#culture

I moved across the country for State Farm based on what they told me during interviews. Now that I'm here, the role and team setup are completely different from what I agreed to. My responsibilities aren't even close to what we discussed. You can't just undo a relocation like that but they act like it's no big deal. Nobody seems to give a damn.

Is it more effective to answer the TTUS survey or to skip it altogether?

Also, they say the survey is confidential, but they never say it is anonymous, which makes me less likely to want to tell them what I truly think.

Nobody I know feels comfortable actually using it because you never see anyone else take time. This might be specific to my area, but I highly doubt it. In the end, it ends up being worse than having a set number of days. I'm tired of pretending this is some great benefit.

My first week was just me sitting around trying to piece things together on my own. No training, no point of contact, just outdated documents that don't match anything we actually do. People keep assuming I know systems I've never even seen. It set such a bad tone right from the start.

The server business was always more sticky and now is hugely more strategic than storage.
Years of comp plans for lEMC sales focused on pushing unity, powerstore, powermax etc distracted from the real prize of owning the entire data centre. They never understood apps, infrastructure. Just boxes.
If they had focused on overall sales, share of wallet, Dell would have been even more of a powerhouse than today.
Servers were never as high margin as storage, but highly profitable and close enough to matter.

The era of prosperity is drawing to a close. Our world is entering its final, irreversible decline

We all knew that something like this will surface sooner or later. Now all engineers are expected to go full agentic starting right this second ( according to the communication). They even drafted a roadmap of how they envision this would take place. What are your thoughts about this move? I guess, this is mainly will affect technology but looks like some businesses will be included in this madness as well.

Looks like Truist Financial Corporation is gonna get scooped up by Citigroup later this year. Bill and the execs will ride off into the sunset laughing their tails off at us with a massive windfall. The rest of us? We’ll be lucky just to hang onto our jobs. Massive layoffs feel inevitable. And yeah, from what I’ve heard, the employee culture at Citi su-ks ba--s.

The U.S. version of the 2026 Employee Engagement Survey will have two questions:

1. Why the heck are you still working here? Please leave.

2. What else can we do to you and your peers, in order to get you dummies to quit? We'll try anything!

Why is she still here? She failed in her most precious task and i see her on LinkedIn accepting paid for bogus awards "best HR person" at some HR boondoggle in Orlando or Phoenix with a bunch of HR Eco chamber id--ts. Sheri did you pay for those trips or did the company?
Brian, she has no credibly or trust with the workforce.

Why are we spending so much time talking about the chevron way history? Trying to rationalize current decisions?

I want to share my experience of the layoff process at Oracle. I was RIF'd in September 2025. I worked for Oracle for 17 years: 7 years in the UK and then transferred to the US for personal reasons (my wife is American and we wanted to be closer to family). Oracle made that move so much simpler and for all the bad things I will forever be grateful to Oracle. During my time in the US I was relatively high achieving within my team and had carved out a unique and critical DevOps role within my team. It wasn't rocket science, but it was unique and critical and I thought it gave me some protection against a RIF. On the Tuesday before I was RIF'd (Wednesday) I attended a meeting with my VP, Senior Director, Director (I was IC4) and we were planning for some business critical work that coming weekend. This is relevant as no one in those positions had any idea it was coming or we would not have been wasting our time on that planning meeting! The following morning we had another meeting (Oracle and their meetings...) and the VP didn't show up... the senior director didn't show up... the director and the ICs all showed up. I then got wind of something being up around 30 mins after the meeting as people were starting to disappear on Slack. I messaged my Director and he was talking to me on the phone and then he excused himself and had to drop for an urgent meeting that had just shown up in his calendar. He messaged me 10 minutes later to say that he had been RIF'd and his access was going to go away and gave me his personal email and said he was there to help however things worked out (great guy). Then around 30 mins later I received an email from my EVP. It was a boilerplate job and basically said "Today is your last day with Oracle, so long and thanks for all the fish". My Slack etc carried on working and in fact all my access continued working, that struck me as super d-mb.... I didn't do anything with that access but others might not have been so responsible! Around 2 hours later I was locked out of everything and was left numb walking off into the sunset. I received my severance on schedule and that was that. It all just felt very sloppy and isn't the way I would have handled it. An email after 17 years just felt a lot like a "F U". My entire org was laid off (bar a couple a of guys to keep the lights on - who wants to be that guy!!) so it was obviously not personal but it just felt so sloppy.

Duke stunned by UConn in final 0.4 seconds. The Blue Devils are now the first No. 1 seed to lose in the tournament after leading by at least 15 points at halftime. Couldn’t of happened to a more arrogant fan base!

This is the most miserable and unpleasant workforce I have witnessed in my career; Mckinsey's magnum opus of misery is the hallmark and extent of attention RV has given BNY culture.

If you stay long enough at BNY you will become ghouls like our execs. Some of these fallen humans are sitting around you now, you can see the vacant look in their eyes.

If you are outside this company and read this board, don't even entertain the idea of working here... heed this warning from someone that bought into their bullsh*t

F’ing coward!

Can't blame him, everyone is jumping ship, why wouldn't he.

1.) Hire exec. team of highly compensated "friends" to virtue signal
2.) Create us vs 'them' environment
3.) Have numerous employee indoctrination meetings
4.) Spin-off non core businesses
5.) Quarterly lay-offs of 'them'
6.) Complain that Bryan isn't Chairmen of the Board

Rinse and repeat.

A rare but rapidly spreading condition triggered when Michael Dell logs on, drops a “Go American” post, and starts sounding like he just got off a call with Donald Trump.

Symptoms include:

Immediate emotional spiral on internal boards

Writing a 9-paragraph manifesto no one asked for on the layoff site

Saying “this isn’t political” while being extremely political

Refreshing comments like it’s the stock ticker during earnings

Advanced stages:

Convincing yourself every product launch is now a campaign rally

Interpreting supply chain updates as coded political messaging

Believing your PowerEdge server has a voting preference

Diagnosis:
A corporate variant of Trump Derangement Syndrome but with more acronyms, fewer facts, and way worse comment sections.

Treatment:
Log off
Touch grass
Stay off layoff sites until mild sedation sets in

Only a company that doesnt care a bit hospitality would bring Bridget back into the fold. There were parties when she left! O well glad im gone. Good luck to those still at macys. Watch your back.

I still do my job. I just don't do their politics anymore.

You can push yourself as hard as you want, but the expectations just keep changing and you’re still left feeling like you missed the mark. And it’s not isolated, it’s the same story across multiple departments. It's astounding how much this place has changed in the last several years.

Awful leadership
Open favoritism
You can forget about coaching or career development
You’re treated as a number and replaceable
Pay and benefits are subpar
Little to no accountability
And so on...

I don't see a long-term future here anymore. I don't think anybody should.

Or let me phrase that better, why do we let that be the case?

There is no doubt that some leaders are driven by ego, and we all know such people. They may seem to be propelled by “legitimate” goals such as building or expanding an organization, but what is foremost in their minds and emotions is making a success for themselves, gaining fame, fortune, influence, and personal power. They are also driven to a great extent by fear and self-protection, which is reflected in the pessimism that many of them exhibit, as well as inflexibility because they feel they have to hold on to positions, ideas, and ways of doing things that have worked in the past. In short: they are afraid of change. They are motivated to try to control change rather than embrace it.

The egotistic leader is self-centered, self-righteous and self-congratulatory. This leads to criticism of others’ ideas, actions, and abilities in order to prove one’s superiority.

Genuine, justified confidence inspires and builds followership; egotism drives followers away. For egotistic leaders, the game is about themselves, protecting their image, winning every argument, feeling entitled and defending and justifying their decisions. Egotists don’t learn from their mistakes, they defend them. They are afraid to be wrong, to show vulnerability, to listen to other’ views, and they resent having to do work they consider beneath them. They focus on personal ambition, power, status, and inflating and promoting an image. As T.S. Eliot put it, “Half the harm that is done in the world is due to people who want to feel important. “

Their Narcissism

They believe they’re the smartest people in the room. They assume they are always right, don’t listen to others’ opinions and ideas, don’t trust others, and end up trying to do everything themselves.

Narcissism is an extreme form of over-confidence that is actually quite common in leaders. Narcissistic leaders use their self-confidence and charisma to draw others and initially inspire them to follow. Dr. Berit Brogaard is both a physician and professor of philosophy at the University of Miami. She has spelled out some of the main characteristics of people who have a narcissistic, exaggerated sense of their own worthiness.

They have a grandiose sense of self-importance, tend to exaggerate their achievements and talents, and expect to be recognized by others as superior — even if their achievements don’t warrant it.

They are preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance.

They believe they are “special” and unique, and can only be understood by other special, high-status individuals. Thus they require excessive admiration and have a sense of entitlement.

They are interpersonally exploitative, and tend to take advantage of others to achieve their own ends.

They lack empathy, and are unable to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others.

They are often envious of others or believe that others are envious of them.

They are arrogant and haughty, these are all signs of an ego that has run amok.

They talk but don’t listen. Or if they appear to listen, they don’t actually act on the advice or information given.

They don’t acknowledge the contributions of others. Many great leaders find a way to praise team members and give them all the credit for success. Ego-driven people seek out the praise and gladly take all the credit.

They don’t train others, and won’t give up control and their teams never live up to their full potential.

They have excessive confidence in their own judgment and contempt for the advice or criticisms of others, as well as exaggerated belief, bordering on a sense of omnipotence, in what they personally can achieve. Sunflower bias, confirmation bias, over-confidence bias can lead to not considering what might go wrong, or that one’s own judgment might be flawed. A big ego and arrogance lead to bad decisions.

They are prone to recklessness and impulsiveness. Daniel Kahneman, who won the Nobel Prize winner for his research on decision-making, has cautioned that, “The brain is a machine for jumping to conclusions.” If you think you are the smartest person in the room and possess unique abilities and intuitive judgment, you probably won’t consider what might go wrong, what you may have overlooked, what information is missing, what assumptions need to be questioned or what might be the consequences of taking a risk.

They feel entitled and have a distorted sense of their own omnipotence. Thus they don’t plan and don’t handle the things that need to be done. They just assume things will work out for them and don’t think about the details or the difficulties of implementation.

It feels like the people making decisions no longer have a clue what our work actually involves. We tell them what's broken and they just ignore it. They acknowledge our concerns and then do absolutely nothing about them. Why should I trust anything they say at this point?

Any insight or comments on the culture of Exxon's trade floor in Houston? I'm considering a job there, but don't have a lot of insight into it and understand it is 'transitioning' with their 3rd attempt to create a trading organization. What is comp like for system traders and crude/product traders? How is culture?

I can't keep track of who I report to anymore or what I'm supposed to be working on. Projects constantly get started and then abandoned mid stream. Can somebody explain to me how this complete chaos benefits anybody, including Nike?

The workload here is insane, but what really gets me is how everyone acts like it's totally normal. Totally acceptable. Working late isn't an exception around here, it's just expected. This kind of pace isn't sustainable and I'm watching people quietly burn out all around me.

The painful and sad truth is that Cisco has become a company run by financial managers and lawyers. Such a company has no chance of growing and being competitive at the crazy growth rate of the AI ​​market. The facts are that there has been no innovation at Cisco for a very long time, the company has been operating conservatively and cautiously, resting on its laurels, there is no risk-taking, no innovation, but rather maintaining the status quo. This is the truth that all need to understand and know about Cisco. All the other talks of the ELT are worthless.

Communication has gotten so limited and people are constantly watching their backs. Nobody wants to stick their neck out or help anyone else anymore, mostly because everybody is worried they're giving somebody else advantage before more cuts. This isn't the same workplace it used to be at all.

The direction here changes every few months, so how are you supposed to feel confident about anything long term? Teams keep starting initiatives that never go anywhere before the next priority shift. That lack of consistency is ki-ling morale more than leadership realizes.

What would it take to get back there? Is it possible?

What is going on over there?? Constant back and forth on plans and resourcing. Even requirements above the 4 days/wk corporate standard to please BB. Sure seems like a lot of people leaving.

I remember when being at Dell felt genuinely prestigious there was energy, momentum, and a strong sense of identity. Lately, it feels different. More like going through the motions than being part of something special.

The PIE group does meetings to help be anti-racist. Anyone been? What did you think?

The questions should read

1. How many times have you thought about quitting? 976 times.
2. Would you hire your boss, if you were the boss? If not? Why? If so, why?
3. What improvements can the company make?
4. Do you approve of our spending? Why? Or why not?
5. Who is your least favorite person in your department?
6. Is your pay acceptable? If not, prove it.
7. If you could be in any position, which position and why?
8. Do you actually enjoy your job? If yes, why? If no, why?
9. Is your job up with the times?
10. Do you feel micromanaged? On a scale from 1-10, how micromanaged do you feel?

The end.