The Hyland Software Scam
- Fred
- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
Back when I first started working at Iron Mountain Data Storage, our branch had about 1,000 customers.
After 9/11, our customer base had swelled to 1,200 in and around the Cleveland, Ohio area. Physical data storage, for about 5 years between 2001 and 2006, was a product that sold itself. But slowly, around the year 2010, customers started to move their off site storage into the cloud and by 2016, the year I was terminated, customers were bolting for the doors.
But after going in and out of corporate headquarters for a decade, I felt uniquely qualified to speak to this. If I had to rate every customer, 1 being the best, 1,000 being the worst, based on atmosphere, Hyland Software was the best company in the region by a mile. Now my old boss would rate the "best customer" by which customer spent the most money with Iron Mountain. That is not what we did.
When you walked in the front doors of the main building at Hyland, there were ping pong tables and couches within 20 feet of the door. There were always employees near the door with smiles on their faces and in a jovial mood. At one time I swore that they were paid actors, no company that I ever visited had employees that happy. I wasn't the only one with that opinion, Hyland was on Fortune's Top 100 Companies to Work For as late as 2016.
The first thing you noticed beyond the front doors was a slide on the second level that wound around the reception area to the front meeting room. One time I walked in and one of the leaders of Hyland went down the slide and landed in front of a cheering crowd like a pep rally. Once you finally arrived at the receptionist desk, a good 50 feet inside, you could see themed parties near the cafeteria throughout the year. Another time I was standing at the reception desk and they wheeled a Tiki Bar past me.
But Hyland was more than slides and nice Christmas Parties. It was one of the best paying jobs in the region with free daycare. Yes, you read that right, Hyland ran their own daycare across the street from the corporate headquarters.
Hyland was the closest thing to the heady tech days of Google or Facebook in Northeast Ohio.
In 2007, Thomas Bravo quietly bought Hyland, but CEO A.J. Hyland was still in charge. In 2013, Hyland retired and the company shifted hands to someone outside the Hyland Family for the first time. After Covid, the first set of layoffs came, then the second, then the third. Hyland started closing corporate centers, then the daycare.
According to Crain's Cleveland in 2025: "Hyland continues to adjust its workforce amid an ongoing shift in its identity away from a primary focus on software development to more cloud and AI-powered services."
Back when I still worked at Iron Mountain, nearly everyone in our company applied at Hyland, they hired none of us. I remember a co-worker saying "I'd rather be a janitor at Hyland than a regular employee at Iron Mountain, at least my kids would get free daycare."
But co-founder of Beacon of Speech, Ted, still works at Iron Mountain. The reason Hyland Software came up this week is because I now work for the local school district and found out Hyland rents their former daycare to an independent Special Needs School. I imagine that's a really nice tax write-off. I asked Ted if Hyland was still a customer and he said "they cancelled our services years ago, back when they were closing the buildings. At the end, they were just another failing corporate account, that magic was long gone."
Before I could respond to Ted, he gave me a really sad look, "is this how it ends for America? All the good jobs are replaced by AI and you and I get to keep our shitty jobs until we die?"
Oh, I'm sure I'm getting replaced at my shitty job before I die.
Editor's Note:
New Lifespan of an American Company?
Good Idea
Make that Idea a Reality
Grow Idea in the Marketplace
Find a Niche Near the Top of your Field
Sell Your Company to a Multinational Conglomerate Holding Company
Move Your White Collar Work Force to AI
A Handful at the Top Make a Mint, the Vast Majority are Shuffled off to the Service Industry...
....if they're lucky.
p.s.
Who was the worst customer, way down at # 1,000?
Our very worst customer was...drumroll please!!!
Iron Mountain.
You're confused because I worked at Iron Mountain? That's right. I worked at Iron Mountain in Cleveland, our worst customer was Iron Mountain in Boyers, Pennsylvania. I joked that they paid us in imaginary Iron Mountain Bucks, but we had to do business with them like they were a real customer and they were pains-in-the-ass.
Worst customer that wasn't our own company? Probably Timken in Canton. They didn't let Iron Mountain anywhere near their corporate headquarters, we delivered to a building at the end of their campus that was part gulag/part industrial waste site. The whole Timken experience was always very unpleasant.
For about 5 years, this flag flew in the front yard of a $20,000 house about a block away.
It was very appropriately placed.