I''ll try sum it up front here quickly: the senior leaders of the firm are practicing dishonesty on an epic scale. No one believes them any more. Sound strident? They have been asserting for nearly 2 years - basically since the Carlyle Group's leveraged buyout - that the "secret sauce" of the firm - the firm's unique culture - will not be changed, at all. Why would they change it, they said? Why mess with success? Well, it is the equivalent of state propaganda - repeat something long enough, and it will be believed by many despite all the evidence in front of them . So many things have changed, so fast. The entrepreneurial culture and ability to grow business is gone; all we are about now is big proposals. Like the other poster said - we are aiming to be just like SAIC or GD or NG. And the layoffs - with no warning - of 30+ Principals and about 100 Senior Associates (there are names to back up each these numbers, including my former boss) - people who had paid their dues and build successful and profitable businesses, only to 1) be asked about a year ago to leave their areas of practice within the firm to be "fungible", and then 2) if they had a misstep in their new area, or - truly in most cases - if they were not well-connected - it was used quickly as an excuse and then they were told they were being terminated immediately. One retired military officer, who had transitioned successfully and worked hard to build a $15M business from zero in his 2 years with the firm, was preparing for a marketing call to a senior DOD rep the very next day, when he got a call from his partner that "he might not want to make that marketing call, after he heard what the partner was about to tell him" (his termination). He is still shocked. Many others were done pretty shabbily as well. It was done stealthily, quickly, and without any real objective, falsifiable evidence - like a police state purge - and to the degree senior leadership is talking about it at all (not much), they are rewriting history to smear folks in generalities, saying that only the bad people were let go: non-performers! Yeah, right. Too many cases of the people who really did the work and built the business, are being canned in favor of compliant tools that didn't earn their way into the position. Why are they doing this? Simple and probably obvious to the outside observer. Cut costs to the bone in the year (plus minus) left until the IPO, so the most senior management plus Carlyle can show the market a super pumped up profitable firm. Pump and dump. Then they leave, and who cares what happens after that. Some (outside the firm) may say that this is the real world, and predictable, but when one hears the most senior leaders repeating the same mantra over and over, and then suddenly drop a bomb of new operating practices and people practices on professionals who have dedicated years to the firm - is not honest. They have lost all credibility. After all, the last few years prior to this one were advertised internally by the leadership as record years for revenue and profit. So, the "why would we change" message was believed for quite a long time. The only reason for these changes and firings - is to put more short term money in the pockets of the very few at the top. Squeezed out of those who built it over time. I have been with the firm for 6 years, and saw what a great place it once ways. Now, it's a place that is heading toward delivering mediocre results to clients, at expensive rates, abandoning a grow from within leadership model, and breaking commitments and faith and trust. It will take a long time to recover, if indeed it ever will.
