7 ms·

I am Hertz Alumni, 2011-2016. We had a great group of engineers and product people, many of us far too talented to be in company like what hertz turned into. We

I am Hertz Alumni, 2011-2016. We had a great group of engineers and product people, many of us far too talented to be in company like what hertz turned into. We were under the leadership of an incredible division head and most of the folks in our group felt a deep sense of loyalty to her. Nearly all of us, including that division head, are gone now, mostly laid off. If you poll any random Hertz alumnus, the story you're likely to hear is "we had a great team and incompetent senior management." To us, there is a quote in a different bloomberg article from last week [1] which strikes us as accurate. Attributed to Maryanne Keller, who is referred to in this article, it says: > 'It’s a saga about gross mismanagement,” said Maryann Keller, a longtime auto- > industry consultant who was on the board of Dollar Thrifty when Hertz acquired > the company. “It could have been salvaged had he picked the right management,” > she said, referring to Icahn.' Icahn lost $1.6b. Thousands of us lost our jobs. But these C-suiters sailed the company to bankruptcy over five years, each of them extracting 7 or 8 figure bonuses. The CIO who laid us all off, for example, received $6.5 million compensation that year [2]. (Sidenote, the work we were doing was replaced with Accenture consultants, who couldn't handle it, screwing up so bad they ended up in court [3].) One former colleague of mine wrote a post on LinkedIn suggesting Icahn was the unwitting victim of untenable debt situation, and while he may be correct that the debt made it difficult, Icahn can read a balance sheet and he understood the situation. I can't speak about Marinello's performance, but I agree that the problem dates back to 2014 or even earlier. People have a widespread belief that Frissora was flying too close to the sun, driven by his aggressive personality. Despite his flaws, he had a great team of people who kept the business running, and it wasn't Frissora who fired them all. Nobody, it turns out, was a fan of him. But everyone agrees he was far better than the gang of unusually wealthy miscreants that Icahn replaced him with. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-27/icahn-files-13d-a-on-hertz https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-27/icahn-fil... [2] https://www.cio.com/article/3404205/how-much-do-cios-really-make-pay-packages-of-25-fortune-500-execs-revealed.html https://www.cio.com/article/3404205/how-much-do-cios-really-... [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19737070 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19737070

rb808 6y ago
2014 - its interesting this is when headquarters moved from NJ to Florida. Its a bit like SV - are California/North East expensive because its worth it? I'm not sure if Hertz went downhill because of the move or you just can't run a smart company from Florida.
- khuey 6y ago
  You can probably run a smart company from Florida if you start there but can you transplant a company from New Jersey to Florida and expect it to survive? These corporate HQ moves don't seem to work out well (e.g. Boeing)
  - blaser-waffle 6y ago
    Physical locations matters. I feel like we're appreciating the advantages -- but also the deep shortcomings -- of remote work and distant offices.
- njt 6y ago
  I have a family member that worked for Hertz during the time of this move. After a lot of consideration and soul searching, they decided not to move down because both his family and his wife’s family were in the North East U.S. and they had small kids who wouldn’t have adjusted well to a cross-country move. So somewhat reluctantly, he resigned his job with Hertz and stayed back while the rest of the team moved down. It was difficult for him because he had worked there for a number of years to reach the level that he was at and essentially reset when he switched jobs. Anyway, a short time after that, he found out that everyone he worked with and had made the move to Florida had been laid off by Hertz. He dodged a bullet on that one. I always suspected the move was a strategic-but-unethical one by Hertz to terminate a whole bunch of people without drawing too much attention to themselves. (Older employees with families typically don’t make moves like that, and you can easily get rid of the rest after.)
  - stevetursi 6y ago
    Can confirm, I have many anecdotes of folks who moved and regretted it, and people who found new local jobs who were grateful. It was gut-wrenching for almost everyone. Our department was an exception. We got to stay in NJ (they laid us all off two years later.)

rb808 6y ago

2014 - its interesting this is when headquarters moved from NJ to Florida. Its a bit like SV - are California/North East expensive because its worth it? I'm not sure if Hertz went downhill because of the move or you just can't run a smart company from Florida.

khuey 6y ago
You can probably run a smart company from Florida if you start there but can you transplant a company from New Jersey to Florida and expect it to survive? These corporate HQ moves don't seem to work out well (e.g. Boeing)
- blaser-waffle 6y ago
  Physical locations matters. I feel like we're appreciating the advantages -- but also the deep shortcomings -- of remote work and distant offices.
njt 6y ago
I have a family member that worked for Hertz during the time of this move. After a lot of consideration and soul searching, they decided not to move down because both his family and his wife’s family were in the North East U.S. and they had small kids who wouldn’t have adjusted well to a cross-country move. So somewhat reluctantly, he resigned his job with Hertz and stayed back while the rest of the team moved down. It was difficult for him because he had worked there for a number of years to reach the level that he was at and essentially reset when he switched jobs. Anyway, a short time after that, he found out that everyone he worked with and had made the move to Florida had been laid off by Hertz. He dodged a bullet on that one. I always suspected the move was a strategic-but-unethical one by Hertz to terminate a whole bunch of people without drawing too much attention to themselves. (Older employees with families typically don’t make moves like that, and you can easily get rid of the rest after.)
- stevetursi 6y ago
  Can confirm, I have many anecdotes of folks who moved and regretted it, and people who found new local jobs who were grateful. It was gut-wrenching for almost everyone. Our department was an exception. We got to stay in NJ (they laid us all off two years later.)