
New Relic CEO scolds employees in internal memo - davidw
https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2020/07/new-relic-ceo-scolds-employees-in-internal-memo-we-are-a-company-with-an-urgent-need-to-get-back-on-track.html
======
el_nahual
I'd like to point out that TFA does not actually link to the memo itself. So
any phrasing in the article like "scolds," "blunt," or "exhorts" _must_ be
taken with a grain of salt--and by extension, any comments here that are
opining on the letter based on these adjectives.

In fact, I'd go as far as saying that the article in its current state is _at
best_ worthless (and at worst a hatchet job).

It's entirely possible that the tone of the letter/memo was indeed harsh, or
tone-deaf, or cringe-worthy. But perhaps it wasn't, and honestly the few
quotes in the article make it impossible to tell.

~~~
david38
Exactly. It’s very possible the author of the article is sensitive / has an
agenda / etc and interprets anything said in the memo in the least charitable
way possible.

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YetAnotherMatt
> “History has not been kind to technology companies who do not continue to
> grow. Technology companies either grow or they die. There is no middle
> option.”

This is hopefully beyond obvious, but if upper management ever says something
like this, it is time to at minimum start working on making other
opportunities available to you.

Whether you do this by interviewing, networking, blogging, public speaking, or
whatever your preference is doesn't matter much. As long as you do something.

In my personal experience, whenever anything like this happened, there would
be layoffs within a year. Also whenever management would make an official
statement addressing "rumors", saying that "everything is fine, zero risk of
layoffs", layoffs happened within a year.

~~~
ecdavis
> In my personal experience, whenever anything like this happened, there would
> be layoffs within a year.

A few months before Microsoft laid off 18,000 people in 2014 my team and I sat
in an all hands meeting for our group (or division, or whatever it was
called). The merging of the SDET and SDE career paths was explained,
accompanied by a PowerPoint presentation. The presentation contained a slide
which had as its only content something like, "No jobs will be lost," in bold,
red, all-caps font on a white background. Over the following weeks, several
SDETs who worked closely with my team found SDE positions in other parts of
the company. Sure enough, come July, thousands of SDETs were laid off.[0]

That slide is burned into my memory, and I often wonder if it was a warning
from management who knew what was coming but were not permitted to say.

[0] Many would later be hired back, but that's another story.

------
awinder
“The blunt letter exhorts employees to work harder”

If newrelic thinks employee loyalty and engagement are the cause or driver of
their issues, then they should totally offer buyouts to deal with that
problem. But as a user of the product I know that’s a bs excuse, you can
observe the organizational dysfunction ooze out the UI at all corners.

~~~
qes
> you can observe the organizational dysfunction ooze out the UI at all
> corners

Really? Because I've always found New Relic's UI to be far and away the most
useful out of the half dozen or so APM's I'm often re-evaluating.

Maybe Infrastructure & Browser or what have you are not as good (I use Infra &
Insights and have some complaints about them), but their APM imo has always
really nailed it with presenting the pertinent info.

~~~
apple4ever
Their APM interface is pretty good, but has some weird issues.

Infrastructure & Insights are terrible. Just terrible.

------
codezero
I don’t know what the culture at New Relic is like, but if the CEO of my
company told us to work harder, there would be a coup. Everyone who still has
a job knows they are lucky, and is working at 150%, losing sleep, and
experiencing a lot of strain on their lives on top of the strain of the state
of reality. Nobody is asking for a pat on the back, but it takes its toll. I
wouldn’t tolerate my CEO doing this, but that’s easy to say - since mine
didn’t, and as said earlier, I have a job.

It’s pretty despicable for a CEO to do this, at a time like this.

~~~
Google234
You do understand that not every company is the same as yours, right? Maybe
there is a bad culture there and perhaps the ceo has information that you
don’t have? Also, since when did criticism became despicable in the virus
crisis?

~~~
aaomidi
What did I just read.

Wonder how much does this CEO work and what their effective hourly wage is.

~~~
HeyZuess
> Wonder how much does this CEO work and what their effective hourly wage is.

If employees are paid fairly, then should it matter? As a founder and an owner
I gather, it means less, as a publicly traded company it means a little more.
But in the big picture, it matters very little if employees are duly
compensated. BTW he has a boss (or bosses) also (or investors, boards,
customers).

~~~
aaomidi
Yes very much so. The workers are producing the value (CEO is also a worker).
Is the CEO producing x times the value of their average worker? If not then
that compensation doesn't make sense and in effect is stealing from others who
are producing that value.

Any other view is justifying stealing from people just because they're "well
compensated."

~~~
HeyZuess
> Any other view is justifying stealing from people just because they're "well
> compensated."

That ideology hasn't worked to well in the past.

> If not then that compensation doesn't make sense and in effect is stealing
> from others who are producing that value.

While I admire the premise of this line of thinking, this is not how
Capitalism works. It is also very difficult to quantify value also, how does
person X compare to person Y doing the same job compare in regards to the term
of value. If person X has more seniority, or maybe less but greater skills,
produces more etc. Let alone person X and Y who are equivalent, but work on
different parts of the machine. Heck devs are drastically more valued at the
moment than receptionists but receptionist may work harder.

Now I sit somewhere between Ayn Rand and a Socialist, but I definitely believe
in Capitalist ideals, that a person should be paid on their market value, and
profits are made for those on top in regards to what value the entire machine
produces. Those in the middle shouldn't suffer though, but that can never be
attributed to theft (there are a few cases which escape this), unless you take
on a more Communist idealism.

~~~
aaomidi
I completely disagree with you and capitalism is an immoral system of economy.
It might have been a necessary transition but as it stands right now it's
ruining the world bit by bit.

It's also still theft no matter what system of economy you believe in.

If someone is taking the compensation of the value you're adding to the
economy, that's theft.

~~~
HeyZuess
> completely disagree with you and capitalism is an immoral system of economy.

As I said I stand between an Ayn Rand type of system and and a socialist
system. So while I think Capitalism is definitely the better options, I don't
deny it's failings.

> It might have been a necessary transition but as it stands right now it's
> ruining the world bit by bit.

There are obviously areas it can be improved, however as it stands there are a
lot more benefits than problems.

> It's also still theft no matter what system of economy you believe in.

> If someone is taking the compensation of the value you're adding to the
> economy, that's theft.

If people are compensated for their work then it isn't theft, when you agree
to sell X (you effort) for Y (money), especially where Y is not capped in too
many ways then it is not theft.

Remember person isn't adding the entire value to the economy, the company is,
the product is.

And it is fine if you disagree.

------
tyingq
Company wide emails scolding productivity sound like a death knell to me. What
do they think the individual reactions to this are? Like, _" oh yeah, they're
right, I've been slacking, and I will do better"_? Is that a real thing?

------
Animats
This follows last week's layoff.[1]

[1]
[https://www.bizjournals.com/portland/news/2020/06/29/layoffs...](https://www.bizjournals.com/portland/news/2020/06/29/layoffs-
at-new-relic-as-company-combines-2-enginee.html)

~~~
jacquesm
On approximately 1300 employees that's not a whole lot though, is it?

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yingw787
I don't think there's any harm in having an internal all-hands where labor and
management can discuss how a company can forward social aims. Having a ban
hammer come down like this gives the impression the company doesn't care about
employees, and while that may be the truth for many more companies, it's never
the impression you want to set. Have a chat, blow off some steam (people are
stressed about other stuff too), then keep working.

For one, I really like Netflix's commitment to keep $100M in black-owned
banks, so they can farm out loans to under-represented communities. Progress
is a state of mind, but I think that one move has the potential for a lot of
materially positive change.

~~~
wonderwonder
This comment is only addressing the airing of political / social opinions at
work, not the rest of the email which seems ill judged at best. Sounds like
the issue with this topic is that employees are requesting that the company
not sell to certain companies / organizations. When an established company
loses $91 million in a year it starts to worry about survival. I can
understand the CEO being terrified of the employees losing focus on
productivity and earnings and turning their focus on things that cost money
rather than produce it.

On top of that the internal discussion of how a manager working late sets a
bad example means a good portion of the employees have lost the plot and see
the company as a hang out where certain things are expected. I appreciate work
life balance as much as the next person but castigating someone for working
harder and trying to succeed is a dangerous precedent for the employees of a
struggling company to take.

Another issue with allowing controversial subjects to become common discussion
points in work is that people disagree and this can lead to problems working
together. If Bob is a massive supporter of BLM and goes around expecting
everyone to agree with him and Sam responds All lives matter, there are going
to be issues. Same with someone being an ardent Trump supporter going around
speaking about him to everyone and being shocked when someone expresses
disdain. Its not conducive to an acrimonious work environment. The company
eventually goes under and Portland has lost its largest tech company.

Just a side note, issue with New Relic is just the software is not great, I
genuinely don't like using it, its not a good experience. I do wish them and
all other companies the best.

~~~
agrippanux
We don’t actually know the reason why the manager was called out for working
hard. Was it because they are naturally awesome and motivated? Is it because
they were covering for a problem with the team? Is it because the manager is
new and doesn’t have experience delegating? Without the context it’s
impossible to draw a conclusion.

------
williamstein
Is his claim true? I'm glad some companies like Basecamp provide a
counterexample...

> “History has not been kind to technology companies who do not continue to
> grow. Technology companies either grow or they die. There is no middle
> option.”

~~~
PragmaticPulp
Basecamp is a relatively small company. Comparing Basecamp to a publicly
traded enterprise is apples and oranges.

Furthermore, it’s important to realize that Basecamp’s company culture
evangelization is partially a PR push for the company. I have no problems
believing that Basecamp’s employees enjoy the work environment, but their
constant insistence that their way is the only way to run a company and that
all other company cultures are fatally flawed is some dishonest rhetoric. I
loved it when I was a junior IC straight out of college and thought every DHH
Tweet was a new revelation about how my employer was dumb, but the more time I
spend on the operations side, the more I realize that Basecamp’s PR push is
more about sowing discord to sell books and products than about actionable
advice.

~~~
Barrin92
>Basecamp is a relatively small company. Comparing Basecamp to a publicly
traded enterprise is apples and oranges.

yet there are also significantly more small companies than large companies in
terms of employment. Looking at the last stackoverflow survey, half of all
developers report to work companies with fewer than 100 employees, whereas
only ~10-15% work at very large firms. The same is true for publicly traded
business of course, it's a small minority of the market.

So I wouldn't disregard basecamps attitude as atypical because they are small.
Small is normal.

~~~
scarface74
Stack Overflow’s survey is a self selected sample. If you are working in a
large company doing enterprisey things in something like C# or Java and you
are a “dark matter developer”, you probably aren’t hanging out on
StackOverflow.

Also how many small companies are “lifestyle companies” and not small
companies trying to grow fast and get acquired?

~~~
Barrin92
I'm not sure lifestyle company is the right description. The overwhelming
majority of companies are small businesses, privately owned. Think Qt. Or
Datomic. The startup scene itself is only a tiny fraction of the global tech
sector, it's a sort of business pretty much exclusive to a few cities around
the world. All unicorns on the planet summed up are smaller than Apple in
value.

~~~
scarface74
That’s the usually definition of a lifestyle company. One that just wants to
be a profitable privately held business with no interest in either going
public or getting acquired.

~~~
Barrin92
sorry I wasn't familiar with the term. It took it to mean "joke company" or
something like that

------
pascalxus
I've been using NewRelic for a while now, and it's a great product. But, I
don't see many moats around the business model. There's nothing preventing
other competitors from popping up and taking market share. The cost of
switching is equivalent to the cost of installing a competitor's system of
perf measurement which shouldn't be very high. If I were to guess, I'd say
this is a competitive market.

------
alainchabat
I'm a New Relic user, and looking for a cheaper managed monitoring solution.

I've checked Datadog but their pricing is a bit outrageous.

Anyone has any other solution to recommend?

~~~
brianwawok
Following because I actually started browsing APM software this week. I
haven’t used it in 5 or more years... seems the same players, except with
higher prices (notice how every price is now “contact me”)

Are there any reasonable APM software that can monitor a small k8s cluster for
a few hundred a month? I built my own really simple “free” APM, but would
rather buy something than sink 100 more hours into it. But I’m not spending
$7,000 a month to monitor a handful of servers. Don’t need 6 billion graphs
and monitors like data dog does

------
Redsquare
Good riddance, aggressive sales, expensive...not much more to add.

~~~
snuxoll
Expensive is an understatement - when Dynatrace is cheaper you know you have
missed the mark.

------
apple4ever
Maybe New Relic shouldn't do silly things like charge for monitoring
development environments.

I used New Relic, and its a pretty great product. But that left a bad taste in
my mouth.

They also kept deprecating services causing more work.

------
LordFast
There's no need to go to war with someone if you can plant the seeds of a
toxic mindset, and then watch them tear themselves apart instead.

------
purplezooey
If you are telling your employees to "...work harder" this is a failure of
management in the product mix and roadmap. But the "solution" is always, as it
seems to be here, to hire a new round of tired executive faces and layoff a
bunch of people.

------
crb002
This on the heels of a stock sale. The board needs a new CEO and they should
offer Lew a position leading sales and out of product.

------
jariel
So I think this is 'how not to do it' for a few reasons.

1) This kind of thing has to be done in person. Writing angry emails from
above will only have the effect of getting people upset.

2) Scolding people about 'not working hard enough' is lacking in insight.
'Hard work' is probably not the issue, almost certainly, it's structural etc.
- which is to say - it's probably more 'managements' fault than anything.
Which implies a hefty does of hypocrisy.

So the message should have been mostly about 'the problems we're facing, what
some underlying issues are, and a plan for addressing them' and how everyone
has a responsibility to participate.

At most - if there is a legitimate problem of distractions or slagging off ...
he can hint at it and that's about it. But only in the context of material
plan and assuming responsibility himself for the overall concerns.

3) It's fair for a CEO to be concerned about staff trying to take on 'too much
concern' for their ostensible political causes - but - he should not deny that
a) his staff feels as though the issue is important and b) the company, on
some level has a responsibility to be a good corporate actor.

So what he can do, first, validate their real concerns instead of dismissing
them, _explain_ why social responsibility for these things are often an
individual thing to be done outside work and why organisations generally are
not in and of themselves political or issue oriented, but also indicate some
things the company can do to be 'good corporate actors' in the context of
these issues.

To put a different way, it's not a corporations job to 'sponsor protests' for
example, but it definitely is a corporations responsibility to make sure they
are 'not being racist' within their own operations and relations. In fact
'political action' is often secondary to the real, material actions which in
and of themselves are 'root causes'. For example 'not being racist' is much
more important that 'going to a protest' because if we all behaved
appropriately, such problems would arise much less often.

Surely there are at least _some_ things the company could do to improve their
actions as a group, which I think would in fact be _more relevant and
material_ to the concerns of some of the staffers anyhow. By implementing some
appropriate measures, and indicating that 'this is actually the best way to
address such problems' \- he's both making his company better at the same time
as addressing their real and emotional concerns.

~~~
coldcode
For one they could improve their product. Every suggestion I made was ignored,
despite us being one of their larger customers. I even told them how to
implement what I wanted but never heard anything further. I wish we would go
elsewhere as their product is not sufficient. Maybe the problem starts at the
CEO not the developers.

~~~
jariel
Fully agree, I think that would be the overall implication of 'we need to do
better' impetus of the CEO. But "I even told them how to implement what I
wanted but never heard anything further." ... every company has a million
voices saying 'what they want', it's usually not possible, and if there is no
process or he process was not followed for feedback, you're not necessarily
going to get a response. I worked at a large corp and would get 'I want this'
in some form or another every time I spoke to customers or partners, which was
at least weekly, for example.

------
jacquesm
Newrelic, isn't that one of those companies whose Javascript never makes it
past my blockers? I never liked tracking companies to begin with, this
internal memo makes me like them even less. The management should introspect a
bit more rather than blame their employees, if a company fails in comparison
to their competitors that is usually not something the employees have nearly
as much influence over as the management does.

This CEO should look in the mirror and wonder what _he_ could do to improve
things.

~~~
spoopyskelly
> This CEO should look in the mirror and wonder what he could do to improve
> things.

He is trying to improve things by telling his employees to get back to work
and stop pearl clutching.

~~~
jacquesm
Prediction: that won't work. If people are not productive or distracted by
other issues that is a sign there is something wrong with the company culture.
You won't fix that by yelling at your employees, you fix it by addressing the
root cause.

------
ponker
This is a dumb email from the CEO because it makes the company look bad to the
_peers of employees_. There are plenty of companies who don’t care about
racism, they say the right things and move on changing nothing, allowing
people who work there to still hold their heads high at dinner parties.
However if you have to be the person who works at the place where the “CEO
doesn’t care about racism” that’s a lot harder to do.

The winning move here is to say the right things with a somber face regardless
of the strategy you intend to execute.

~~~
mhoad
I was about to say that last paragraph seemed like a bad take but it seems to
work for Facebook I guess.

