#culture

Displacing individuals is too slow and not creating sufficent staff reduction.
Poor work conditions and arbitary illogical management and we-ponized metrics have failed get employees to self attrit. Leadership next phase: Build League, the foundation to start displacing entire teams of employees at once....

Have read this a lot..

The problem with this logic is that it is exactly the strategy used to hire them in the first place (internally from other BUs using Spotify model) what your missing is that this is was designed to fail and there was extreme internal resistance that became louder in late 2019… convenient right?

Have you ever heard anyone at the firm say “fidelity doesn’t like two VPs in one room” before they humbly announce a lateral move to a different adjacent org? Take a look at some of your peers at any pay grade that started to make lateral moves during the fall of ‘25 water cooler talk.

I see your posts, i hear your sentiment. but what you are enraged about isn’t the firms gross incompetence. It’s actually quite worse, because it was strategic and now associates are left pointing the finger at the right people but for the wrong reason.

The existing tenured VPs on teams actively pushed back for years against the re-org and likely didn’t tell you about it. It was near impossible to fight — as PI was proving the model worked in their BU. The main argument of why the success wouldn’t transfer for AM tech is based on the end users and stakeholders. 100% internal technology with a specific set of elitist stock pickers, research analysts and traders as internal customers.

And then expecting those exact investment professionals to engage in this new silly structure was down right embarrassing. Asking someone who has worked as a product manger (industry title) to become a squad lead (not even a title used by Spotify itself anymore) was evidence in itself for some people aware enough that they jumped ship or took a lateral move.

Covid became the catalyst for this shift to formally take place, yes. But dont let your ignorance (and outright bigotry) distract you from the real enemy here. False sense of transparency from upper executives. Tenured VPs shielding delivery teams from all this happening only made them less prepared for the blow.

Fidelity wants to remain known for not following suit in layoff trends throughout changing economies. This is a decade long plan to control costs in a different way that other competing public firms cant take the same approach. If you want someone to blame, this is a “privately owned” cop out.

Thats it. The VPs you keep bringing up that you all seem to want to interrogate hypothetically. They were brought in so that there wouldn’t be outraged when they were phased out. Every single AM tech leader knew this. Patterns were recognized. New roles were presented to people with confusing titles and responsibilities. Delivery teams divided.

Asking chat gpt to come up with reverse interview questions about new VPs merit is sophmoric. This was why they were placed originally — upper execs paid for the Spotify consult and needed to see it through, and covid allowed them to execute this. knowing it would fail and THAT was a valuable point enough to justify future layoffs.

There are MANY cases of well accomplished VPs choosing a demotion, strategically. To stay at the firm, embrace the change for a temporary 5-7 years until the next wave of “leaders” try to make an impact. When Kathy and bill were here, this was well understood but not widely discussed because there was an actionable conversation happening about what long term associates LIKED about why they stayed for so long. There was a long run of success with their combined approach, and unfortunately gave a lot of younger employees a sense of stability that would soon change.

All of the outrage of covid hires and thinking you can reverse engineer something that was intentionally designed to fail in the first place is a waste of your time. Stop being tricked into thinking they actually believed this re-org would work. Or that it was a disguised effort to implement DEI.

Your leaders didn’t tell you the truth, stop whining about DEI when it was intentionally used to distract you and blame your peers, and not the execs.

I’m hoping for some honest feedback. I recently applied for a role in the Retail IT department at Walgreens, but I walked away with a really bad feeling about the hiring director and the overall environment. I’m wondering if pursuing this opportunity might be a mistake.

Great line by NVIDIA CEO.

Truth is, Verizon should have many empty chairs then…

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/entrepreneursanctuary_jensen-huang-co-founded-nvidia-in-1993-and-activity-7453027411870371840-5DK2?

Hey, guys wondering which orgs should I consider transferring too. I want know which STS are green or red flags. I’m currently an associate engineer with continued meet standards in CET,RWT and I keep getting things blocked due to budget related stuff. I’m tired of my org not evaluating me fairly so I’ll be applying around again.

Alright, let's hear it! Comment below on the first week back under the new RTO mandate. People going from 3 to 4 days a week, how bad was it having that extra day and having 3x the amount of people around you all day? HBAs returning to office (myself included), was it as bad as you thought, worse or better? My personal opinion and observations were the following:

• Commutes: These are only 'tolerable' if you get there before 7 and leave before 3. Traffic is and always will su-k in a post covid world where everyone drives like they are either on me-h or sleeping pills.

• Collaboration: We have to sit around people we already work with (I work with cool people thank goodness). Zero difference in teamwork, communication etc other than talking over a cube wall instead of in a teams chat. The idea that being in person will "increase collaboration" is one of the biggest lies told to us. In fact, it seems that people are less likely to do any type of extra "collaborating" because everyone is tired, burnt out, and of patience. Another Fail for ELT. (put this L on the stack with the others)

-"Culture": Day one had lots of chatter and "summit energy" from associates seeing others they had not seen in years. This type of "energy" also can be found at Founders Day. Oh wait, PP ki-led that whole event with no explaination. By day 3 people appeared to be less "bubbly" and were more or less just focused on staying in their cubes, plugging the ears with a headset or ear buds, and counting down the hours until it was time to leave. Everyone looks tired and checked out. If EDJ had any brains, 2 days in office seems to be the sweet spot if you were going to have RTO and not make it fail horribly. But, these people are stupid and will never notice this. Also, for the folks that think HBA peeps are lazy because we are (or were) at home, please sit down and take your L. Lazy people in the office are no different than a lazy HBA. In office are actually worse about getting out of doing work because there is nobody watching them. HBAs always felt like they had to go above and beyond to stay off the radar.

• Productivity: This was the biggest fail of them all. The distractions of having people walking by my cube, the background noise, hearing other calls, and just general in office vibes. This is a horrible, outdated, beyond stupid way to complete non client/branch facing work. It is unbelievable how much less productive I was this week in office VS at home. The time it took to get day to day work done was increased due to having so many distractions. I made more errors this week than I have in years. Stupid errors from simply not being 100% locked in on the work I was doing.

• Leaders: The only leaders that seem to be enjoying this new RTO are the ones at or above DL. The ones who wear the sport coat/blazer every day. They have the talking points down, the fake persona like a politician, and generally walk around thinking they are Gods gift to this company as they figure out new and creative ways to break everything they touch. They don't even seem like real people and make zero effort to interact or have any personal relationship with the people under them, unless of course they need a new 'work around' created for a system tech failure. They stay in their clique` with the other 'jackets'. They seem almost completely detached from reality and have zero ability to "read the room".

Summary: I knew it would be bad, but this is much worse than I imagined now that I'm seeing it in real time. People that love WFH don't care if someone is in office, teams chat is yellow/away, or someone doesnt reply right away. We simply do not care and only focus on the job we are paid to do. Nothing else matters to us if the work is getting done correctly. The in office junkies (the ones who love RTO) seem to be nothing more than micro managing control freaks. They dont have enough to do and have major insecurities. They love being in the office and therefore everyone needs to be in the office to fill whatever mental void they have. These people are borderline psychopaths with the way they obsess over what their coworkers are doing. It's sick and childish when it comes down to it. The obsession with seeing bodies in the cubes and nothing more has to be one of the biggest fumbles and fails EDJ has ever done (next to layoffs and outsourcing). I'm generally curious at this point as to how much extra $ is wasted on these buildings to keep them functional VS when the company was fully remote for almost 4 years. It's going to be a very long summer.

so surprised that no one mentions next week on this forum

https://share.google/LaNSdgZJxVmNlINzW

Is there anything less American than this? F this company... How is this even legal?

I have a PhD for 20 years now and most of my papers are in AI. I worked for 5 years at Fiserv as a product director before I left! This lady keeps referring to AI, but she is simply talking about workflow and automation. This is not AI. Can someone please educated her? Is she just another Gibbons?

Listen to the Bloomberg Talks interview with Dan. They literally ask him what changes will average customer see that will make an impact and Dan literally couldn’t answer. Totally embarrassing- it’s so CLEAR he has NO PLAN for any real changes. Just AI, AI, AI. Literally no plan at all!!!

Humana gives the bare ** minimum

Lots of major names have left the company, and people continue to leave. Probably a combination of the upper management culture (nepotism much…), LT mindset around optimizing and running as lean as possible, and the profit sharing changes which apparently we claimed “entitlement” to and did not work for. And really bad base pay relative to general industry. What do you think?

We are told we are an AI first company.

Now we are being told not to use it too much as it's costing too much money!

Significant change in culture and employee satisfaction. A few extremely poor leaders out in leadership and department head positions and everyone is job scares, anxious and unhappy. CEO change and the domino effect afterwards was a big part of it. Sad, but at some point the cancer will be identified and removed

Who is next to get ousted?

I come into work every day wondering if something is about to change and nobody says a word. The lack of communication about job security is becoming exhausting.

The head of the Writers Guild of America East union blasted Paramount-owned CBS News for recent “cruel and needless layoffs,” its firing of “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley and the shutdown of CBS News Radio.

https://variety.com/2026/tv/news/wga-slams-scott-pelley-firing-cbs-news-cruel-needless-layoffs-1236766676/

What the he-l is wrong with you kiss-a-s corporate boot-lickers?

Beth doesn't support families, women, disabled people, and those with extenuating circumstances with the RTO requirements that make FTO impossible. And to add insult to injury, the recent layoffs despite record stock prices and revenue...

Have some god-damn self respect for yourselves.

So few doing something about it. Start looking. Move on. You'll be so much happier.

The people who get the most done always seem to end up with even more work. It's gone from recognition to punishment at this point.

Uber is cutting 23% of jobs in its People and Places division, which covers human resources, recruitment, workplace facilities, and culture, according to Bloomberg.

A company spokesperson confirmed the affected headcount falls well below 1% of Uber's global workforce of 34,000, though the company declined to provide a specific figure. Senior-level positions account for a large share of the roles being eliminated.

https://qz.com/uber-layoffs-hr-people-division-restructuring-060326

I have worked here for over two decades and this is one of the more frustrating periods I have seen. The actual workload is manageable, but the constant politics between departments and leadership make the day feel heavier than it needs to be. We're spending more time avoiding conflict than solving problems. Most of the conversations are tense and few are comfortable speaking openly anymore. A few coworkers who used to be very engaged now barely participate unless they have to. It's exhausting, and for all the wrong reasons.

They expect you to eat, sleep, and breathe work. If you're willing to give up your evenings, your weekends, and any semblance of a personal life, you'll probably do fine. If you want to see your family or have hobbies, good luck. Is this a Cisco-wide issue? I was thinking of applying internally, but I don't want to end up in a same environment.

Except when it comes to bonuses, which mostly go to those on top. And layoffs, which mostly affected those of us not on top. And raises. And so on. But we're all in this together! /s

What a load of sh!t this all is. You don’t care about any of us. If you did you would have respected our survey feedback last year. People want flexibility, none of the other BS does anything for anyone.

How can you mess up a company so badly and never answer for any of it? Are we in a TV show and they have plot armor? What is it that's keeping them untouchable despite so many failures?

Big changes in merrill banking. Word on the street is no more banking quotas monthly for 2026. The new scorecard is radically different suggesting concern over the pressure to open more and more and more accounts. Now the bankers are judged solely on risk and accuracy.
Looks like some freedom fighter took the charge to the Bull, and a RIGHT hook from the disgruntled base connected

Besides broken systems, unqualified leadership and performative culture?

Finance SD is openly vying for a SVP job two levels above his. he frequently mentions it in team meetings and its all over LinkedIn. he uses my annual performance meetings to talk about his desire for a promotion. SVP and AVP show favoritism to him. he acts inappropriately around employees and encourages us all to slack off. he constantly pressures people with opposing opinions in an abusive way and lies to protect himself. toxicity at its finest.

Q&A at Global Town Hall, Geoffisms

• We’re closing sites where people don’t want to live or travel to.
• We don’t have a retention issue.

He needs to make a career change to doing comedy.

So glad Aetna is doing so well...how about sharing that financial success with the rest of us for once!

What’s up with these events today like they have been a long time tradition? What’s the point of hyping these irrelevant events? What the he-l is a swoosh cup? Is there anything more irrelevant than a Nike Mile? Perhaps they trying to cover up the fact how fun JDI days used to be?

Are people actually going to JDI day or do some people use it as a day off? I really don’t have that much interest in going, and I think my team is kinda doing whatever. Wondering if it’s abnormal to not partake or how people approach JDI day especially considering where the company is at. I’d rather have saved the money of JDI day and split the cost up as a bonus between everyone lol

Does anyone know why all of a sudden there is a huge divide between Gainwell and HMS? The messaging at first it was we are one company. These past couple of months it’s been shown we are NOT one and was verbally told to separate from them. You see it in their actions. W are treated like the red headed stepchild! We bring in so much money but we’re treated like we don’t even exist. They never wanted us and that’s okay. Does anyone know if we will be sold soon or the sudden direct change of heart? Is it time to move on?

I work in the quad, and it seems like everyone is extremely unhappy. Empty eyes as people walk through the skyways. Blank expressions as we struggle to keep our heads above water while doing "more with less."

Everyone is overworked, underappreciated, frustrated to be sitting in a cubicle on Teams meetings because we've offshored so much of our workforce, bitter that raises and promotions are a thing of the past, stressed out because our leaders change direction every few months and want everything immediately but don't give us the time, tools, or people to do it correctly.

I've had friends get laid off who then tell me they're just glad it's finally over, like ripping off a band-aid (or its inferior counterpart, the Nexcare brand adhesive bandage strip).

How long until Bill succeeds in running this place into the ground?

Bravo Waters. Bravo. Impressive.

When did CVS start using HireVue for prescreening?
For anyone lucky enough not to know, it’s where you record yourself answering interview questions while an AI quietly judges you. Essentially a corporate Tinder.
This is a director level posting, not a role getting hundreds of entry-level applicants. I’ve been here over 20 years, and I only apply to things I actually care about—not panic-clicking “apply” at midnight. My skills were a great match for the role. I’m also not eager to risk awkwardness with my current manager just to get rejected because I didn’t maintain “optimal eye contact with my webcam.” Its a lateral move so I really need a two-way conversation with HR first to assess compatibility.
I was told it’s mandatory, so I withdrew.
Am I overreacting? Is this just the times? I get it AI is everything now but I feel certain circumstances should not be using this route to weed out candidates. Id love to hear from those who think this is a great idea because I must be missing something and some day I may very well HAVE to use it..