Wood Mackenzie reviews

WM struggles with figuring out how to move from a research to a SaaS model. They have a very lucrative core research business but they struggled to figure out how to build new products and grow the top line. Failing to grow, they adopted the standard PE value-creation technique of cutting the bottom line. Tons of layoffs, especially in the US, to support hiring in India. This could still have been *okay* if they didn't botch the layoff process. It was a highly secretive initiative, even among some of the fairly senior folks, which meant that the layoffs were ultimately just names and salaries on a spreadsheet instead of thoughtful decisions around performance and capabilities. Additionally, the hiring in India was a nightmare. Hiring quotas were ludicrous (you could be asked to hire 12 people to "supplement" a 6-person team). Many candidates flunked even basic technical interviews. When there was pushback, leadership "fixed" the problem by forbidding interviews. We were told to just fire anyone who was unacceptable, which was also a challenge (and a waste of time). To be clear: there were plenty of good, talented hires in India, but it takes time to evaluate and find them. During my time there I saw many folks, including myself, who tried very hard to move an ancient ship in a new direction. However, there's tons of old, territorial politics that get in the way of improvement, and an enormous disconnect between the C-level and even middle management. WM was a good, arguably even great, place to work once... but during the end of my time there it was clear it was headed in the wrong direction. I hope the recent leadership changes are improving things but I can't speak to that either way.

I'm writing this after reading WM's response to a recent review. The pattern is both familiar and worth highlighting. When the reviewer raised specific issues like workload, compensation, leadership clarity, the response followed a script all us employees are now intimately familiar with: acknowledge vaguely, reframe legitimate problems as "perception" or communication failures, then punt the person through a bureaucratic maze. The WM responder to this particular review opened with self-congratulation about how "unlike many companies, we do respond to each one," and how they've "invested in quarterly surveys" and provide monthly overviews of Glassdoor feedback to leadership. They note WM's quarterly surveys and Glassdoor reviews provide "more regular pulse checks - even if sometimes it spotlights more work to do." Translation: WM collects more feedback than other companies, and even though that reveals more problems for us to deal with, we soldier on. Seriously???These aren't achievements. They're the minimum functions of a competent HR operation. Responding and collecting more data isn't the accomplishment. What you do with what you hear is what matters. Then came the condescension, something else we are very familiar with from our UK leadership. The reviewer called out that company responses sound AI-generated. The reply? "Try not to be too cynical..." Treating the problem as the reviewer's attitude rather than addressing the substance of what they raised. Read through the other WM responses and decide for yourself if any of it sounds genuine. The offered solution at the end: the ever present, go talk to your line manager, your HRBP and now the Head of ESG?? Someone raised concerns publicly, presumably because normal channels failed, and the answer is to add a third person to the escalation chain. How does that help? Finally, they recast workload and compensation concerns as "perception of increased expectations and workload." Not actual problems to solve, but messaging failures on their part... How a company responds to public critique says plenty...