#culture

… that’s all.

First principles are the foundational, irreducible truths of a system that cannot be deduced any further. SNPS is a software company that depends on selling software for profits. So the first principles of the company are those who write codes and those who sell the software. Anything else should serve these two principles: reduce distraction, provide a comfortable working environment, and give them good compensation.

However, at SNPS, these 2 groups are the ones who are mostly ignored and suppressed. When management flips the organizational hierarchy, bureaucracy cannibalizes the engineers who build the product and the sales professionals who generate revenue. Every supporting department—from middle management to HR—should exist solely to optimize this pipeline, not obstruct it. Losing sight of this foundational truth triggers immediate organizational decay. This is the root cause of extreme low productivity compared with our competitors.

This structural inversion creates dangerous consequences for the company's market position. High-performing talent does not stay where it is marginalized. When top-tier developers and elite sales executives face hostility, they leave for competitors who respect first principles. The company is then left with a culture of compliance rather than innovation, where survival depends on pleasing managers rather than creating superior products or winning market share.

To see this reality clearly, it is worthwhile to pause and count the people around you. Ask yourself: how many actually write code? How many engage in real sales? And how many do nothing but to make their managers happy? When the talkers outnumber and outrank the doers, a company has abandoned its first principles.

At SNPS, It's not uncommon that an IC sits in the 8th or 9th layer in the reporting structure. We, the front line engineers, don't need so many nannies and care givers.

Fiserv cannot afford to keep ineffective, incompetent, inexperienced VPs! Waste of $$$$. They warm their seats, collect a nice salary and add no value. Their staff runs the ship without them - why keep them?? Their resume speaks for themselves - no real leadership or industry experience or knowledge and they don’t care about us or our clients! Someone explain WHY in the heck they get to take advantage of Fiserv?! We are dying here! Someone take responsibility!!! Let’s win back our reputation!

When will ELT and Sr Leaders slow down the type and quantity of change they are shoving down our throats?! I understand that change is required in any organization, but for fcks sake give us a change to digest these changes and understand them before you dump more on us!

Change fatigue is real, and is the main reason I want to leave but probably won't because of the amount of $$ I have wrapped up in my LP. Plus, I don't want the tax hit from having to sell it if I leave and work for a competing firm.

But seriously... just fckng leave us alone for a hot minute.

Extremely worried about the future here. Uncertain times. Will these centers survive?

Dell Federal was always the darling (along with Global). Federal had their own building annex next to building 3 when I was there (for -security- and their red outlined badges to easily identify them as part of the elite Fed team). They had the most lifers and boomers @ Dell. Many ex-military. Life couldn't get better at Dell if you were in Dell Federal Sales. Do they still reign supreme with their easy Government appropriations and special blanket purchase agreements worth billions of dollars... most of the mega easy commissions checks cut by Dell were for Federal AEs, ISRs, SEs and ISG/CSG TSRs. Hope they are still doing well and raking in the cash.

Some managers and dirs just do follow ups, just they pressure on developers to deliver data to meet deadlines. They didn't even know proper architecture, business, no proper direction to dev's and some even don't know basic git commands. I don't know how are they even surviving in this org.

I can’t believe these people are the leadership.

When is the next Beat. I am missing the commentary. That one person really made my day.

Did you like the Beat updates?

Apaches how’s the vibe now? You had 100 days to feel empowered and successful…now the man behind the curtain needs to drop trousers (oil price) so the midterms don’t destabilize the wizard of Oz.

What’s break even now? Can Apache continue nickel and dimming its vendors?

I don’t want to do any work, clearly why should we work when Sarah doesn’t give a damn about anyone but greedy self.
Sarah is a character she talks about the struggles of her mother and what she did for her on LinkedIn for Mother’s Day. Than she does this. Come on do better and stop being fake.

I joined today's ESPP call after hearing about the share scheme and understanding that managers had been awarded shares, with some reportedly receiving free shares worth around $10,000. I expected the session to explain a similar opportunity for employees.

Instead, we were told that we can participate by purchasing shares at a 15% discount. While I appreciate that a discounted purchase plan has value, it was disappointing to learn that managers receive shares at no cost while individual contributors are expected to buy them.

The difference in treatment feels inconsistent with the "One Hitachi" message that was highlighted during the presentation. If the goal is to foster a sense of shared ownership and unity across the organisation, a scheme that is perceived as benefiting one group significantly more than another risks sending the opposite message.

For all the people posting "just quit," I'm assuming you either have wealthy parents, a wealthy spouse, a trust fund, or simply don't understand that most American households rely on two incomes to keep the lights on.

The idea that people can "just quit" comes from a place of privilege. Many people can't simply walk away from a paycheck. They can't magically afford a maid, laundry service, extra childcare, or elder care to make RTO more manageable, or months of reduced income or no income on unemployment while they search for something new. And let's be honest—the job market isn't exactly making that decision easier right now.

What makes this especially frustrating is that many of us chose these roles over the last few years because they were advertised as remote or hybrid—not because we were specifically committed to one company. Changing the rules after people have built their lives around those expectations feels like a bait-and-switch.

So when people say, "just quit," what they're really saying is, "just absorb the financial risk and disruption to your life." That's easy advice to give when you have a safety net. Not everyone does.

The result isn't that people leave. The result is that you end up with a lot of frustrated, disengaged employees who feel stuck because they can't simply walk away.

And yes, it's hard not to notice that many of the people making these decisions have financial security and flexibility that most workers don't. It's a lot easier to tell someone else to take a risk when you're insulated from the consequences yourself.

Not to mention that the office setup, hot-desking, and commutes are terrible.

Am I getting paid for that commute time? No. Should I be? Probably. We all should be.

And let's not pretend there aren't real quality-of-life impacts. A lot of people use the flexibility of remote work to take a walk, go to the gym, attend a doctor's appointment, pick up a family member, or simply take a break that helps them manage stress and stay productive. When you're spending hours each day commuting to and from an office, that time disappears.

For many people, return-to-office doesn't just mean working from a different location. It means less time for exercise, less time for family, less time for errands, and less time to take care of their mental and physical health—all while doing the exact same work they were already doing successfully from home.

I’ve literally heard nothing about engine in my functions for months. Anyone have insight into it? Is it working? Or is it like agile, and we’ll just all forget it, and it’s associated magical thinking, ever happened?

Dear “leads”,
What the actual fu-k are you doing up there? If your goal is to make Mattel the least respected, most toxic, revolving door of all time - continue celebrating yourselves, you’ve done it.
Signed,
Someone struggling to care as little as you do.

Why is anyone still working here? Being unemployed would be better for you at this point. Leave the company. Let them choke on their own nonsense. Zuck deserves to be allowed to drive this thing into the ground.

Just to confirm, this will be implemented to track us and help them get rid of us?

Im sorry to say, this place is beyond cooked....and its not just BD, its the whole world.

Balance no longer exists. What remains is a world defined by imbalance so constant that it has become indistinguishable from normalcy. Excess and deficiency exist side by side, not in tension but in resignation, as though correction is no longer expected.

Across the public sphere, intelligent and coherent thought has grown less common, not because the capacity has disappeared, but because the conditions that sustain it have eroded. Attention is fragmented, discourse is accelerated beyond reflection, and communication is increasingly shaped by urgency rather than understanding. Conversations that once demanded depth are now compressed into immediacy, and in that compression, nuance is lost. The result is not silence, but noise without clarity.

At the same time, the natural systems that underpin life are under sustained stress. The ground, the water, the air, and the food supply carry the cumulative weight of industrial and chemical expansion, often in ways that are not immediately visible. These changes do not announce themselves dramatically. They accumulate quietly, persistently, until their consequences become unavoidable. What once could be assumed as stable now exists under conditions that are uncertain and increasingly difficult to restore.

Economic structures mirror this imbalance. Wealth and opportunity continue to concentrate, while access to stability becomes less predictable for much of the population. The idea that effort alone ensures security has weakened. Systems that suggest fairness in principle often fail to deliver it in experience. As disparity widens, so does the distance between those who can insulate themselves from instability and those who cannot.

Institutions that were meant to provide coherence reflect this fragmentation. Education struggles to reconcile its purpose with shifting demands. Governance often reacts rather than directs. Information systems prioritize engagement, leaving accuracy as a secondary concern. These structures continue to function, but their ability to produce alignment or trust has diminished.

On an individual level, the effects are less dramatic but no less significant. People remain connected through constant technological access, yet the sense of being understood does not scale with that connection. Productivity continues to increase, but fulfillment does not follow proportionally. Options expand, while direction becomes less certain. Activity grows, while meaning becomes harder to define.

None of these elements exist in isolation. Each reinforces the others. A decline in thoughtful discourse makes it more difficult to address complex problems. Environmental strain contributes to economic pressure. Inequality intensifies social fragmentation. The systems designed to manage these forces operate within the same conditions that weaken them.

This is not a moment defined by a single collapse, but by the gradual normalization of imbalance across every domain. It is a state in which strain is continuous, correction is delayed, and the expectation of equilibrium has quietly receded.

Did anyone win nascar tix? I’ve heard of nothing from anyone in my division/group which seems odd.

Did they hoard them for VPs?

Down another 50% in last year, now back to 2017 pricing. Tragicomic Q3 results puts this abject clownshow near 130 by EOD.

When your "operating model" is to find the most enthusiastically incompetent, dishonest, lazy "leaders" available and give them absolute control over sales, marketing, and service delivery...

I do not understand why this company would choose to send every department into a tailspin of nerves and anxiety for the next 2 months. Morale is completely gone and employees are paralyzed with fear. Who is actually working at this point? No one cares because we all know we may be next. Not to mention earning back the trust of employees after a stunt like this! Are YOU working or are you sitting in front of your computer shell shocked and unable to put one foot in front of the other? I feel that's like the spot most employees are in. Has anyone heard of any departments at this point that just might be ok? Are your people leaders saying anything?

There are too many posts on this board expressing animosity between the wireless and wireline sides of the business. If you’re contributing to this animosity, you should stop! It’s silly! I’ll explain why below.

One recurring theme is that wireless couldn’t survive without wireline. Way back when, all wireless operators used T-1s and DS-3s and that generated quite a bit of revenue for the LECs. As capacity needs increased, they shifted to fiber about 20 years ago. There are a lot of fiber providers so wireless is no longer dependent on wireline but getting fiber from your own company is better for the balance sheet. Would you rather we paid AT&T for fiber?

It’s also true that wireless was initially financed by wireline but so what? Wireline saw an opportunity and they took it. T-Mobile was financed by investors outside of wireline and they’re doing just fine.

In short, wireless would do just fine without wireline and wireline would do fine without wireless but they are better together because there are significant synergies including bundling services. So stop this silliness! There’s enough drama and nonsense in the company and you don’t need to add to that.

Belk is the only department store to still be operating like it’s Covid 2020. Stores have not improved since the pandemic in terms of staffing levels and services for customers. We are stuck in Covid business model.

It’s a sad state of affairs at all levels unless you’re on the EC, then it’s all working out amazingly. In the past 60 days we’ve lost talent that dedicated multi decades of hard work to the firm. Strong minded, intelligent people that really contributed to shared goals every day. Up to the time when shared goals became a blur of corporate kool aid, McKinsey projects, revolving door of leadership. Never did I think it would come to this but I’m at the end of my pain tolerance. Very sad. Is Wealth growing or shrinking? Can margins grow out of the bottom gutter? Is Jose doing anything to make change besides firing,hiring, cashing checks, selling shares? So sad. The range of firings has been like a sn---r attack in a classroom. Best to dress like the plebes or be targeted. Last thought - does RV look unhealthy to any of you??

We can’t wait to get outta here….behind this trapped door

Looney "brings deep experience in global energy, capital markets, major project delivery, and international partnerships to the company", the Knoxville, Tennessee-based developer of nuclear fusion electricity

Keep a chastity belt on all the pretty female employees!

They can't keep people it is such a terrible company to work for and ever since the Rentokill mess, it's worse. The techs can't do their jobs efficiently since their planners clearly don't understand a map or distance. They schedule 6 8-10 stops that are 20 miles apart and mandate the amount of time you have to spend at each stop. The leadership are all the latest failures from unrelated industries like Burger King or some other cr-p job. The after hours work of calling customers and fixing the scheduling the planners can't get right reduce your hourly pay to min wage or worse all to work in cramped spaces in extreme heat and cold. Seriously, layoffs are not the issue, retaining people is their big problem.

Vivek's purview to say with confidence that the most important applications at Verizon outside of network operations. POS, point-of-sale, intakes some 70+% of ALL of Verizon’s revenue. ACSS is a superset of that software. This software is utter garbage. I mean it’s just layers on layers of undocumented spaghetti code written by contractors that were seemingly plucked from the streets, paid 50,000/yr, and whose agency was billing Verizon 120,000/yr for their time here. At a company with Verizon's profits a full stack developer should reasonably expect to start here and be able to search a UI for any service or data they need to build pretty much anything you could conceive. Yet you won’t find a single shred of such documentation. GTS leadership has passively allowed layers and layers of teams to be stood up where each team only works on one segment of one leg of any end to end business process. No one engineer is empowered to build a single feature holistically end to end without pulling people from 2-3+ teams to get the job done. Often the job is just chaining some API calls and making a UI to display the results. Something a decent college CS graduate could build independently if there was proper documentation. Instead engineers are tasked with endless non-funded pet projects in some obscene race to be the team that shows the shiniest little half functional proof of concept to the nearest VP. All the while our most integral systems are held together with popsicle sticks, glue, and chewed up bubblegum. Everything is expected to be done yesterday. No one cares about code quality thus software/product quality. Most of the leaders within GTS could not solve a LeetCode medium if their families lives depended on it, assuming they even knew what LeetCode was. The sad part is the same is true for most of the Principle Engineers, Distinguished, and associate fellows and fellows as well. All these guys do is sit in calls so they can steal each others ideas. Then go implement them in some shoddy fashion so they can say they did it. Who cares if it works in production or provides any tangible return on investment for the time expenditure. The engineering culture at Verizon is utter garbage and it is perpetuated by the leadership within GTS. It is beyond simple incompetence, the leadership in GTS does not even have an idea of what competent software delivery is. It’s not incompetence because that would imply some intent to do things correctly. It’s simple ignorance. I have seen a VP of Site Reliability Engineering shoot down a Distinguished Engineers suggestion that engineers should be able to run the code that they are working in locally to validate results. The VP thought that was an absurd request. To put that in layman's terms the guy was just saying that when I paint a picture I should be able to see the canvas as I paint. That was dismissed. That’s the level of ignorance we’re dealing with. To reverse this level of cancerous spread you would need to inundate GTS with so much chemotherapy and radiation it likely would die out before any recovery was ever observed. I really do believe that the only way back is just terminating all of GTS leadership. Stop all software delivery. Bring in VP’s from actual tech companies who have actual software engineering experience within the past decade. Allow them to document ALL of the inner workings of the existing systems. Publish that documentation to OneConfluence or some adjacent documentation platform. Grant access to this documentation to ALL VZ Software Engineers. Release all of our Fellows, and Associate Fellows. Replace them with real engineers from real tech companies. THEN you can START redesigning the systems that collect all of VZ’s money. So regardless of Vivek's character do you really think he is prepared to make this level of systemic change to how Verizon delivers software? Or do you think he will just perpetuate slop delivery ad nauseam until Verizon crumbles or someone does the needful that I have laid out here?

Lyons need to start by rewriting the mission and vision statement, and permanently ban trigger words like "meaningful" and" "purpose-driven." The only purpose and mission Bill had was to run the company into the ground and take a meaningful amount of cash with him.

Is leadership checked out in other markets like the PNW or is this a local problem? The last year we took a nose dive..

What happened to sales? Not a single person could speak without reading a script. Can any of them be authentic like SV? Just speak naturally instead of something you clearly know nothing about.

One of the regional heads in the USA spoke for 10mins about a deal when she seemed to have NO understanding of either the deal or the client. It was brutal. And the head of DSS for gods sake just kept going nonstop.

It was refreshing to see the head of client solutions speak from the heart and provide real facts instead of reading from script.

Please Change this org. They cut engineering but not this? Shame!

How you’ve found value by just restructuring the company is amazing. But how you will continue to post growth at this circling the drain is beyond even the most experienced insiders when we know this growth is financially engineered. This is a slow motion train wreck and if you don’t take the GE people out of this picture, you will also lose value. It takes consistent incompetence and grifting to destroy something with this much history and momentum and you guys have showed up late to the party.

So why does John Stankey drive a Range Rover? Shouldn't he be driving a Ford, GM, or Buick? Disgraceful

I'm asking because I honestly can't remember what it's like to not dread Monday morning. If you actually love what you do, what's your job and what makes it worth it for you?

Cringeworthy LinkedIn profiles for regional vp’s.

Staged store photos of everyone holding bogus awards or giving the camera the number “one” sign. (((Cringe)))

Describing jobs and management positions as “amazing opportunities “. Using words like “golden store”. “Winning team”. It makes my skin crawl. (Cringe)

It’s so misleading it’s actually very sad

Yet some poor soul will believe this and apply for one of these jobs

I think I speak for a lot of people when I say this: I do not give a fu-k about my 9-to-5 job. I don’t care about your KPIs, the company’s goals, or the team’s goals. I don’t give a fu-k about my coworkers, and I don’t give a sh-t about my boss. I don’t care how some director or VP feels about themselves, the team, or the company. I couldn’t care less about any of that.

The only thing I care about is how much money you’re paying me and how much bullsh-t I have to deal with to earn it. I don’t want drama. I don’t want politics. I don’t want unnecessary headaches. I want to do my job, get paid, and go home.

Over the years, I’ve had bosses and executives come to me talking about KPIs, metrics, performance targets, and company objectives. They act like it’s the most important thing in the world. Meanwhile, in my head, I’m just thinking, “Yeah, sure. I don’t give a fu-k.”

If we hit our KPIs, what does that actually mean for me? Am I getting a significant raise? Am I getting a bonus? Is my life improving in any meaningful way? If not, then why should I care? I don’t give a sh-t about what it means for management or what it means for the company. I care about what it means for me.

Unfortunately, when we’re at work, most of us have to pretend we care about those things. We nod along, smile, and act engaged because that’s part of the game. But the reality is that for most people, work is a transaction. We exchange our time and effort for a paycheck.

I think for 95% of employees, that’s the truth. They’re not there because they’re deeply passionate about quarterly targets or corporate strategy. They’re there to make a living. Everything else is just background noise.

A major problem in today’s economy is that many companies focus more on extracting value than creating it. A truly great company should make useful products, serve its customers well, treat employees fairly, and maintain healthy relationships with suppliers. However, modern business culture often rewards companies even when they fail to do these things. When a company becomes highly valued despite offering less value to the people who depend on it, that reflects a deeper problem in society.

Business leaders should measure success by the value they provide to customers, not only by the money they return to shareholders. A successful business should constantly ask whether it is giving customers more value than it did before. The danger comes when companies decide to take value away from customers in order to increase profits. This may help the company in the short term, but it damages trust and weakens the purpose of the business.

This problem is especially visible in technology. Many services begin by offering something genuinely useful, but once they attract a large user base, they often shift toward extracting more profit from those users. Platforms may make useful features harder to find, increase prices, show more advertising, or push content that benefits the company more than the customer. This is the process Cory Doctorow calls “enshittification.” The original purpose of the product becomes weaker, while the company captures more value for itself.

The rise of artificial intelligence raises similar concerns. AI may make businesses more productive, but the benefits of that productivity do not have to belong only to shareholders or owners of capital. Greater productivity could lead to higher wages, shorter working hours, better services, or lower prices for consumers. However, if companies treat shareholder profit as the only important goal, AI could deepen inequality and reduce the role of ordinary people in the economy.

A society where only a small group of capital owners benefits from automation would be unstable and inhuman. Prosperous economies require the circulation of money and value, because businesses still need customers, workers, and communities to survive. If AI replaces human labor without creating new ways for people to participate, then the economy could become more concentrated and less inclusive. The challenge of the twenty-first century is to decide what role humans will have as more tasks become automated.

The future of the AI economy is therefore a choice. Society can allow AI to become another tool for monopoly, lock-in, and extraction, or it can design systems that allow more people to participate and benefit. The web and open source software succeeded in part because they created an “architecture of participation,” where many people could contribute and share in value creation. A humane economy should follow that model by using markets to support human flourishing rather than concentrating wealth among a few people.

Tim O'Reilly
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrQu3MRSQgc

Pretty bad company and their hiring process. Guess if you show any success they do not want to hire you. They want mindless drones.

I just do enough in log in the hours and collect a paycheck. The place is the walking dead. Nobody cares. Stankey just doesn't remotely come close to having that It factor that you would get behind and do battle for. Most would give him a giant shove into the line of fire.