For those who previously worked at CDW, I’d appreciate hearing which VAR you’ve joined and how your experience compares to your time at CDW. Many of us are exploring opportunities within VAR organizations that place a stronger emphasis on coworker value and overall culture, and your insight would be extremely helpful.
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@19p WWT/Softchoice here. It is going great! I am super happy to be at a non-publicly-traded "VAR" after spending my first 12 years at one that ran by the quarter (so they couldn't invest to grow).
The cultures are high-trust and very compatible. Sales targets achievable. Partnerships top-tier. And, most importantly:
WE ARE HIRING!!! WE ARE GROWING AND NEED GOOD PEOPLE!
WWT Side: https://recruiting.adp.com/srccar/public/RTI.home?c=2166501&d=WWTExternalCareerSite
SFTC Side: https://careers.softchoice.com/
Gonna be tough in this environment - not only is the business landscape tough but you have tons of folks at the same time looking and competing for jobs. I feel bad because folks will have experiences that are unique to the VAR space such as XYZ Presales.
SHI had layoffs as well although not as sizable. The VAR space has been difficult - customers haven't needed Servers, SAN boxes, etc. as nearly as much before - a lot of movement towards Cloud and SaaS. Broadcom's takeover of VMware ki-led a lot of Partner opportunities. So this is where Managed Services & Pro Services comes into play - which CDW had the idea to bring on Sirius but the timing & integration was just messed up.
That's the challenge where CDW tried to be the be all VAR and things started collapsing around - both internal mistakes/blunders and external market forces.
Zones picked up some CDW folks over the past 2 years as they tried to reinvent themselves - I've no idea how they're doing but they had the same problems as CDW, even worse earlier on in the cycle. This included the fact that Zones in the past hired heavily overseas including Pakistan.
Softchoice seems to be doing well - they remind me of a young smaller CDW. They seem to have have a good, fun vibe - part of it could be because they are Canadian based and so maybe has a cooler corp culture -- but then hopefully on the other hand World Wide Technology who bought them, don't mess them up.
But look at the Channel Partner space --- as well as smaller niche market sellers. Don't think just "VARs' but solution sellers who have a solution to sell/market. A company that say has a Solution + Services offering to Healthcare market as just one of thousands of examples....or work with a Vendor who is a CDW Partner - I have seen that happen with numerous ex-CDW coworkers who were laid off the past 3 years. Broaden out to all sorts of these opportunities because the traditional VAR market is tough and declining with few new opportunities.
The big VARs are cheerleaders for AI - but yet can't keep up with it with helping customers strategize, plan and deploy AI solutions. We could barely do it well with Cloud a few years ago! We tried slapping Managed Services + Pro Services with a couple of acquisitions but it didn't carry and weren't nimble and innovative enough with the big CDW elephant in the room. So CDW tried to do little bit of everything. Try other Services orgs or Vendors that have greater focus.
@gg Good thing you will have all that money. You will need it to cover your new health issues after the new culture burns you out and tosses you on the curb like last weeks trash.
“ place a stronger emphasis on coworker value and overall culture” aka losing money. Play survivor to win bi--hes.
@fq I’d agree. A month ago I would have laughed at this comment.
SHI was never a consideration of mine, but at least it hasn’t intentionally plowed itself into an iceberg.
@fm shi lookin ahhh
VARs are a thing of the past