#leadership

Its funny that the definition of SETH in mythology is this:

In mythology, Seth (also spelled Set) is a prominent deity from ancient Egyptian mythology. He is a complex figure associated with chaos, storms, deserts, and violence

Its exactly what MW has done to the company. Will he acknowledge his failures? Will he be accountable and take a pay cut or better yet leave? Will it just be more lies?

In 2024, Christian Klein, 44, received a €19 million ($19.9 million) bonus, up 165% from the previous year. Eliminating all MOVE SAP and similar programs, limiting bonuses through performance management, reducing yearly salary increments, Project Mongoose, and so on should net him approximately €32 million bonus in 2025. When you compare all of the numbers shared by the CFO and Works Council newsletters in 2023, 2024, and 2025, you get this figure.

I wonder how much he'll actually get this time. Guess we won't know until this information is made public.

What is the supervisory board even doing? Are they also going to make a deal with the board to get good money for being laid off like how the Works Council members did?

One person says one thing, another says the opposite, and somehow the work still has to get done. I thought that the guy who told me when I first joined that 1% of the people do 99% of the work was joking. It took me a year, but I finally realize he was very serious and was warning me.

I'm sure the new CEO will want to put his stamp on things as soon as possible, but I doubt he'll want to rock the boat too much from the get go. I'd like to see him start cleaning house on day one but I realize that's too much to expect. But I also hope he doesn't wait for too long.

I was impacted and reading everyone’s threads has been both reassuring and sad. Thank you to everyone for sharing openly and honestly— when work culture suffers from toxic leadership and snuffs our ability to have actual community and honest conversation about the company we work(ed) for, we came here— I’m glad for that. I also am not using “toxic leadership” to score a hit— it’s a real construct with indicators and impact. Reading about it might help you put more objective (sorry for this term) language to what you’re experiencing.

If you’re still at Gartner, I do not envy you. I would prefer to still be working there rather than be unemployed, but I also can’t imagine what it was like/is like to be making calls and selling people on a place you can no longer trust. That would be hard.

My advice to those currently recruiting would be to not trust internal communications about Gartner performance. Remember that it benefits them to make you believe we are doing well. This makes us more effective sellers. I was an effective seller, and I am left feeling guilty for selling people on a lie- I put them in a position to experience what I have just gone through.

Trust what you are seeing with stock prices and quiet layoffs, and make a plan for if things change quickly. I had no plan, and I am paying for it now- the best I can do now is to suggest it to others.

If you’re a well-intentioned leader and you’re reading this, please know that I (and others) understand that you passed down the information you were given, which was the misleading “Gartner is doing great” speak that was all but smashed over our heads in the Q2 town hall. The best you can do is to not repeat this kind of speech to your teams: it leads to us being unprepared. We also get enough of it already through the carefully crafted corporate comms that reassure us we are a great company at all times. You don’t have to add your voice if you know there’s risk ahead for your people.

I will never get to speak to those who intentionally misled people who make 5% of their salary. Those most senior leaders manufactured security through talk tracks and inside Gartner emails that assured us of growth and opportunity, while designing layoffs in private. They do not know you and do not care about you. They will end your healthcare at midnight and give you four weeks of severance, all while telling you “when we do the right thing, great results will follow.”

Be very cautious, whether you’re still there or not. Have a plan. I am still most grateful for the people who did work ethically and without acting like Gartner gave a damn beyond the bottom line.

Oh boy oh boy! The band of butt clients will be there for Maurice’s town hall. I can hardly wait for his expressive reading of his slide deck and spinning his excellent work at saving the company with layoffs!

"It's 2017...

Your SAS Account Executive wants a meeting. She wants to tell you all about SAS Viya, SAS’s “open, cloud-ready, next-generation high-performance analytics and visualization architecture.” SAS launched Viya last year, and it’s a dud.

Viya is SAS’s “answer” to Apache Spark. Like Spark, it’s a distributed in-memory computing system; SAS claims, without evidence, that Viya is faster than Spark. It’s certainly a lot more expensive than Spark. The SAS applications that run on Viya have graphical user interfaces, so it’s easier to use than Spark. But nobody wants to hand petabyte-scale applications to low-IQ users who can’t write code.

You still have numerous SAS users. Most of them work on their desktops with plain old SAS: Base, STAT, and Graph, with Enterprise Guide. They will continue using SAS unless you tear it from their cold, dead hands, which nobody will do as long as their department budget covers the license fees.

SAS is secure in your company until the existing users die or retire. However, the last thing you want to do is expand your SAS footprint or invest in a “next generation” architecture that will lock you in for another 20 years."

https://thomaswdinsmore.substack.com/p/a-short-history-of-automl-part-eight

With Rizzo to Chief Operating Officer over both Property Liability and Protection, it appears Tom and the BOD have Mario as the inside candidate to follow TW. No doubt they'll search for external talent as well (such a great track record!), but he's a safe pick in Tom's world having come up through the Finance function. He'll get high grades for fixing the profit problem (novel--raise rates, tighten underwriting), and increasing shareholder value. Jess Merten to President of Property Liability provides him with an operating role for his resume. TW still has $200+ million in stock options, so he has a vested interest in shareholder value for sure. He'll probably stay as Chairman or non executive Chairman at retirement.

Humana is letting go of many leaders. If history is an indication, expect some to land at Centene. Ex-Humana people have been disasters at Centene, but we still hire them. Why?????

Earlier in the year, the bonus level and public guidance didn’t match. To get a bonus we would meet to beat all the guidance. Seems disingenuous from Blake. Not surprising, he is an id--t narcissist. What multiplier will we get and when is he finally leaving. Enough already!

well looks like they did it. mixed and confused messaging from leadership in infosec

For full disclosure, I am a white male that got let go earlier this year after 20 years with the company and yes, chatgpt helped rewrite my rant in the following professional manner.

Chevron’s Health, Safety, and Environment (HSE) organization was once the benchmark of operational excellence, a “Platinum” model respected across the energy sector. Backed by deep technical expertise and field-driven leadership, it played a critical role in upholding Chevron’s reputation for safety and discipline.

Today, that reputation is that Chevron is plain and simple, get the job done with the cheapest way possible. HSE is an afterthought.

Insiders and industry observers say the HSE function has lost its edge, evolving into a bureaucratic arm focused more on compliance optics than real safety outcomes much of what was seen in 2019 and repeated over and over again including this year. Chevron HSE Moto was White Males not wanted. Look at today's HSE demographics. Experienced white male professionals have been replaced or sidelined in favor of internal favorites and corporate climbers, with leadership roles increasingly filled by those lacking field or technical experience.

Chevron’s recent cultural pivot, including a strong emphasis on DEI initiatives, has sparked a rash of incidents. When qualifications and expertise take a back seat, especially in high-stakes functions like HSE, the results can be damaging.

The shift is already visible: incident reviews are increasingly sanitized, technical audits feel performative, and institutional knowledge is quietly being kicked out the DEI no white males allowed door. These are all my opinions rewritten by ChatGPT.

EOM

Wirth now has three priorities.

First, complete the restructuring and rebuilding of Chevron's corporate culture; second, integrate Hess; and third, extend the concession to develop the giant Tengiz oil field in Kazakhstan, which expires in 2033.
The latter is crucial. When the initial 40-year agreement was signed in 1994, it was dubbed the "deal of the century," as it gave the company access to the oil of the former Soviet Union.

Our concession is valid for another eight years…We have begun working with the government to discuss its extension. I'd like to finish this, not delegate it to someone else," Wirth said in an interview with Bloomberg.

it's been chaotic like this at intel for a while now.

the last value-add ceo was grove, but everyhting after him is just junk & leaches.

nobody cares, they are just milking thecash cow, a long succession of ambitious but incopetent clowns.

Who even gets RSU's?

Senior managers don't, so is it just Directors and above?

Imagine if our Executives put as much effort and creativity into developing viable strategies for growth and driving revenue as they do devising ways to manipulate financial reporting.

MW has lost the locker room and fans have zero confidence in him. Who is up next?

This place is driven by the top management who's only focus is to get their big fat bonus come next spring. So Bloody October is an every year occurrence for this company. Worker be where this place does not care about you.

I know Founder's Day was supposedly put on a hiatus during the pandemic, but leadership said they were going to bring it back or something to replace it once the world opened back up. Once the pandemic was over Penny was the new managing partner. Here we are in 2025. The world has been open for years now and still nothing (crickets chirping). Is this just another way of Penny going back on her predecessor's words? Penny has an absolute pattern of doing this now. This is out of control how she has commandeered the company with her own vision instead of what the previous five managing partners intended. Penny is an absolute joke. No one likes her. Even people in her inner circle do not like her and are plotting for her fall (I'm looking at you KJ, SM, DC, and HM). Tread carefully, Penny. These four people will bring you close and then cut you just like you have cut thousands of associates who were once "One Edward Jones, y'all". I guess Founder's Days has been replaced. Penny replaced it with Enterprise Reimagined. Well played, Penny, well played (sarcasm).

Who says a CEO’s past track record means anything in a completely different environment? We’ll see soon enough where the new CEO stands on outsourcing or workforce cohesion.

Another long and tedious United Way season at Phillips 66 has begun.

We are being asked yet again to give to an organization where nearly 20% of your money goes to pay for administration and fundraising efforts.

We are being asked to give so that our executives can be viewed as charitable in Houston and so that they will be invited to award dinners where they are recognized.

It is your money. Give it to where you want it to go.

It’s disappointing to see how deeply unethical behavior has become normalized in certain parts of Corporate Affairs. The HRBP who should be a neutral advocate for employees has instead chosen to protect friends, silence those who report harassment and abuse, and use false camaraderie and guilt to discourage accountability.

By enabling this kind of conduct, what the company itself calls “orange and red behaviors,” he’s not just protecting the wrong people; he’s fueling a toxic culture that’s creating real legal and ethical risk.
It’s also concerning that hotline reports appear to end up with the same small circle in Legal, where they quietly disappear without follow-up or action.

Until meaningful change happens, take a good look at who’s in leadership and ask how they got there. Often, it’s been at the expense of others who tried to do the right thing.

If you think this culture is limited to one department, think again. It’s spreading across the organization, unchecked.

Sometimes it feels like some of the decisions being made are there for no reason other than to make our lives harder. I think this leadership is sadistic and has turned Wells Fargo into a sadistic company. I don’t think anyone is still here because they want to be.

Verizon is too far gone for anyone to save it. Sure, things might get a little better, but years of bad decisions don’t just disappear overnight. Consequences stick around and demand payment long after the damage is done. I’d love to believe things will turn around, but I’m a realist.

Whats the story with the complete silence from management? Nobodys telling anything. No guidance, no news. What`s happening?

Listen this new CEO was brought in to cut management, cut costs and raise stock prices .This is no coincidence he was brought in right as the merge with frontier which has contracts and the largest current contract up in August that they could not agree on an extension.So for the union people too this is no blessing !!!I believe the board saw Hans as too sympathetic to the Unions as Europe is .So I would now confidently say get ready for a long protracted Strike .The unions are too behind eight ball CWA IBEW to realize this was another strategic move by the VERIZON BOARD.McAdams 2.0 coming in .Any associate not starting to realize where this is headed in next few months and stop suk in the management in the fios back room deserves what’s next but is out weakest link open your eyes leadership/membership

Especially knowing that a bunch of my co-workers in the same orgs were silently laid off a couple of months ago for "business decisions". Exemplary leadership making people at the bottom rungs of the ladder do double the work now so we can pay for the leader's promotions.

New Boss = New Logo

Alvind's Pipmunks were trying to say that their featured VC id--t has a work life balance. Oh, really ?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/i-m-the-head-of-vc-at-ibm-my-day-includes-10-miles-with-my-doodles-sign-language-and-meetings-with-startups/ar-AA1MIEq6?ocid=msedgntp&pc=W099&cvid=2ad8df3cd70a4e43aaef3f86740a6bb1&ei=26

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/verizon-names-former-paypal-ceo-dan-schulman-ceo-2025-10-06/

I thought a number of EVPs transitioned out of USAA and some other leaders were promoted. But the website seems to still have old info. Have the changes not happened yet?

That's all I have to say.

Rumor mill coming from Shell that you hired one of ours made redundant to join your leadership ranks.

Walmart needs a really good story to tell at the Q3 earnings call. What better way than to cut more US workers and save a ton of money on salaries! Remember, they have thousands of already approved H1B positions and the obvious closeness between the Indian outsourcers and Walmart leadership pretty much paints the picture of what’s to come.

This does not bode well. Have a look at CGI layoff. Same playbook. Mistreatment of employees, off shoring to India and layoff being the only solution adopted.

In tech. Recently there has increased visibility from leadership into our metrics/projects/etc. Our Jira boards and backlogs are regularly monitored and critiqued, and we've been told they are going to be averaging story point completion per person. Now they're asking us to track the specific skills we are using when completing each task. Is this happening anywhere else? Feels like a bad sign

There are a number of posts on this site - possibly all by the same person - that make it sound like management is out to sc--w over the workers.
Let me assure you, most managers hate this process. Sure, there are a small number of easy decisions and obvious low performers, but most of the decisions that need to be made are heartbreaking.
Worst of all, no manager wants less people, especially when they know they still have to do the same amount of work as before.
Quit with the comments about no compassion and bad leaders. This su-ks for everyone.