#culture

but we don’t give a flying ** about your job, you’re just another number. True values of this place :D

Inherited environment, culture of stress, anxiety, uncertainty from Roger, added his own flavor of further uncertainty among associates.

When BME was announced, Rich was dead clear in sharing "everyone's going to be part of this model"

Since he didn't see eye to eye with Bob, he's on his way out the door now.

With the retiring of "squads, scrum masters, chapters", we will definitely see some BS made up titles with same responsibilities.

Why does Fido want to ruin the holiday season for all?

Rent a center has shifted its collection processes for the worst. How you ask? They have taken the attitude that it's better to get something other than nothing at all. Here is an example, customer gets a brand new 85"tv. Makes a $10 online transaction and comes due. Never pays, never communicates with the store. Now the customer is 40 days past due. They are sent an email or text, apologizing for us bothering them ,but wanting to help them. The company then offers a payout settlement of $300 , for a brand new $1000 TV mind you. Customer takes the deal , and can reapply and do it all over again. Now think of that on a scale company wide. Why has profit dropped off, why are collections higher year over year? That process right there. And don't think for a minute that customers don't encourage others to follow this process. Get a brand new ps5 for $150!!!
All the while store staff stays till 8pm everyday trying to hit collection numbers that are now impossible to hit. Thanks to the ivory tower think tank!

Best senior leader you have encountered and why?

I'm not a spiritual person, but I do believe in the concept of right/wrong, good/bad, etc.

There is an evil lurks witihin the Gainwell culture. It can be felt on so many levels through the work day. Whether it be interacting with managers or certain individuals who have some state of power or authority. Even when dealing with peers.

It's the toxicity. People taking from others, but giving so little in return unless there's a direct benefit to themselves. People that can't be bothered or respond to others unless they want something in return.

It's been mentioned about intra and inter-departmental gas-lighting, purposely withholding information for the sake of control or to merely sc--w with somone. You would have thought that would have decreased with NTT taking over operations. But on the contrary, it hasn't changed. In fact, the sickness has started to spread to NTT in some aspects. Possibly because so many of those Gainwell managers, are now NTT managers. Or NTT has to follow Gainwell's wants or marching orders.

I've always seen NTT as being the fall guy. Yes, NTT, come manage our operations. But you have to do so in the manner we require or want. If that be the case, then nothing has actually changed. Gainwell is still making the bad choices and calling the shots, but now they have someone to pass the buck on, to divert attention

For anyone who hasn’t seen “The Truman Show”: it’s a story about a man who lives inside a perfect illusion. His entire life is a TV set. The town, the neighbors, even his wife and coworkers… all actors. They know it’s fake. They get paid to keep the illusion running so Truman never realizes the truth.

The employees in Truman’s world were enablers.

They smiled on cue, stuck to the script, and did whatever it took to keep the show believable. Not because they believed in it, but because it was their job. Because it paid the bills.

Sound familiar?

For years, that’s what we, Xerox employees, have done here.

We’ve watched the numbers collapse, the debt balloon, the rhetoric pile up… and we’ve kept performing.

We’ve called decline “transformation,” losses “investments,” and chaos “reinvention”.

We’ve applauded speeches that we knew were hollow, because the alternative was uncomfortable truth.

We weren’t fooled. We were complicit.

Now the walls of the set are falling down.

Let’s stop pretending we didn’t know. We all knew.

We saw the numbers slide quarter after quarter.

We sat through the town halls, clapped like it mattered, then went back to our desks to whisper the obvious: this company’s been dead for years; we’re just managing the c0rpse.

Why?

Because the salary was decent.

Because it was easier to play d-mb than to stand up and say the emperor had no clothes.

Because survival inside a dying machine feels safer than the uncertainty outside it.

Every spreadsheet, every “adjusted” margin, every fake pep talk… we saw it all.

And instead of calling it out, we became the extras in the show.

We smiled, nodded, and sold the illusion that Xerox was turning a corner.

But the truth is brutal: we helped build the illusion.

We traded everything for comfort, and comfort is what leads companies to de4th.

We knew the business model was obsolete, that “Reinvention” was just branding without any substance.

We heard the excuses: tariffs, macroeconomy, delayed orders, COVID (in 2025?)… and pretended those were answers.

Now the curtain’s down.

No plot twist, no surprise ending… just the arithmetic of brutal financials that don’t lie.

The problem isn’t that management lied: the real problem is that we let them.

We built a culture where truth was optional and optimism mandatory.

We rewarded obedience over thinking.

Every time we clapped at jargon, every time we stayed silent while the company hollowed out, we helped build the lie.

Now there’s nothing left to hide behind.

The show’s over.

Stop clapping.

This is probably the only channel I can say this on. But by God, people. Please get in line with the in-office requirements. 3 days and 8 hours is not that big of a deal. And if some of you lazy people keep looking for loopholes and abusing the system, they’ll come down harder. It’ll be 4 days, then 5. And we shouldn’t blame management. We should blame you.

Leadership was couped by "the West". Legacy BMO employees are treated like garbage by the actively hostile management from "the West" and never considered for advancement.

The management that ran botw into the ground is tearing down all the guardrails that made BMO a stable bank. They constantly lie and gaslight.

Now they're laying off a bunch of people off right before the holiday season. This company has been corrupted by the toxic culture from the West.

At BNY, leadership isn’t something you do—it’s something you post about. In this gilded age of corporate theater, where substance is optional but hashtags are mandatory, BNY has perfected the art of appearing important while doing absolutely nothing of measurable value. Welcome to the House of Optics™, where the louder you are on Teams, the closer you are to God (or at least to a LinkedIn shoutout from someone with “Global” or "Head" in their title).

Let’s begin with the sacred ritual of the Selfie of Significance™. At BNY, no moment is too trivial to commemorate with a front-facing camera and a forced grin. Did you attend a 15-minute “Leadership Listening Session” where no one listened and nothing was led? That’s a selfie. Did you stand near a VP while they cut a ribbon on a building funded by tax credits and the dreams of displaced mid-career professionals? That’s a selfie. Did you walk past a banner that said “Innovation Starts Here” while wondering what your job actually is? Selfie. Bonus points if you tag the Executive Committee member who once waved in your general direction at a town hall.

But the real magic happens in the Testimonial Industrial Complex™, where associates are gently nudged (read: strongly encouraged) to post about how “energized,” “inspired,” and “humbled” they are to be in the presence of greatness—greatness being defined as someone who once said “synergy” in a meeting without laughing. These testimonials are often indistinguishable from hostage notes, except with more emojis and fewer demands. “Feeling so proud to be part of today’s strategic alignment session with our fearless leader!” reads one post, accompanied by a photo of a man in a Patagonia vest nodding at his own PowerPoint.

Leadership at BNY is not measured by outcomes, impact, or even basic competence. It is measured by decibel level and calendar saturation. The true leaders are those who speak the most in Teams meetings, regardless of whether they say anything. In fact, saying nothing is preferred—it reduces the risk of accountability. The goal is to be seen speaking, not heard making sense. Bonus points for using phrases like “double-click,” “value prop,” and “let’s circle back” in a single breathless monologue.

And oh, the meetings. BNY has elevated the Meeting as Performance Art to an Olympic sport. There are meetings to plan meetings, meetings to debrief meetings, and meetings to align on the outcomes of meetings that never had outcomes. If you’re not in at least six simultaneous Teams calls, are you even leading?

Meanwhile, the Executive Committee floats above it all, like a celestial body emitting vague strategic radiation. They are thanked profusely in every post, regardless of their involvement. “Huge thanks to [Insert EC Member] for their visionary leadership!” reads a caption beneath a photo of a hallway. No one knows what the EC actually does, but their names are invoked like corporate deities—part reverence, part insurance policy.

But BNY’s pièce de résistance is its Public Diversion Strategy™, a masterclass in distraction marketing. While morale craters and more layoffs loom, the company unveils a new building, a new partnership, or a new initiative with a state college mascot no one’s heard of. These announcements are accompanied by drone footage, branded cupcakes, and LinkedIn posts with captions like “So proud to be part of this journey!”—a journey that, coincidentally, involves replacing experienced professionals with interns and new college grads who think COBOL is a TikTok dance.

These partnerships are not about education or community impact. They are about labor arbitrage agreements with a side of PR frosting. BNY receives generous economic development credits to build “pipelines” of low-cost, inexperienced talent while quietly offboarding seasoned employees like expired yogurt. The message is clear: if you’ve been here long enough to know how things work, you’re a liability. Please collect your commemorative stress ball and don't let the door hit you in the a*ss on the way out!

And yet, the illusion persists. Awards, merit and promotions are given for “visibility,” not value. Promotions go to those who master the art of Strategic Echoing™—repeating what someone just said, but louder and with a slide. Recognition is bestowed upon those who “lean in” to performative enthusiasm, not those who quietly deliver results. The loudest voice in the room is assumed to be the smartest, even if it’s just reading the agenda out loud.

In this ecosystem, actual accomplishment is a liability. It implies you were focused on work instead of cultivating your personal brand. Worse, it might make others look bad. The safest path to success is to be loud, visible, and vaguely inspirational. Think TED Talk energy, but with less content and more acronyms. Afterall, who started this practice and how has this become the fabric of the Robin Vince BNY culture?

So what’s the lesson here? At BNLie, it’s not about what you do—it’s about what you appear to do. Leadership is not a function of impact, but of optics, volume, and proximity to power. The currency of success is not competence, but curated enthusiasm and PR hype. And the ultimate sin is not failure—it’s silence.

So smile for the camera, tag your favorite executive, and remember: the building may be empty, the strategy may be incoherent, and the talent may be fleeing—but as long as the LinkedIn post gets 100 likes and 450 impressions, everything is fine with the personal brand.

When the only thing that “matters” is quarterly performance, leadership starts trimming everything that isn’t a number that moves the stock. Pay. Comfort. Flexibility. Those are the first to go.

Directors and VPs play it safe. They tighten rules not because they believe in them, but because they’re scared to stick their neck out. Fear trickles down faster than trust ever does.

One of the most overused phrases I have heard at U.S. Bank is “I appreciate you!”.

Word to the wise, stop using this phrase. You sound like an insincere fool. If you truly appreciate someone, show it in your ACTIONS not with empty words. Vampires 🧛.

You feel it, we all feel it. It doesn’t read like leadership trying to build culture.
It reads like control masquerading as culture. When a company actually wants people together for collaboration, the tone is invitation. When it’s about covering themselves or flexing power, the tone is exactly what you would expect from Dell. Cold, absolute, and written as if you’re a dog in a cage.

Kakistocracy is the rule by the incompetent.
That is, those who govern are the least fit to do so, but the most skilled at holding onto power.

5 Rules of Kakistocracy:

Incompetence: Promotions are not given to the most competent, but to the most loyal and ambitious.
Corruption: Those in power no longer work for the common good, but for their own interests and those of their network.
Weakening of checks and balances: Dissenting voices are silenced to prevent questioning of their decisions.
Manipulation: Lies are used to divert attention from failures and to shape public opinion in their favor.
Deceit: Mistakes are never acknowledged. They protect each other and shift responsibility elsewhere. Bad faith and dishonesty are no longer flaws, but strategies.

The reign of the incompetent has a bright future ahead.

A very simple question now all you Lexmark folk are part of Xerox - a warm welcome, or a shock awakening ?

I keep seeing posts on LinkedIn and places that it’s a reset and Fiserv is a legacy company etc, I worked at Fiserv for 9 years and loved the place. What I saw post merger with First Data, is atrocious. The amount of layoffs and the total dismantling of a great company for short term goals should be downright illegal.

Frank is absolutely responsible for where Fiserv’s stock sits today. Instead of building on what made Fiserv great—long-term, recurring contract value driven by core processing relationships—he chased short-term gains. The repeated rounds of layoffs might have bumped margins for a quarter, but they stripped out the expertise and continuity that sustained core revenue for decades.

He never truly understood the value of the core franchise. Instead of strengthening those contracts, he diverted focus to Clover, which is built on shorter-term merchant agreements that simply don’t offer the same stability or lifetime value. That shift toward quick wins and short-cycle contracts is exactly why the long-term fundamentals have weakened.

In the end, he traded durable revenue for momentary optics—and the stock price reflects that.

Mike reads these posts? Somehow, I think he does. Unlike Frank, it seems like it gives him a pulse on employees, better than the survey. Frank used it to find out our thoughts and get revenge

In orgs that reward visibility over results, advancement goes to the safest pick, not the strongest performer… the chosen few keep things calm, nod along, and soothe the people above them…

Real competence can unsettle because it exposes gaps and weaknesses... when u do excellent work leaders are forced to confront how little control they actually have….So instead of building strength, these systems recycle timidity and value loyalty much more than leadership. Once the loop starts each layer shields the one above, and real talent burns out or walks. This is how mediocrity becomes the norm.

Working for this company is absolute he-l. When working in tech you are still expected to sell sell sell. 99% of our continued training is nothing but sales soft skills. The only thing this company cares about is "adding phone lines" if someone has already been escalated up to multiple levels of tech support they don't want to hear about plans or perks or upgrades. The amount of work they expect agents to be able to do is completely outside of reality. There are so many service related issues that can not be resolved by anyone.

Gotta love how the management that got us in this mess are left untouched while the common men are affected.

Prayers for those affected, remain positive... Control your thoughts, don't let them control you. There's light always at the end of the tunnel

The company culture is built on a foundation of distrust, particularly regarding leadership and feedback mechanisms. Pulse surveys are treated as a joke; the promise of anonymity isn't trusted, and employees see no positive change resulting from constructive criticism.

Follow-up meetings feel like attempts to 'brainwash' employees into believing their voice matters, which is made worse by condescending 'family' and 'Vteam' rhetoric.

The most toxic part is that leaders are reportedly penalized if their teams are too honest, creating a system where compliance is valued over improvement. Leadership's communication is viewed as political and disingenuous, and the company feels like a hollow shell of what it once was.

Thoughts on new lp?

Has anyone ever successfully reported a colleague for s-xism?

I’m not sure what route to go but it’s an issue multiple people have noticed.

Is it true Whole Foods is adding in conventional products? using old space were cafes use to be? If so what a move! Get your pepsi and organic quinoa all in one space.

#wholefoodsisdead

I sure hope you've all been doing your JSAs to be in here.

Whoever wrote it thought they were really doing something.

Here's what will be said at the town hall:

1. The company is performing very well due to BT.
2. All employees are fully embracing BT.
3. Asinine questions from shills planted in the audience
4. Few if any real questions will be addressed
5. Go-Go will say "full speed ahead".

L and D is posting on various platforms stating what a huge success the Month of Learning was.
No it wasn’t, it was the same failure it’s always been since the new group of leaders took over.
Everyone I’ve talked to says they didn’t get anything out of it.
They’re trying too hard to convince, I don’t know somebody, maybe even themselves, that they are really performing a good service to the employees.

The bickering between EQT elites and Zayo has beens now? Oh yeah, and the New Crown leftovers?

So was that strange long message to us:
genuine a wake up call or super long reminder that "winter is coming.." and now its going to be "cold"?

What’s really frustrating, and honestly a little disturbing, is how many of our leaders have started acting like politicians. They ignore anything negative, spin reality, and only focus on whatever sounds good in a town hall or email. It’s insulting to our intelligence and completely out of touch with what’s actually happening on the front lines, where the real work gets done.

Until leadership stops pretending everything is fine and starts listening to the people doing the work, nothing will change. Just more talk, less trust, and a widening gap between the top and the rest of us.

This isn’t rumor, emotion, or gossip.

This is what the company itself has said, plus the math that follows from it.

No fluff. No slogans. Just reality.

Where Xerox actually is:

• Q3 cash generation did not cover costs; free cash flow driven by working-capital timing, not profits.

• Legacy business declining on a like-for-like basis.

• GAAP gross margin is 22%, very thin to support debt, restructuring, investment, and dividends.

• Significant debt added to fund acquisitions.

• Leadership has stated we do not have 2 years to fix this.

• Workforce reductions confirmed to continue into 2025–2026.

• Integration urgency now tied directly to SURVIVAL narrative.

• Merit / raises tied to profit (uncertain to say the least).

• Strategy locked: no pivot planned, only “execute faster”.

This is a turnaround under time pressure, not a routine quarter.

What has been signaled:

• The model is right, execution has failed!

• The company will run out of runway without faster performance!

• More layoffs are expected!

• Every function and region expected to “do more with less”!

• Employees told to stop prioritizing personal situations and put the company first!

• Execution failures = leadership changes!

The bets are already placed. No turning back. Sink or swim on execution.

Employee reality:

• Job security is performance- and speed-dependent.

• Raises contingent on profitability, not guaranteed.

• Higher workloads, fewer resources.

• Culture shifted from “corporate career” to “survival, sprint, sacrifice”.

Clear message: contribute at full speed or self-select out.

What happens next? Likely 12–18 month environment:

• Continued restructuring & RIFs

• Ongoing cost compression

• Integration friction + tech platform migration

• Talent drain and forced performance pressure

• Narrow focus: cash, margin, execution speed

Best case? Turnaround works, company stabilizes, slow growth returns.

Middle case? Extended grind — layoffs, morale erosion, cash tightness.

Worst case? cash performance fails... strategic alternatives come to play (asset sales / debt restructuring / Private Equity involvement).

All are standard outcomes in leveraged turnarounds; which one we hit depends on speed, cost takeout, and execution.

Bottom line:

• Xerox is no longer operating in “business as usual”.

• This is SteveB's plan A: execution speed vs. cash runway.

• There is no plan B. And plan A must work quickly.

• Everything else — morale, culture, careers — is secondary to operational survival right now.

Wartime rules are in effect. Everyone just heard it live.

The mood shift, the urgency, the tone, the pressure... all real.

This is what corporate in distress looks like when management says it out loud.

Now you know.

Nothing seems to have a good captaincy anymore. Sailors are shaking the boat. In Visa domain knowledge and love for systems is not rewarded anymore. New direction is looking at easy points. Share prices stumbling. Old people are let go. Maybe if there's any small indication, it is right time to part.

https://www.instagram.com/fordcareers/reel/DQmmXhIgDwK/?hl=en

I smell a Grammy for QB
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zyRaOTY4aM&list=RD6zyRaOTY4aM&start_radio=1

I mean, at these point executives have not only become tone deaf but truly cynical. At least we know that these surveys are completely worthless. No matter the results, they will label them as "opportunities".

And clueless management to boot!

I don't know if this is a company thing or a district thing but why would Walmart make Team Leads have to do an evening shift two days a week? Our store has informed all Team Leads that twice a week they have to work a 7-4pm shift and a 2-11pm shift of they have to step down as team lead. Many of our team leads, who are great, have kids or are single parents and cannot take off or find child care for this. Why does Walmart ask what days and times you can work and then make a rule like this.
Also, why does everyone in the store now have to have open availability? Again, why have me fill out a form and ask what days and times I can work and now tell me I will work when and on what day they want me too or I wont get hours. One of our best associates has a special needs child and has to take him for treatment on a certain day and a certain time. Now they have scheduled her for that day and time but she can't make it so she has been cut from 40 hours to 25 hours. Seems unfair and maybe illegal. Thoughts