Jimmy Pontzer’s Post

Today is a difficult day for many at Intuit. Friends and peers are going to be learning news about their employment, and then they will have to share that news with friends, co-workers, and family. I wanted to share some thoughts regardless of which camp you may be in. Friends or family - The departure may not have anything to do with the employee's performance. Sometimes decisions are made, and it's impossible to have all of the information - even if it's important to the decision. Assume the best and be a listening ear. - Even if the departure had nothing to do with the employee's performance, they may feel shame, embarrassment, loss, anger, frustration or they may feel relief. Regardless of their emotion, acknowledge it and don't tell them how to feel or when to be done feeling it. - Wait to ask the question, "what are you going to do?" or "what type of job do you want to pursue?" They don't know - they most likely wanted the job they had or they at least wanted the choice to leave the job they had. - Refrain from "everything happens for a reason" or "something better is around the corner" - they are platitudes meant to make you less uncomfortable. Be in the discomfort - it's okay. (Check out Lauren Daigle's You're Gonna Be Okay) If you're leaving Intuit.... - What was true about you as a person yesterday is still true today. A job doesn't define you or your core values. In the days ahead, as you reflect, document what is true about you, so that in the moments where you feel beaten up by the message delivered or disagree with the decision, you can rest on what is true and durable. - You don't have to rush to the next job - I know that fear may motivate you to do that, but set a timeline to give yourself the space to process and logically think through the next steps. It's not often in life that you can pause and truly decide where you want to go next - take the moment. - Spend a day, weekend, week, month - but recharge mentally and physically and be with those you love. In an effort to support anyone in the journey at Intuit or the Accounting Industry, I would love to support you whether it's a brainstorming/coaching conversation, a listening ear, or a connection that I may have. Please let me know.

As another day comes to an end for my colleagues, I am energized and humbled by the support pouring in from across the globe. Lay-offs done in an ethical, compassionate manner are perfectly normal and acceptable. The outrage sparked by Intuit’s words is deserved and was completely avoidable. Hubris, arrogance and entitlement took precedence over decency, compassion and values. After days of thought and lending voice to the injustice of Intuit’s actions, I am no closer to understanding how their behavior and messaging benefited anyone - including the company I used to be so proud to call my employer. I am on the backside of my life. The end is much closer than the beginning. As such, my passion on this matter is not because of any impact this might have on me. I honestly don’t care about that. I’m fine. But for those earlier in their lives - just starting to build their networks and reputations, new home owners, caring for young children and aging parents - or those later in their careers who can’t afford to retire but live in areas where jobs are scarce - they are the ones I raise my voice and fist for. I’ve been chatting with people from all over Intuit and my business network. They tell me how devastated and disgusted they are. Intuit employees say they feel that when people learn they work at Intuit others will wonder if they are one of them “less than.” Managers who didn’t realize that when they complied with instructions to change performance reviews on named employees weeks after they were submitted that they were being used to change employee records and dooming their colleagues jobs and to being labeled on the global stage as under performers when they actually were not. Those managers I’ve communicated with are guilt ridden that they did not stand up for their teams. And those are just the tip of the iceberg of the pain Intuit has caused with its senseless comments. As much as some may want me to shut up and let it go, I will keep this in the public consciousness. We cannot let Intuit sweep this under the rug while people struggle to differentiate themselves in a highly competitive marketplace that has been fed a tainted view of them. These people deserve better. Intuit must do better. I wish everyone a restful night. I hope we all find some sleep. For my part, after listening to struggles others are facing these last 4 days, I know whatever stressors I may have, they pale in comparison theirs. And I suspect tomorrow more will surface….. #intuit #intuitfailedemployees

So let me get this straight. Intuit is eliminating the roles of 10% of their workforce and nearly 60% of those laid off Intuit is publicly calling "Underperformers"? Where do I begin? So Intuit is admitting that: 6% of their global workforce are underperformers so instead of dealing with them on an individual basis and coaching them up or leading them out you decided to handle it through a mass public execution? You made it INCREDIBLY clear that 60% of these folks who are dumped into the marketplace to pursue other roles are UNDERPERFORMERS. How do you think that's going to help them "be more successful outside of Intuit”? You think Meta, Google or any other Bay area company are going to be excited about interviewing them? You then go on to state that you are going to hire 1800 NEW employees in FY25. How excited do you think candidates are to join Intuit after you have publicly humiliated the previous 1800 employees they would be replacing? It is absolutely clear what management guru Tom Peters said decades ago “Forget loyalty. Or at least loyalty to one’s corporation. Try loyalty to your network instead.”

“I hear a lot of great things about Intuit. Is it really true?”   Whenever I meet people from other companies at tech meetups and conferences, this is one of the most common questions I get asked. My answer is always the same. “Big yes, whatever you have heard is mostly true”.   After working for more than 4 years (the longest in my career), I thought of writing a gratitude post.   Intuit is undoubtedly one of the most employee-centric companies I have ever seen. It embraces the principle of “Take care of your employees and employees will take care of the customers”.   While the secret sauce behind it is something that is a result of decades of focused effort toward giving employees a platform to do the best work of their lives, here are a few things that still amaze me every single day 1. The second half of every day is declared as no-meeting hours. That gives engineers dedicated time to do what they love the most, write code without interruptions. 2. Every 6 months, there is a week-long hackathon called “Global Engineering Days” where engineers choose what they want to work on for that week. 3. Additionally, all Intuit employees are encouraged to use 10% of their working hours as unstructured time devoted to projects they are passionate about. 4. Intuit has an employee assistance program that offers free, confidential, evidence-based mental health care for employees and their families. Along the same lines, Intuit also has another unique benefit called “Safe space” which benefits people who feel different because of their gender, sexuality, or other aspects of their identity. They can take help from a trained supportive professional while maintaining complete confidentiality. 5. Intuit also offers a Tuition assistance program to support employees to continue their education in subjects related to their current position or career development at Intuit. Employees can reimburse expenses up to 4 lakh per calendar year. 6. Additionally, there is a well-being for life program that supports employees in being healthy in all aspects of their lives. Employees can reimburse expenses up to 60k INR in a calendar year. 7. Every year Intuit contributes 4.5% of your fixed pay to your NPS account, which is over and above your CTC (and tax-free). Most of the monetary awards are tax-protected. For example, suppose you get a monetary award of 10k INR. Based on your tax slab, the company pays more so that after-tax deduction you get 10k INR in hand.   This isn’t all. Scroll down to the “Possibilities section” on the below page to read more. https://lnkd.in/g2DP4tMC   #EmployeeBenefits #EngineeringCulture #IntuitLife

There Intuit, I fixed it for you. Most people have heard that Intuit has decided to lay off 1800 people. "It is never easy to say goodbye to our colleagues and friends and we are committed to treating everyone who has been impacted by these changes with the compassion and respect they deserve." OK, this makes sense. But then.... "We’ve significantly raised the bar on our expectations of employee performance, resulting in approximately 1,050 employees leaving the company who are not meeting expectations and who we believe will be more successful outside of Intuit." But my honest question that came that came from Ron Shevlin's post was why sneak this little passive aggressive comment into the post? There was absolutely no need to add that additional nugget. It added no context or value other than to say "we're laying off a ton of people but actually for some of them...it's their fault not ours so it's not so bad" Talk about walking into a trap of your own design. How does this get through marketing/legal/executive team without someone saying "maybe this isn't the smartest idea when dealing with people's livelihoods?" I mean how does this even get past a spouse or family member without someone bringing this up. And are we going to just gloss over the fact that they are moving the goal post mid-game so they can justify laying off more individuals to fix their balance sheet? How do company executives continually fail in their responsibilities yet somehow continually blame their employees for those failures? *sigh* the way brands continue to shoot themselves in the foot when it comes to laying off their people is just mind boggling to me.

I can’t stop thinking about the 1000+ Intuit employees laid off last week.  In an open letter https://lnkd.in/e_27Xh4W under the heading ‘Taking Care of our People’ the CEO say’s this: “We’ve significantly raised the bar on our expectations of employee performance, resulting in approximately 1,050 employees leaving the company who are not meeting expectations and who we believe will be more successful outside of Intuit.” Even if that is the case I cannot understand how publicly labelling people you have just laid off as ‘under-performers’ benefits anyone.  Certainly not the colleagues who will find it hard enough to find another job in an already tough market.  Or the colleagues left behind wondering if that’s how they’ll be treated if they don’t meet expectations in 12 months’ time. Many years ago, I was asked to lead the communication for a redundancy programme that would affect some of my closest colleagues. Bound by a strict NDA, it was quite stressful listening to coworkers discussing their future plans—weddings, house moves, holidays—while knowing what was about to be announced. I managed that communication with great care, planning every detail of the announcement as if I were one of the impacted colleagues.   I also wanted colleagues who were staying to approve of the way their colleagues were treated when leaving the business.   It made all the difference to the colleague experience.  I often share this story in presentations about change. It’s where I first experienced managing change in a people-centric way and it’s been the template for how I’ve managed redundancy programmes ever since.   Laying people off is never easy, but the very least we can do is remind ourselves of the values we espouse and allow people to exit with compassion, dignity and respect. I’d love to hear what you think.  

In practice, what Intuit has done is paint all 1,800 employees as underperformers. What a petty thing to do to these people on their way out, particularly the 750 people who don't fall under the "not meeting expectations" banner. Think about it: Not only did these employees lose their jobs, but (for a time) their reputations too. This damages their future job prospects and further curbs their earning potential -- a double punch to the gut. You learn a lot about a company by how they handle terminations, however necessary. This approach represents a certain obliviousness, if not arrogance, in the leadership ranks. I'm not sure Sasan Goodarzi is a good steward for Intuit. https://lnkd.in/gKYWCg93

Intuit is cutting 1800 jobs but not to cut costs ➡ rather to focus on re-investing in the future (powered by AI). Some interesting articles and takes in the comments about the Silicon Valley tech job market continuing to take hits. Intuit CEO Sasan Goodarzi is quoted with some clear strategy behing the layoffs: "“We must accelerate our innovation and investments in the areas that are most important to our future success,” Sasan Goodarzi, Intuit’s chief executive officer, stated in a blog post. Artificial intelligence applications that Intuit can deliver to its customers are among the primary new areas of focus. Intuit’s quest to stake out new territories in the AI world is a key catalyst behind the job cuts. “This is part of the company’s strategy to accelerate innovation in our most critical growth areas, including GenAI driven ‘done for you’ experiences across all of our products, embedding AI in all our customer experiences, enabling our customers to manage their money end-to-end, and accelerate our mid-market offerings and international growth,” Kali Fry, an Intuit spokesperson, stated in comments emailed to this news organization. Intuit also decided to eliminate 215 jobs in San Diego, bringing the California-wide total to 559 lost positions. “We do not do layoffs to cut costs, and that remains true in this case,” Goodarzi stated in this week’s blog post. “The changes we are making today enable us to allocate additional investments to our most critical areas to support our customers and drive growth.”" This strategy is being widely adopted as new startups are gobbling up captital and potential market share. Products like QuickBooks Online are the industry standard for SMB accounting, but competitors are appearing left and right. What do you think? Is Intuit making the correct investment to reboot part of it's workforce?

I have never been so proud to have left a company as I am now. I took a risk taking a pay cut but found it necessary for my mental health and self esteem. I had a gaslighting manager who cared about administrative throughput rather than developer productivity. Seriously, if you made individual Jira tickets for clicking little switches on a config site and closed them out, you got more kudos than the engineer that made and setup the switches under a single ticket. There was a culture of productivity at all costs, championed by managers, reflected by menial metric collection. The resentment towards upper management was always there. It was kept at bay by some of my mentors; people who I admire and respect that taught me how to navigate corporate culture and keep my head down and work. I hope they are still there or are in a better company and position in their life; one where their freedom to speak their minds isn’t hampered by a looming work visa keeping them on their toes. Now, three companies later, I am on a core algorithm team writing some of the best code of my life. People that know me know I don’t like denigrating old employers and rarely do; even Intuit, despite what this post implies. Don’t get me wrong; I had good and fun times at Intuit. Those memories I’ll always hold dear and the skills I’ve learned are invaluable to my career. I have been laid off in a company before, but that was never as emotionally impacting as I’m seeing now. Now, I am the happiest I’ve been in my career thus far with a company that sets me and my coworkers up for success and discusses ideas, not people. Shame on you, Intuit. “We care and give back”, my ass.

I see a lot of posts today about how Intuit has called over 1000 laid-off workers "underperformers". While I think the company as a whole certainly does underperform, given how terrible TurboTax is, when you look at the real story, you know it has nothing to do with employee or product performance. It's another pinheaded pivot to "AI", and if it's anything like every other big corporation's reactive approach, it's going to use AI in the most useless way possible. I was already fed up with TurboTax because the horrible automation layer had completely swallowed up the necessary base of manual control. As a result of their terrible design, I had to call tech support which meant "upgrading" my plan when I didn't want to. Did I ever get a refund for that? Nope. And now, they want to make the automation layer even more abstracted with an LLM while likely making manual control even more impossible? THAT is what this layoff is about. Intuit products are about to get even worse. And it's that smoothbrained move that Intuit is using the "underperformer" excuse to cover up. It really is outrageous. So what are YOU going to do about it? Personally, this is it for me. I used TurboTax for almost a decade and since I run my own business, I have always had complicated taxes that necessitate their premium products. Well, that ends today. I am going to switch to... anything else. So, please sign in here if you plan to quit using any of these products: - TurboTax - Credit Karma - QuickBooks - MailChimp - Pro Tax And share this post. Get the word out. Don't just complain. Companies don't care about that.