I work for The Nielsen Co. and absolutly agree with some of the decisions Habib is making. Altough I absolutly DO NOT agree with outsourcing overseas why wouldn't the company do what they can to save money and make a better profit. Isn't that the point to make money?

One of the major cuts Habib is making is managment and supervisors. Which currently Nielsen has a 5 to 1 ratio of employees to supervisors/managers. With some people managers that only manage 2 people. And those 2 people manage 3 or 4. Which is crazy. If we are going to pay these people managers big money they sould actually be managing people. Habib's plan is to make the ratio 10 to 1. Whith this about 2000 US people managers within Nielsen will be demoted, which will in turn cause others to lose their jobs. But that is what should be done. Another cut he is making is removing and restructuring jobs so we dont have people checking others work. It should all be done right the first time and not need to be double checked.

Another major change that is being made is to allign US, Eourpan and Canidan systems. Which will again eliminate redundancy and make everything run smother.

REALLY think about this, if you were the owner what would you do. Let everyone keep their jobs just to make them happy or make the changes necessary to improve your company and make more profits.

I really hope this all works out for the company.

Sadly, Dave Calhoun and Mitchell Habib, from GE, are now turning their tricks at The Nielsen Company. It’s a shame that a profitable company must go through the cultural destruction that is imminent. Mitchell Habib has announced a ten percent layoff. The layoff has begun. Already a senior engineer with US patents and twenty five years of service has been released. No one is safe.

Morale is low and diving. Many people do not want to come in to work anymore. The new org chart puts most of us in centers of excellence. This term is code-speak for a crushing micro-management. Anyone faced with a Habib center of excellence should look for another job, else suffer the misery.

The entire company is being reorganized. IT departments are being dissolved. Many managers have already been released from Susan Whiting's organization. We expect more next week. Mitchell Habib's cuts are expected May 11 or May 14. The main thrust of the first cuts is to make room for the outsourcing to TCS and CTS in India. Already the staff has had to endure mandatory Cultural Diversity Awareness training. Of course the only culture presented was Hindu Indian. Now there are new Indians showing up in the building every day.

Even if you survive the initial cuts you are not safe. The initial cuts provide severance pay. Following these will be the cuts based upon forced ranking. These people will get no severance pay. They will be fired. The firings will continue monthly, indefinitely. I think anyone who went to business school has learned that force rankings kill off team work. Forced rankings drive staff to fend for themselves because they want someone else to get ranked in the bottom ten percent. So people are likely to withhold information and avoid helping others since the failure of a teammate helps to ensure your own job. The new GE culture is arriving at The Nielsen Company. It’s so disgusting.

Expect to see the data quality decrease. The Indians will not give a darn about Nielsen quality. They will be rotating through their assignments on to an assignment at GE or elsewhere, climbing their own ladders. Nielsen subject matter expertise will dwindle and vanish. I for one am planning to leave as soon as possible and take my unique knowledge with me. No one will force rank me! And I will not help Mitchell Habib succeed in this debacle.

Over the years I have noticed that outsiders ALWAYS UNDERESTIMATE the uniqueness of the TV ratings business. Time after time consultants underestimate and projects go far over budget and fail. Only the insiders can complete project execution. This time the entire company is being downsized and I doubt that it will impress the market for the promised IPO in three years. Dave Calhoun and Mitchell Habib are going to live to regret the mess they are making. And many loyal Nielsen people are feeling like a number, losing their loyalty and looking for the door.

I am sick of corporate America. Will this hell ever end?

Thanks habbib U r doing fenastic work for IT people.

I do not understand why everybody is lifting their finger to TCS, TCS is a great organisation and one of the largest IT/BPO service providers in the world. Nielsen runs a business and they will mind only profit, thats quite natural and whoever is more efficient (or fittest) will get the opprtunity to serve Nielsen. Every company wants to minimise cost and maximise proft, Nielsen is not an exception.

Now, the question is whether Nielsen should cut jobs to make more profit. Actually, Nielsen is not only cutting jobs, its giving jobs also but in India and I think that is a symbol of a truly global company. After all, we all know the theory of Survival of the Fittest by Charles Robert Darwin, whoever is more fit will survive is this competitive world. I think we should not be afraid of the competition, we should face it confidently.

Thanks & regards

They just hired a whole bunch of "executives". According to their CVs they all worked at GE and then Citi. The employees are going to get screwed over while the executives are going to rape the company and turn around and flip it. They're going to lose all their big accounts because those companies are not going to get accurate data from TCS. The people from India are good at working from scripts and doing exactly what they are told but are clueless when it comes to anything outside of the script.

Right now their all scrambling because Lou Dobbs called them out on CNN. Check out the videos at CNN.com - CNN Videos - searchword: nielsen

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2008/06/23/ldt.tucker.outsourcing.jobs.cnn?iref=videosearch

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2008/06/25/ldt.tucker.nielsen.outsourcing.cnn?iref=videosearch