As many as 56 people’s jobs at Dealer.com’s Burlington offices are in jeopardy because of a change in business strategy by parent company Cox Automotive.
The “digital strategist” position is being eliminated in favor of a “performance management model of client services,” Cox spokesperson Lisa Aloisio told Seven Days.
The company is eliminating 112 digital strategists across five locations. Half of those positions are in Vermont, Aloisio said, but affected employees will have “a really good amount of time to apply” for the new jobs.
Dealer.com creates and manages websites and online inventory systems for car dealerships nationwide. It was founded in 1998 and sold for $1 billion in 2013 to Dealertrack Technologies. Cox Automotive bought that company for $4 billion in 2015.
Aloisio said the company plans to hire more than 112 people to replace existing digital strategists, but she refused to comment on whether all 56 Vermont jobs would be replaced.
According to a written statement from Cox Automotive, “impacted team members will be given an opportunity to apply for a Performance Management Operations Specialist role or enroll in a three-month trial program for a Performance Consultant role.”
Digital strategists who don’t qualify for the new roles or don’t want them “will leave [the company] and receive transition and separation support.”
Aloisio didn’t provide specifics on how the “performance manager” responsibilities will differ from the work of digital strategists, but she said the new jobs will employ “a significantly different skill set.”
“The biggest difference is … you need some hands-on experience with dealer operations,” she said, refusing to elaborate further.
Part of the reason the company is so tight-lipped about the new jobs, Aloisio said, is to give internal candidates “first shot at the new roles.”
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“The original owners of http://Dealer.com grew their business and then sold out to out of state owners, which was their right.”
No, they SOLD the business they grew.
Not surprisingly, the highest bidder was not a Vermont-based company. Theirs is a multi-national software platform. Onion River CoOp is great (I’ve been a member for a very long time). But it is in no meaningful way analogous. A closer comparison would be IDX (remember them?) Rich Tarrant was smart to sell to GE.
I’m not going to go off on some “Atlas Shrugged” rant here, but if you really want to kill the dreams of many young innovators in Vermont, then tell them that, yes, they can work like all get out, take enormous risks–but then cannot plan to ultimately sell the business they built.
Mr. Cohen said, “If taxes are so incidental as one poster claims then why are companies always looking for tax incentives to move from one state to another?”
First, businesses would be crazy not to look for free money. Second, we’ve been led to believe that lots of jobs are gained and lost due to interstate business moves. That is not supported by the available evidence. Third, taxes and tax incentives are not the same thing. In Vermont, incentives are just a one-off, while taxes are an annual event.
What tax incentives and other incentives did http://Dealer.Com receive to locate in Burlington? VEPC kicked in $6 million, what other incentives were used? VEPC needs to be investigated.
If taxes are so incidental as one poster claims then why are companies always looking for tax incentives to move from one state to another?
Also, Dealer.com was treated just like every non-employee-owned business in this country. A little company to be gobbled up by bigger fish in the vicious financial ocean that the 1% run. Businesses that are built here can stay here and not go through this crap if they are formed as coops or employee-owned. City Market is fighting interstate markets for market share and making a nice niche for itself. If Vermont is for Vermont, it should be encouraging these homegrown businesses that are developed to work in this environment. If they are a good product they succeed. The original owners of Dealer.com grew their business and then sold out to out of state owners, which was their right. Maybe Vermont should be looking for a different model to protect its citizens and businesses.