#company

If you aren't failing upwards, you aren't doing it right.

Team GM means going on vacation a week before your big project is due, so your work is reassigned to someone who will take the blame.
Team GM means walking around with a GM logo on your coffee cup, wearing official GM branded clothing and having the latest GMC truck.
Team GM means going on linkedin, and making a show of how much you love GM products.
Team GM means attending meetings of projects you are barely contributing to, so that you can challenge the meeting organizer with new problems that aren't even part of the discussion.
Team GM means asking lots of questions at the end of each meeting, especially staff meetings to extend the meeting and prove your loyalty, interest and importance to everyone in earshot.
Team GM means being a true believer that the company would collapse if you left, and that despite the fact that you do almost nothing, you are working your tail off.
Team GM means that your entire identity is tied into working at GM and your role at GM. You will tell anyone that didn't ask that you work at GM.

I'm sure all of us are so grateful that the company is doing so well and that nothing's wrong and that the leadership's competent and that we don't have to fear layoffs every single day or anything like that. This place is just amazing. Sarcasm, just in case it's not blatantly clear.

Today, the last few remaining engineers in ABU IT were stood down, following the end of their transition roles.

This brings to an end a horribly protracted period of uncertainty that started early in 2024 with McKinsey moving into 1TE to try and find ways for ABU to reduce costs, which than spiralled into one of the most disorganised and chaotic re-orgs many have ever witnessed. It finally ended with respected and talented veterans of the company not only being notified of their impending termination in June, but having to awkwardly serve out several months training their replacements in India.

Almost two years later from when rumours of layoffs began circulating in earnest, they are now complete.

ABU IT is now half of what it was, barely 50 people for a business unit that generates a third of the company’s revenue. A business unit that extracts the state’s natural resources for profit whilst seeking to give back as little as possible.

All that remains now of the IT teams that helped build two of Chevron’s most complex facilities are a handful of telecoms/PCN people, the skeletal remains of data and insights, some project managing paper-pushing types, digital core, and some of the most ineffectual and disengaged middle managers and hi-pots imaginable.

There is no longer a single software or data engineer in ABU.

Chevron are doomed to fail.

I hope Dan’s Thanksgiving is as warm and comforting as an 8 AM layoff call.

Right?

And so it begins!

To make move to Manchester from Liverpool being offered old K grade £68k mid point. The old J grade is £54k. I thought they got rid of the J & K bands? But they have kept separate bands? BNYM doing their normal thing to benefit them yet again.

The offices are going to be closed tomorrow and Friday! What on EARTH!

It seems odd that the other PayPal execs are around already, but Shankar is still not replaced. I mean, he's not doing any work, not showing up for anything, not talking to his teams, not setting a strategy or a direction or anything. So clearly HE knows he's out (fingers crossed that the rest of his posse are out as well.. first of all Vivek and his reports) But still, it would be nice to know which PayPal guy will oversee the next shift of 10+k jobs to India / contractors...

In the 1970s, deep inside a research center in Palo Alto, a group of young Xerox engineers quietly built the future. They created a machine unlike anything the world had seen. A screen you could point at. A small device that let you move a cursor with your hand. Windows that opened and closed. Icons that behaved like real objects. Even the ethernet cables that would later connect the modern internet. It was called the Alto, and it was decades ahead of its time.
But inside Xerox headquarters, the company still viewed itself as a copier business. The innovations coming out of the research lab felt strange and experimental, far removed from office equipment and paper. Management could not see the commercial value of a graphical interface or a computer mouse. The Alto never reached the mass market, even though it held the blueprint of the personal computer revolution.
In December 1979, Steve Jobs visited Xerox PARC through a technology exchange agreement. Engineers showed him the graphical interface and the mouse. Jobs later said it was like seeing the future unfold in real time. He returned to Apple energized and committed to transforming these concepts into a consumer machine. The result was the Macintosh, launched in 1984, the first widely accessible computer with a graphical interface.
People often say Apple stole from Xerox. The truth is more complicated. Xerox had built extraordinary tools but did not move to commercialize them. Apple recognized their potential and reshaped them into products that could reach millions. The modern computer industry grew from that moment when one company overlooked its own inventions and another saw the opportunity clearly.
The story of Xerox PARC remains a reminder that innovation alone is not enough. Vision requires the ability to recognize value, invest wisely, and understand how transformative ideas can reshape the world.
Story based on historical records.

No email about Thanksgiving this year. Guess he accidentally fired his email composer along the way?

National salary program meeting today, what are the key takeaways?

https://www.cfo.com/news/despite-incoming-holiday-layoffs-cfo-bonuses-are-likely-safe-resume-org-survey-/806530/

https://markets.ft.com/data/announce/detail?dockey=600-202511260330PR_NEWS_EURO_ND__EN33185-1

Really?

It’s the time of the year again

At the end of the webinar i felt demoralized and agitated, exactly opposite of what it was intended for, Not sure what they wanted to achieve with AMAs

Should I worry about more layoffs this year? I'm thinking between Thanksgiving and Christmas, it'd be truly assholish of them to lay people off. Not that I wouldn't put it past them, but it'd come with some unwanted bad publicity. Am I too naive to think they care?

Anyone one hearing anything? My manager said it was looking much better so I’m optimistic. Heard that from another area as well

We can’t afford to pay engineers and techs but we can afford to pay someone to send out these stupid emails??? GTFO no one reads this sh-t.

TSMC sues ex-exec Wei-Jen Lo over secrets theft - Breaking The News https://share.google/QYQr7IUivQgG5of0z

Anyone hear anything about what March 2026 will bring for Connect Week schedule changes?

Title says it all.

It is now new tactics to save money. Giving forced NS to senior person and lay him off without giving any severance package. Thus company is saving money.This is new trend in visa

https://www.cvshealth.com/news/company-news/cvs-health-names-david-joyner-chair-of-the-board-of-directors.html#:~:text=WOONSOCKET%2C%20RI%20(November%2020%2C,%2C%20effective%20January%201%2C%202026.

So now David Joyner will be president, CEO, and chairman of the board. One guy in charge of everything, making all the decisions. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but CVS is now going “all-in” on Mr. Joyner.

Well, 2025 is almost over and Belk has survived another year ! It’s amazing how we can keep cutting, year after year, and everything seems to just function fine. well, ok not fine, but belk is still operating! Soon we will have no employees working at all, we are now thinking of using chimpanzees in place of human beings, what do to all think? I think it’s a winning idea !!!
2026 should be a year of dramatic cuts.. first I would like to have absolutely no visual merchandising standards in stores. I have the brilliant idea of throwing all merchandise inside of large bins and let all customers fight over it. Kind of like a scavenger hunt? What do you think? As far as benefits and pay increases are concerned, I want to cut cut cut cut cut…..let’s offer the standard 2% raise, but then cut paid time off even more! What a brilliant idea! Here I am babbling on and on.. as far as Belk’s top brass is concerned, it’s been a great year!, six and seven figure salaries, top tier benefits, bonuses and lots of perks, I hope everyone will enjoy their store meals on Black Friday! Don’t forget to keep the cost under $9.99 per person!!!! Deli meat, cr--kers, and Kool Aid should be in the menu! gobble gobble, kluck, kluck…

Hugs and Kisses,
Donnie

Back in the day Lowell ran the company with integrity. Back in the day Lowell said you could not be promoted to management within your market. The purpose of this was to evade the markets from becoming a good ole boys club. Since Lowell's retirement, Verizon has, in fact, become a good ole boys club. Maybe this reorg will fix that. Or maybe, we are in the death throws of a dying company.........

One person called Verizon their dream job. Another few people were 'thanking' Verizon. Another few were claiming that these people 'deserved it'.

Stop breaking your backs for this company, man. Have some respect. You don't need to have all of the answers, but people don't need to be su-king up to the incompetence in this company.

Being unemployed, I am looking at the big job boards (which I don't trust) and companies career sites. One thing I notice is that it is quite rare to find a company that uses Oracle for their database.
Thats what I get for sticking with and learning RDBMS ect. for all this time.

Couple things

1. The company has never ever cared for employees over the results. Even the red chair..
2. All the execs posting boo who...If we had your money we would burn ours. Save your comments & books. You all laugh your way to the bank.
3. The beginning of the end was when when wireless and landline merged. "It's over Johnny"
4. Maybe AI can select a board & CEO that doesn't promote golden parachutes and politically current tears but results. 7 years on the board and now running the helm???? Mentioned he was impatient...7 years watching the ship sink...HELLLOOOOO
5. Verizon gives 40 hours sick time. Use them.
6. Unless state mandated, pers days won't carry over . Use them
7. Every state has its own requirements for termination notification and last payments, understand them.
8. Don't underestimate your experience & knowledge.

Couchbase, a California-based cloud database firm with offices in Austin, is laying off 11 employees in Travis County, according to a notice filed with the Texas Workforce Commission. The reductions are scheduled to take effect January 12.
The company stated in its filing that the cuts are permanent.

https://dallasexpress.com/business-markets/another-tech-company-hit-couchbase-to-experience-layoffs-in-austin-post-buyout/

did any remote workers get a notice about paying local taxes? If so can somone please explain what is going on please?

How do we feel about Jim Peichel as the new CTO? Seems like initial reaction is generally positive, but I don’t personally know anything about him.

I'd buy it.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/nov/24/northwestern-mutual-insurance-jobs-hiring

Cause they will never ever have layoffs.

Oh BTW said no one ever.

Layoffs January 2026. Book mark this thread

Which line of business has published their reorg charts on vzweb?

Wealth management company Cetera Financial Group laid off a “small” number of employees to streamline its operations, a company spokeswoman said on Friday. Cetera, owned by private-equity firm Genstar Capital Partners, also conducted layoffs earlier this year. The latest round didn’t affect teams that support Cetera’s thousands of financial advisors, the spokeswoman said.

https://www.barrons.com/advisor/articles/cetera-layoffs-f4a234b2

Brutal timing but this is a yearly occurrence at this point

SB, aka Bandy, closed the last Town Hall with a sort of “Trust me, bro” line.

Fitting, because that’s basically the financial strategy right now: trust us while we borrow new money to pay old debt and hope nobody asks why the interest bill keeps climbing.

Xerox isn’t running a literal Ponzi scheme, but the behavior rhymes: fresh debt replaces maturing debt, each round more expensive than the last, with no cash flow to reduce anything on its own.

Let's not forget some of SB's “stellar” performances in this Ponzi-like scheme:

• In September 2023, SB borrowed $500M to buy back from his lord and master Carl Icahn (a legendary activist investor who had fallen on hard times and was wrong not by decimal points but by several orders of magnitude in his calculations to buy HP) his stake in Xerox;

• In late 2024, SB borrowed another $220M to buy ITSavvy, the company then and nowadays run by a friend of the now-departed COO John B (still a board member though);

(Meanwhile, days later, SB indulged the whims of the also now-departed Chief Disruption Officer and wasted $10-20M on sponsoring the Aston Martin Aramco Formula 1 team, which wouldn't even win a Hot Wheels toy car race)

• And even though 2024 wasn't over yet, SB had time to plan how to borrow more money to acquire (well, rather than “acquire”, I would say “pay to be managed by”) Lexmark: close to $1B of extra liabilities for a company that lost about $740M last year.

SB & Friends claim they’ll pull out $200–300M in “synergies” by cutting overlapping functions, closing facilities, and shrinking corporate overhead.

Without those savings, the debt load gets heavier, interest expense keeps rising, and refinancing becomes harder. It’s that simple.

SB & Friends keep repeating the synergy story like it’s guaranteed.

It isn’t.

It requires flawless execution, discipline, and no surprises—things they know very little about.

Meanwhile, the core business is falling off a cliff. The only thing keeping this train moving is access to credit markets and the hope that lenders keep buying the story.

So yes: when the CEO says “Trust me, bro”, what he’s really saying is: “You are going to take a leap of faith and BELIEVE that the cuts will be implemented quickly, revenues will stop declining, and lenders will continue to be friendly”.

Except the lenders are not staying friendly anymore. S&P Global Ratings just cut Xerox’s credit rating to CCC+.

For those unfamiliar with S&P credit ratings: on a scale of 22, with 1 being “Prime” and 22 being “Lousy” (default, no money to pay bills anymore), CCC+ is 18.

S&P are also warning Xerox will burn $170–200M in cash this year and carry a debt load more than 7.5 times our earnings.

Put it in the simplest terms possible: the rating agency thinks we’re borrowing money just to stay alive, and that if anything goes wrong — if synergies slip, if revenue drops, if refinancing gets delayed — the whole structure can fall apart faster than any PowerPoint slide can explain.

At this point, the person who says "Trust me, bro" is in fact the last person you should trust.