Ok, the day after.. Yesterday, CSStars fired about 11% of the workforce. 40 in Amarillo, 30 in Chicago, and a few others around the country. The reductions seem to be centered on groups who work with products that we will no longer develop though still support. FNOL and MedBill are mentioned by name in the press release that the CEO Bill Diaz read to us in the afternoon. Something will happen today about how we will be reassigned and then another All Hands meeting tomorrow morning. Combined with the 46 in the Polish office that was closed last week and ~20 in the New York office close several weeks ago the company is ~20% smaller. Certain operations that had been done in-house like custom solutions work and testing will be done by an Indian outsourcing firm who is expected to hire ~50 people. The products will be refocused with the next release of the flagship, Stars Enterprise. Another version of Enterprise is expected to release this year.
These changes seem positive though difficult and very sharp. Products with large capital outlays and dubious futures have been removed. Expensive and legally sticky situations have been avoid by closing whole offices.
The one troubling aspect is the expectation that outsourcing will take care of a portion of the companies responsibilities that it has always found very difficult. Magically, it seems India will just take care of this. No voice has been given to the extraordinary amount of work in requirements analysis, specifications, documentation, and User Acceptance that has to go into out-of-house development of in-house products. This would be better “outsourced” to a small city in the Pacific timezone.
Hopefully, this week will mark the end of the drastic shifts in people.