrote:
> On 2023-02-01, Douy Xebis <aa...@uodobdu.db> wrote:
>> On 1/23/2023 8:09 AM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>>> On 2023-01-22, David Turner <dtu...@islandco.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I heard from an old friend and Dealer in the VSI neighborhood that a few
>>>> more got their pink slips a few weeks ago.
>>>> This has got to be unnerving for the employees
>>>>
>>>
>>> Ok, that's rather different from people choosing to leave and finally
>>> retire. It's also a little worrying if true, because where VSI are
>>> finally at with VMS means they should, if anything, currently be hiring
>>> more employees to handle the workload from people moving to x86-64.
>>>
>>> Do you know for sure that people have been fired by VSI or is this
>>> really still people just deciding to leave VSI to retire ?
>>
>> About a dozen engineers were fired.
>
> Well, that's not a good sign. :-(
>
> Are you allowed to say whether it was in an area that VSI has decided
> not to proceed with or was it general cost cutting to get the expenses
> down ?

As far as I know or can remember (and I was never an insider), the head
count traditionally went up during a port to a new architecture and was
reduced afterwards, and we are now in a situation of a new port that has
been recently completed for some definition of completed. Of course the
port traditionally finished within a year or three of starting and was
never called a production release until it had been built with native
compilers. So, we're in unprecedented territory, and it's hard to know
what staff reductions mean. I expect we'll find out eventually.

[Simon Clubley]

Regardless of whatever marketing name VSI management put on it, I don't
really regard the current version of x86-64 VMS as production-ready.

I'm mentally thinking of it as more an Alpha/Beta level release and as
such it's at the point where there should be a real final push to get it
over the line and into _real_ production-ready status.

Therefore, now is _not_ the right time to be getting rid of engineers IMHO
because the port is very actively still in progress.

Don't forget also, there's still major new bits of work required such as
expanding the maximum volume size by implementing a new filesystem.

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 2/1/2023 8:21 PM, Craig A. Berry wrote:
> As far as I know or can remember (and I was never an insider), the head
> count traditionally went up during a port to a new architecture and was
> reduced afterwards, and we are now in a situation of a new port that has
> been recently completed for some definition of completed.

I would distinguish between port and enhancement as:

port - the effort to bring everything running on current VMS Itanium and
not declared dead (never to be ported) to run on VMS x86-64

enhancement - add stuff to VMS x86-64 that does not currently run
on VMS Itanium (could in some cases be backported but
I would not keep my breath on that)

The port is close to done, but they are missing some pieces most notable
the compilers!

>   Of course the
> port traditionally finished within a year or three of starting and was
> never called a production release until it had been built with native
> compilers.  So, we're in unprecedented territory, and it's hard to know
> what staff reductions mean.  I expect we'll find out eventually.

The smaller staff longer time for this port compared to previous
ports *should* mean less reason to downsize engineering.

Also more enhancement work is waiting than with previous ports, because
enhancements need to catch up 15-20 years or so. That again *should*
mean less reason to downsize engineering.

I am aware that mr. *should* is pretty unreliable. :-)

Arne