Symantec Employees Forewarn New CEO

On Monday, Symantec CEO John Thompson announced that he is stepping down as CEO in early spring (although retaining his position on the Board). This perhaps is a good move for Thompson considering that his employee approval rating was just 38% which means that he is one of the lowest rated CEOs according to the rankings on the Glassdoor CEO Watch List.

Enrique T. Salem, Symantec’s current chief operating officer, will take the lead and replace Thompson as the top executive at the security software firm. 

So as a courtesy to the CEO, employees are offering up advice on what the company needs:

“Pay your employees better. Demand more – there are too many people that are doing too little, and when job cuts happen you need to cut them first. Other more competent people are ready to step into their place.”

“Stop attempting to force tech support in India down customers throats. Allow support engineers to specialize in specific product areas so they can become experts. Attempting to have support engineers know something about everything causes support cases longer to get resolved. Passing a customer who has multiple issues to different support technicians who are experts in the product area is not bad, it can help resolve a case faster. This is an example of a customer not necessarily knowing what is best for them when the complain about getting sent to different support engineers to resolve multiple problems.”

“Pick something you want Symantec to be the best at, and execute to that goal. Being the most diverse, least integrated conglomerate of little software companies in the world does not count as a goal. Best consumer anti-virus company, or best enterprise storage software company are valid goals. Execute toward one of those goals with innovation, action, integrity and respect, and customers will reward Symantec with market share.”

“Please come down into the trenches and see that the vast majority of your employees want to be better employees and they want to progress, just as you did, but in their own area of expertise. Please offer us training and viable career paths within the company.”

By adhering to some good constructive advice from employees, Salem’s future as CEO could be an all around positive experience. We’ll keep you updated on Symantec reviews and Symantec Salary details once Salem takes the reigns in April as to how employees are responding to his approach to company leadership.

Stay tuned…