#culture

Not much to be thankful for, but at least we still have a job, right?

People talk over you, credit gets stolen, and kindness feels like an oddity. It drains you faster than the work itself.

Work life balance left the building the day I accepted this role. Meetings bleed into evenings and weekends, and by Monday I’m already exhausted. If anyone has tips on reclaiming time, I’m all ears.

We went from a place I enjoyed working at to a place I can't wait to leave in just a few years. I'm not sure what caused the complete shift in culture, but it happened and I know I'm far from the only one who noticed this. I don't know many people who're not currently looking for alternatives.

Whoever did this is a mo--n. The way it shows up on the screen is completely confusing for customers and staff. To do this to us on Black Friday is ridiculous. Most of my customers DO NOT SPEAK ENGLISH. Trying to explain this pricing to them is impossible they don't understand it. They should have just gone with the usual 25 or 30 percent scan label.

Time for hundreds to go sit in a war room and pretend like it’s the 80’s and we don’t have laptops to support from home. Put on a smile, wear holiday sweatshirts and pretend to be honored when leaders show up or in the case of MD send a video of thanks from Seattle.
Everyone gather for a photo to be shared in the all hands and come to work sick next week from the shared germs. Happy Holidays

You asked what our obstacles are so here are a few that are slowing us down

1. Jira - we spend more time trying to please the Jira g-ds than we do on development. It doesn’t work. Maybe it was good at JPMC, but not here.

2. Fortify - nothing like remediating a bunch of false positives

3. Language barriers - there are very few Americans on project calls. We can’t understand the Ind*ians and they don’t know our systems or products

These are just a few. Please feel free to chime in with more.

Jamie Rutledge is on a mission to drive delivery off a cliff. The minions he has hired (Michele Moesman and his direct reports) are the foot soldiers in brute forcing the implementation of “industry pods”. Highly efficient teams being broken into the POD model, manages have no clarity on their roles, such as big org change being done without any due diligence. All in the name of driving productivity. Jamie’s minions think that using “Agentic AI”, we can eliminate manual work. Kyndryl is sadly becoming another Indian IT provider under the current leadership. Kyndryl is driving off a cliff, and I dont see any skid marks.

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.

Nike keeps reorganizing every six months, and it's always the same story: one step forward and two steps back, like we're stuck on a loop that never ends.

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.

It's become a standard practice here for leadership to schedule last-minute "urgent" meetings, often to discuss issues that have been pending for weeks. This blatant disregard for personal time and planning has created a constant state of exhaustion for so many of us. In the last six months, I've watched three of the most capable people on my team resign. EJ is systematically losing its best talent because of a culture that refuses to acknowledge our time has any value.

Is it too soon to feel optimistic?

This management has relied on the same tired playbook for far too long, choosing layoffs as its only real method of improving numbers while pretending that constant cuts somehow count as strategy. They cycle through the same pattern every time, bringing in a handful of low-cost replacements to quiet the workload complaints and then returning to the exact behavior that created the mess, which has become the predictable HP way in every sense.

There’s never been a moment when Dell felt this off-course.

Never been a moment when they reached straight into people’s pockets
and acted like it was business as usual.

Never been a moment when they grabbed freedom with one hand
and shrugged with the other.

Never been a moment when trust evaporated this fast, or when the math showed the people always came last
while the profit columns kept climbing.

Never been
and somehow, here we are.

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.

No one is answering any HR cases wondering if they have joined the Networks Strike or ignoring any queries. This will leave them open court cases if something isn't done soon, wonder why Jen Ragone got an award for poor delivery.

This scenario doesn’t apply at DXC because my salary won’t increase!! It goes to show how DXC is an outlier when it comes to rewarding employees.

On a salary of...
£ 35,000

You pay £6,280 in tax and national insurance each year.

By 2031, the OBR expects your salary to have risen to about £40,647, excluding any promotions or job changes, as wages rise roughly in line with the cost of living.

At that point, your annual tax bill will be £7,862. That's £1,581 more than you're currently paying, and £215 more than you would have paid if thresholds increased with inflation after 2028 as they were previously expected to.

Your effective personal tax rate is now 17.9%. It will have reached 19.3% by 2031.

If the thresholds hadn't been extended today, it would have reached 18.8%.

Hi everyone,
has anyone noticed that our job titles are now showing up directly in MS Teams?

Previously, if you wanted to check someone’s job title, you had to go into SuccessMap and look at their public profile. Now, when you open a manager’s org chart in Teams, you can see all team members and their job titles right away — which also makes it easy to infer their job (T) level.

This seems like a deliberate change, but I haven’t seen any communication about it.

Does anyone know why this was enabled or what the reasoning behind it might be? Curious to hear your thoughts.

Starting an anonymous comp thread.
Not because I’m passionate about it — just because it felt like one of those things where everyone’s waiting for someone else to go first.
So… here we are.

So no one gets doxxed we’ll keep it high level

Org Area: high level
Level: early / mid / senior-ish
Salary Bucket: pick one
• Under 75k
• 75–100k
• 100–125k
• 125–150k
• 150–200k
• 200k+
Merit Vibe: low/moderate/solid
Bonus Range: sub-teens/teens /twenties/other

Here’s mine:
Org Area: Global Investments
Level Category: mid
Salary Bucket: 100–125k
Merit Vibe: low
Bonus Range: teens

Curious to see what patterns people are seeing this cycle.
Not looking for exact numbers — just trying to understand whether this year felt normal… or “normal.”

I’ve worked for this company for many years. Loved my job, in fact. But since they’ve become he-l-bound on implementing AI, this whole company, their company values and all the processes that used to work so well have gone straight to he-l! The new systems do not work correctly. Employees that have given so much to ensure the absolute best quality and performance for this company and our customers are put on CAPs, due to the ones making millions choosing systems that do not work, and we get the blame. These overpaid fools couldn’t do these jobs to save their greedy souls! I am so ashamed to even work here now and am looking forward to getting out.

Is it working to bring the best out of you?

Do you have a fair shot at getting a top rating if you are not FNF?

Do most people feel they are rated fairly?

DST was a sweatshop that stole the lives of many hoping to build a nice career there. Few employees were rewarded for their hard work. Most were ignored and strung along with a carrot dangling well in front of them. Although a public traded company, only the management made out well. Scammers1

I work at another major and saw a commercial analyst role in the M&A group. Does anyone have any insight if the culture in that group is as bad as the rest?

Off topic, but since this website seems like the only place for vteamers to talk honestly, sharing this here

Does anyone else also feel like volunteering portal is such a sham and a useless activity

Most volunteering activities don’t make ANY true impact. It’s a stupid feel- good exercise so that silly bosses (and some silly employees) can virtue signal that they are good human beings. While making no real difference in the world

Pay for performance, not even close. The worst management I have ever seen. The worst methods and procedures I’ve ever seen. Horrible, horrible management from top to bottom.

Without going into too much detail, it’s been a disappointing journey. To come so far after a highly anticipated merger and to be here. Toxicity. Low morale. Same office politics. And a tough market.

mine does, both of them

This was posted on SAPs board here on thelayoff but it totally applies to us as well:

We work for a criminal enterprise full of self-righteous, borderline re--rded psychopaths.

Although it’s not fully cleaned up yet, it’s good to see a much-needed trim of the older friends and family brought in from the ‘fuel’ era. Hopefully the next rounds address the rest of the dead weight who managed to stay by simply playing politics. Keep up the great work, Mr. New CEO.

It seems that way too many folks, who were already laid off, can't deal with the fact that the company is finished with the layoffs.

Embarrassing display of envy.

Did everyone get laid off? Its been like 4 hours since someone's complained about ML or said 60 for 6 lmaooooo

It’s the time of the year again

Its more than likely not your fault, its a cr-ppy tactic of using the bell curve and even if you have 15 members on a team all of which are good performers, management is forced by leadership to pick a handful to give 2's to. Then you are placed on a PIP, and put under even more scrutiny and stress. In the past a PIP mean you if you showed improvement you would be taken off PIP and put back to a 3 next review, now its a death sentence and only a tactic to RIF you, its despicable. If you are not a favorite of management you will be given a 2. I know the job market su-ks but I would seriously start looking elsewhere, layoffs wont stop.

The "we're a family" messaging from leadership feels completely fake at this point. It seems like most of the truly talented people have already left, and the communication here is just shocking. I regularly hear managers shouting at people in meetings and no one even bats an eye. Nothing is organized, no one knows who is responsible for what, and the execs keep selling this beautiful vision that has nothing to do with the chaotic reality on the ground. The whole atmosphere is just toxic. What the he-l has Nike turned into?

SAP, founded in June 1972, when Dietmar, Klaus, Hans-Werner, Claus and Hasso departed IBM when they were told the software they had all been working on was no longer needed and so they started their own company - SAP.

We all need to pay  highest recognition for what these individuals achieved and the great company that was created.

But the time has come  for the remaining two founders and specifically Hasso to completely step away from the management, operation, executive selection, strategy, etc.... and allow new leadership take over SAP,  Times have changed from what they were in 1972 and so must SAP also evolve - which as long as the legacy founders are running the company and selecting the C-Level executives we will be stuck in the past.

Yes, Hasso removed Punit Renjen ( even before he officially took over as Supervisory Board Chairmen), but why did he do this.  Because Renjen was prepared to make significant changes ( whatever they may have been?)  and Hasso was not supportive.

And then what did he do?  He installed another puppet who was a protege of Hasso  and on SAP Board since 2002 - Pekka Ala-Pietila.  The issue is not who are the individuals in C level positions BUT rather WHO is putting them in such positions. 
This type of oversight and control is  simply what IS NOT NEEDED AT THIS TIME.

Look, the issue driving our latest survey results down to 59% when measuring confidence in the Board, is the Board itself  !     And CK, Asam,etc.. are all in Clevel positions for one reason = Hasso.   Until we get  leadership who is responsible for selecting the best and most talented key people AND holds them accountable, we will not see any improvement.

Yes, all congrats go to the founders of SAP for what they achieved, but the time has come for them to move on and allow new talent  that has domain experience and is capable of running a company the size and breadth of SAP.  We no longer can afford to just have hand picked people by Hasso who really have no outside C Level experience running the company - or we will all  be on the outside looking in.  Yes, the time has come and the time is now.

Please get your s#it together, because it is very clear and apparent that there is mass chaos going on in the c level and a couple levels below. Why would you announce broad and vague massive organizational changes yet provide zero clarity at the point in time the announcements come. Announcements that specifically call out teams/roles/jobs and not communicate the what baffles my mind as we come to the holiday season. Please go back to business school and re-take management 101 or read a simple book on organizational leadership. Thank you and have a very happy thanksgiving while the rest of us fear for our jobs.