Fire Baldoni? Yes / No

Baldoni will be here long after the rest of us leave in frustration. At the rate of his promotions, he will be in charge of R&D before I get my next raise.

 

The whole place is crazy, makes little sense. Baldoni in charge of the bulk of MDR plus PCD? It's nuts.

 

This board has become dead. Everyone is afraid of saying what is on their mind.

Despite the talk about flattening the organization, it's only now getting more layers, more complicated, more VPs in areas where there were few. More people in senoir positions who never had anything to do with discovering or developing a real drug, but who get rid of those who have done it, who know what it takes. Too many people in charge who can't make decisions, who dither, but then get rewarded since they go to so many external meetings, chair external conferences as protection to being told they need to work for GSK, not to be traveling the globe to promote themselves.

Sr managers are succeeding while GSK R&D is floundering. So much has to be reinvented, rediscovered, setting the organization back years, decades, and may never catch-up or recover, but will continue its demonstrated decline in sales, lack of new products, lower profits etc.

 

The fact that JB keeps getting promoted even though most scientists in his division despise him is simply proof that those above JB are just as out of touch with reality as JB.

 

baldoni's re-org is moving at the usual snail's pace

communication from sr. mgt. is sporadic and vague

so exactly how is baldoni demonstrating the core value of transparency?

 

Fire Baldoni and the next two or three lines of mgt down

 

It has been clear to me, and now should be increasingly more visible to the organization at-large, that GSK management defines their constantly changing management mantras differently than the ways the pronouncements are advertisements to R&D staff on the whole. The most glaring example is the ongoing game with MS....which operationally is to push him aside from involvement of small molecule efforts under the poorly created image of giving him greater responsibility over biopharm / vaccines / proteins. And so, PV and JB are then given more, simply because they are there, without any transparency of who or how MS will really be replaced. The current design structure will be untenable; it's never worked before for very long in such an organization, and there is no reason to think it will or can work now in GSK. The outcome will be more uncertainty, further changes, new visionary statements that don't help invent drugs, for years in the future......

 

Have seen JB in action for many years. This is typical. Much bravado, great promises, ideas and ideals, with minimal consistency or follow-through, little real change except his job grade with more cars in his garage.

 

Completely agree and have pointed this out before. Similarly, with many years of observation I can say that any initiative instituted or lead by JB has NEVER actually been competed with any useful outcome. They just mysteriously fade away, never to be heard of again, while the next initiative -- predestined to die -- starts with much fanfare and continues for some months with ever-diminishing sessions of arm waving and powerpoint presentations and break out sessions and all-hands meetings and gum flapping in the hallways and eyerolling for those who have seen it all before, until whatever it is was that was so important to stop everything to do is supplanted by the next be all and end all initiative.

 

I agree.

I used to try to catalyze discussion on this board (heck, I created this current fire baldoni thread). But it didn't seem like more than half-dozen people actually posted. Obviously because everyone posts as 'anonymous' you can't be sure. But based on writing style and content I don't think that many GSK scientists actually post.

It is only when lay-offs are in high gear do we hear from more people.

I don't know why.

Perhaps people are not aware of how to use a proxy network (Vidalia) to post with high degree of protection. (Unless you're breaking the law and law enforcement is after you - these proxies should allow everyone to post with confidence.) Of course, the content of your post is more likely to reveal who you are than any technical tracing.

Perhaps not many GSK scientists are even aware of this board?

Perhaps its the silence of the lambs...

 

What's even sadder than JB's ineptitude, is the ineptitude of the next 3 layers of mgt below JB. Have to dig pretty deep to find a director here or there who isn't butt-kissing yes-man.

 

There seems to be more chatter about Pharma here :

http://www.biofind.com/rumor

 

that reminds me

there used to be this great site, urumour or irumour or something like that, it no longer exits but for about a year it was incredible, all sorts of good stuff posted

urumour had an incredibly funny series of posts spoofing the GSK layoffs from a few years ago

while it was way over-the-top sarcastic, it was very clear that GSK scientists from all over the world were contributing to it

I was really disappointed when that site folded

 

Biofind site looked ok.

I like the 'in the pipeline' site. Good balance between intelligent discussion of specific topics as well as 'insider' comments from Pharm R&D scientists from many companies.


http://pipeline.corante.com/

 

Those pseudo GSK posts were a riot!!! Pretended to be emails from MS, JB, etc. discussing their plans for the layoffs. Just as good as a Monty Python sketch. I should have copied those posts - I still laugh just thinking about them.

That site had pretty good rumors from many companies. A cynic would think that someone pulled strings to close it. But it probably had terrible traffic or couldn't draw corporate sponsors since its focus was on corporate rumors.

 

http://www.cafepharma.com/boards/sho...30#post3553030

 

http://www.cafepharma.com/boards/showthread.php?t=90543

 

Snails pace?

Glacial is more like it.

(Then again, with global warming, glaciers are moving pretty fast these days.)

Looks like JB is out for the world's record is slow reorganizations. I hear his recent conquests in Discovery has slowed things down as he now has a bigger board and more game pieces to play with.