eBay EachNet and Tom finally Getting Married
The headline shouts ... eBay abandons China! ... . I’ve been predicting this for quite a while ... (could still be a rumour, but it rings true) ...
What to say? except that it was precisely because the current eBay management finally recognized the mistake of not hiring locals that it decides to partner with Tom.com. Hopefully, this employee will have a better time under a management team that understands the Chinese a little better (the “dragon lady” is from HK ... so not completely local). This is the right move strategically. As for UMpay, its a $100M hedge to keep Paypal China relevant ... (cant argue with deep throat though that its structured like a bribe).
BTW ... “Meg Whitman is Ebay Mao Zedong” . . never in my lifetime I would expect someone to be compared to Mao (semi) negatively . . times have changed! ...
Why Re-Orgs Suck
Re-orgs can be good. But I dont care. The topic of the post is why re-orgs suck. (next one will be why re-org is cool but thats later). Anyways, The last week has been a banner week for re-orgs. Couple of very important companies went through reorgs - one very publicly and the other more privately ... (one starting with Y and the other starting with e). Speaks volumes about the number of mercaneries in these companies on the way these re-orgs are handled so differently.
So, here we go, why re-orgs suck:
1. just when you finally learn how to kiss your manager’s ass, he/she gets re-assigned to China for an ultra “secret project” to take on Baidu/Alibaba/QQ/NetEase etc (aka career suicide)
2. just when you are finally ready to present your “strategy” deck, the new presentation template got re-vamped too (to web friendly colors)
3. packing cubes
4. headhunters who call and offer you your last job (from 3 years ago)
5. Make executives feel useful (and consulting firms paid), but the TPS reports stays
6. You spent the last few ounces of your political capital re-aligning yourself with the “hot new” VP just to have him be left with 10 reports after the re-org. (you are one of the ten)
7. Newly re-orged VP takes over your project and declares himself (and the project) the savior - while you are left packing your cube
8. Farewell emails
9. Techcrunch didnt publish your memo ... and no one gave it a cool nickname. In fact, people just called it an email ... it never reached the status of a “memo”, much less one with a cool nickname.
10. New asses to kiss