Wednesday, March 17, 2004

Why are executives leaving PeopleSoft?

Since last June, when Oracle made its hostile bid for PeopleSoft, seven high level executives have left or have announced they will leave PeopleSoft. The departures include two former PeopleSoft GMs: Joe Davis, former head of PeopleSoft's CRM unit, who is going to run a software start-up, Coremetrics, and Doug Merrit, former head of PeopleSoft's Human Capital Management group, who has not yet announced a new position. Other executives that have left include North America VP Kyle Bowker, CRM marketing executive Brad Wilson, and Peter Gassner, the former GM of PeopleSoft's tools group, who left last July to take a position with Salesforce.com, a CRM competitor to PeopleSoft. In addition, Anne Jordan, PeopleSoft's general counsel, has given notice and plans to leave sometime this year. PeopleSoft's director of public relations is also gone (but I can't find the name).

Industry analysts speculate that concern for job security -- heightened by Oracle's threatening bid -- is behind the departures. PeopleSoft contends that the turnover is normal for a company the size of PeopleSoft and that the departures just show how talented PeopleSoft's executives are.

I might also suggest that a little turnover is good sign that a recovery is underway in the technology sector, with new interesting and challenging positions opening up for these executives to jump to.

CNET has the story.

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