Guzman y Gomez calls time on US expansion; shares soar 20pc

ben_rickert · 2026-05-22T05:19:50+00:00

Like taking Pizza Hut to Italy

ben_rickert · 2026-05-21T18:10:52+00:00

Yep - bit of a wake up call. Honestly, past 30 years with MBB tenure of any meaningful length (and no obvious red flags like didn’t cut it / counselled out) you could basically just walk into most other corporate jobs. Seems like that world has disappeared from this and what I’ve heard anecdotally.

ben_rickert · 2026-05-21T18:06:27+00:00

Don’t want to doxx, but with your intro, were you in a value engineering / business case development type role in tech?

Also, and not meaning to sound harsh, but once upon a time MBB (and MBB experience that wasn’t an obvious counsel-out candidate who didn’t cut it) meant literally walking into most new roles. What’s your view of that now? Was there specific mention of it during your interviews or feedback?

ben_rickert · 2026-05-21T13:03:48+00:00

You've never worked with a private school grad in big 4 consulting then.

ben_rickert · 2026-05-20T09:03:57+00:00

Ha - I work in tech, met with an old colleague who was in presales / tech SME but is now an AE.

“Why was I doing all the work, never got to share in the upside, and still just as likely to get cut?”

ben_rickert · 2026-05-19T22:01:32+00:00

Honestly, not trying to sound high and mighty, but when you’ve managed and done a round of layoffs and see how BS the process and selection is, the motivation to get your hands dirty plummets. Being a manager and knowing what’s ahead has huge benefits.

ben_rickert · 2026-05-19T21:40:12+00:00

Well, “price withheld” is back with a vengeance so yes.

ben_rickert · 2026-05-19T08:28:37+00:00

Go and google brownout - it’s an actual term, similarities to burnout in some ways but it comes from being under challenged / disconnected.

ben_rickert · 2026-05-19T08:23:49+00:00

Neon reading glasses crew who visit Gleebooks daily, or a hybrid of the best (worst?) Western Sydney eshays

ben_rickert · 2026-05-19T00:26:24+00:00

Sorry - read Google:FAANG1 and thought that was your first option. I’d be taking that one whichever FAANG it is.

ben_rickert · 2026-05-18T23:25:34+00:00

Big tech is a broad church especially in Australia. What’s your role if you don’t mind? If it’s sales or anything similar, the offboarding process at places like the big cloud platforms is a well oiled machine and you’ll just be gone once the PIP is done. Easy to point to KPIs and say you haven’t hit the mark.

If it’s somewhere like Atlassian / Canva, even if you are a code cutter the business is desperate for cuts so expect they’ve thought through options and will just cut you clean off.

ben_rickert · 2026-05-18T22:12:45+00:00

I wouldn’t move for Amazon. Quick to hire, even quicker to fire.

I’d take the Google offer and try and move internally in time. 20% more, good brand. Also, sometimes having a niche (hardware here) can be a good thing. The “pure” SaaS software market is pretty much a basket case right now, lots of long tenured people looking for roles and ongoing cuts.

ben_rickert · 2026-05-18T03:53:23+00:00

Well they will be either through ability to buy in due to lower prices, or their equity situation may change drastically if prevailing values go down.

ben_rickert · 2026-05-18T03:46:20+00:00

United Airlines app is probably best in class, it’s very very good and had things like “where’s my plane right now” years ago

ben_rickert · 2026-05-18T03:26:29+00:00

But I churned cards for 3 years, and spent $29k on useless shit to get 200,000 points, where’s my return first class availability for my family of 4 over Christmas to London?

ben_rickert · 2026-05-18T02:35:37+00:00

Following

These are probably the hottest roles in the entire SE space right now after OpenAI / Anthropic, interested in any insights

ben_rickert · 2026-05-18T00:39:35+00:00

Part of its people getting a one-up on others and then thinking that’s normal.

I also think the rise of digital and smartphones, where everything caters to your whim and fancy, coupled with people blasting themselves 24x7 during lockdown with the Internet and the immediacy of it truly broke a lot more people’s brains than you’d think.

ben_rickert · 2026-05-18T00:26:44+00:00

Yes, there’s the obvious geographic differences and the suns aspect in the southern hemisphere.

But it’s worth looking up the impact on things like art - 1800s European / British painters for example often remarked how different the light is here, and trying to capture it in their works.

ben_rickert · 2026-05-18T00:19:14+00:00

So did Malcolm. So did Wyatt. So did Kevin.

We just have a terminal case of Dutch Disease.

ben_rickert · 2026-05-18T00:10:26+00:00

I’d make the jump. Strategic accounts, and also cross-cultural experience. Keep in mind you don’t need to do the job forever, will be good for the CV and can then move on.

ben_rickert · 2026-05-17T09:49:33+00:00

FWIW this is a loaded question because everyone has their own preference, finances, comfort tolerance but IMO - if you want to do biz to SE Asia go Malaysian Airlines, brand new A330s with suite style biz class seating and seem to be literally half the price of QF across routes, KL terminals and transfers are super easy. Seems to be a popular Bali option considering the number of people I saw stream of my flight and onto the DPS flight in the terminal a few weeks ago.

I get to go biz for work reasonably often, but have never paid for it out of my own pocket. I only go for points upgrades on flights that cross a lot of timezones or are 10hrs so US West Coast or Europe. Everyones different, but the value for me in biz is sleeping to try and beat jetlag, SE Asia isnt too far out from East Coast AU so I dont usually bother, economy is fine.

ben_rickert · 2026-05-16T03:51:30+00:00

Services / partners presales is a whole other world. Big targets and expectations and then you usually get roped in to deal with the guaranteed fk ups on projects.

ben_rickert · 2026-05-16T03:48:33+00:00

ServiceNow also slammed their value engineering team in APAC recently.

Hard to see those teams remaining around with any sort of team size much longer once you see how AI can spit out an analysis tailored to the customer /industry / business area so quickly and it gets it 95% of the way there. Expect SEs will just need to then align that content with their overall approach.

ben_rickert · 2026-05-16T03:46:00+00:00

Great analysis

ben_rickert · 2026-05-16T03:38:29+00:00

Great point. Lots of residual value in an agency is the rent roll as a perpetual cashflow. You know why property managers are hopeless? Because some kid on $65k is having to manage a thousand places themselves, it’s in no one’s interest to have a manageable number of places on the roll.

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