Softchoice reviews

The strategic direction of the organization is set every year during their annual kick-off. During my last year, the focus on services made complete sense...in theory. Unfortunately, the company lacked the vision, tools, resources and management talent required to carry-out the strategy. It wasn't until half way through the year until we all received a PowerPoint slide with a few fluffy value propositions that were intended to be an aid for all things services. Needless to say, the strategy wasn't executed. As the end of the year neared with the strategy hanging in the air without anything to support it, the company did what they needed to do: conduct layoffs and reorganize individual contributors. Management, of course, was left unscathed. The culture is very challenging. At the onset, it appears like a vibrant, social, work hard/play hard environment, but behind the thin layer of "drinks after work" lies a corporate culture seeded with arrogance. In the end, there were far too many "this doesn't feel right in my stomach" moments that finally prompted me to leave.

I was in services. In 2 years, I had 5 managers. Each one wanted to do something different. In fact, at the top of the services organization, there were 4 leaders in the period of time. The first one was removed by the others in senior leadership. I did not know him well, but it appeared that they felt intimidated since he was probably the only true leader in the company and had quite a following. He definitely had positive qualities that they don't. Then they brought in a good friend of theirs to run services who had been successful at a previous company. He said that it did not take him long to realize that he was sold a bill of goods and that he could not be successful at Softchoice. The third one was pretty sharp and seemed to understand the business very well. He had been successful in building a strong services practice at a company that Softchoice acquired. He said that Softchoice was breaking everything that he had created before the company was sold and left. The one that I am assuming is still currently leading the practice seems like a nice person. I do not know much about him since I left shortly after he took over. He was running IT previously before this move with, shall we say, mixed results. The top executives say that they want to transform the business, but seem to have a lack of direction and are not interested in learning from those that have been successful at other organizations.