WM has been mismanaged for years and continues to be. They are riding an incredible wave in the energy sector, and it's masking some serious issues.
The original issue was a UK-centric HQ that wants to be global but still tries to run everything from the UK + takes very little interest in anyone's opinion below the SVP level (was the problem 5+ years ago, still is the problem now). Some individuals have tried to do better, but largely, you will never interact with leadership unless you're SVP or above. No 360 reviews and feedback on the business/management is never actually integrated. Theme: Numbers run everything; people don't matter.
Then it was horribly mismanaged by Verisk, which tried to run a consulting organization like one of their insurance data companies and that was never going to work (constrained the growth of the org and made a lot of great people leave around the pandemic time). Theme (again): Numbers run everything; people don't matter.
Now owned by Veritas (private equity), which has "invested" in the growth of the company by leaning HEAVILY into BD and sales, but has also decided to heavily underinvest in salary/people/etc. Veritas's only goal is to increase profitability (sell more, drive down internal costs) to a point where they can make money on WM through a sale or taking us public in 2026 (timeline is a guess, but it's fairly obvious). Nothing else matters. Nothing.
Examples:
1. They've frozen the salaries of consulting leadership for 2 years and put in place a laughable commission plan to make up for it. Salaries were already below market (now frozen), and the commission plan is 1/5 as lucrative as other consulting firms (not even comparing to Big 3 - comparing to EY, Deloitte, etc.). It's a joke, but it's communicated as if it makes up for frozen salaries. No one is staying for $30-50K extra when they can go get that in a base salary increase right now.
2. They pushed off 2024 year-end promotions to September and still didn't allow some of those obvious ones to go through. They'll lose (are losing) people because of that.
3. They also release these updates (e.g., moving Q1 2025 promotions to Sept. 2025) via a simple email and pretend like it's normal - no communication. When you relay your team's concern over these changes, you get questioned, and they wonder why people are unhappy with them.
4. They've gutted internal support (finance/invoicing support, customer IT/tool support) and just piled those responsibilities onto their existing workforce. The internal systems for admin work (e.g., doing time, expenses, invoicing, BD tracking) are incredibly burdensome, and they have their best people (Directors, VPs, SVPs) spending double-digit hours in a week on low-value tactical admin work. That's not what your best people want to be doing, and that's not what will drive more growth.
5. This is all underpinning a massive uptick in BD/Revenue - something that is driven by people working incredibly hard to achieve (because OKRs demand the growth and leadership demands updates ~literally~ 2 - 3x a week on that growth), but no one besides top leadership with options will see value from that growth...
6. etc.
Theme (seeing a pattern?): Numbers run everything; people don't matter. Achieve growth, stop complaining.
Veritas has some of the smartest people I've ever met working for them, and they think that those same people can't see what they're doing - pushing off paying people by a few quarters, giving little "wins" like a commission plan to placate for a few months, etc...
The team understands what is happening - we're owned by Private Equity and the playbook is obvious. The problem is that 1) no one besides the top has skin in the game, and 2) the playbook is taking too long to execute. There is not enough share of the ultimate profit to keep people incentivized for the long term, and the cracks are beginning to show. Only the very top people who commit fully to revenue above all else will see the benefits of this growth, but you need everyone to sustain that growth.. not just the top few.
Maybe it will work and people will accept being wildly underpaid because the work is so interesting... but Veritas/WM is playing a massive game of chicken - trying to get to max profit and sell before employees realize it's not worth it.
The job market is very good for top energy professionals right now - particularly for the consulting and research that WM does - valuations, market sizing, and supply chain. People have lucrative options out there with companies that want to pay people what they're worth... and they're starting to realize it. The "max profit/ sales blitz/ low internal costs" strategy falls apart if all your best people leave.
