| Investment firm Hearthstone laid off its IT team during the economic downturn. CTO Rob Meltz turned to cloud services and virtualization to keep the business running and growing.
Like plenty of people and organizations, the institutional investment firm Hearthstone was hit hard by the 2008 financial crisis. Its business — managing assets for pension funds, endowments, Fortune100 firms and other large clients — was kicked directly in the teeth. Add to that the fact that Hearthstone invests exclusively in residential real estate development and, well, the math isn’t that difficult.The sobering results: Three rounds of layoffs in as many years. At its peak, Hearthstone had 80 people across four offices; today, it has 28. Hearthstone’s five-person IT department became a one-man show: CTO Rob Meltz. The executive is now all things IT, relying on consultants and other outsourced help when the workload exceeds the available human resources. In other words: Him. Here are the key specifics on what Meltz did to adapt to life without a team.
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