#leadership

r&d is as cushy as it gets. people sit around trying to stay in the cto’s good graces while he promotes his buddies and little gets done. i’ve heard the same from a friend in it, where leadership is just as rough, and everyone is trying to get away from the vps and svps.

How about your management and leadership.

Way too many around me.

It's been over 10y since I was laid off from Mattel.

One of the 2 most toxic places I've worked for.

The $100k people pay the price for the stupidity, thick headed-ness and arrogance of the leadership (at least in my days and bases on the company executive list, some of them are still there)

I know it sounds like a cliche but, if they let you go, you're all better off/

The how and where report was wrong again. Shorting me hours at the end of the day.

Leadership did tell us two things this week.

• Don't let your average drop below 7.
• Don't make it a habit of leaving early on the same day every week.

Three words. What a mess!

We witnessed our leaders in a dark room with bad lighting. There were sound issues that went on the entire meeting that was giving me a headache.

Our senior leaders talked for 30 minutes about what food they like. The last 30 minutes were a blur of non sense. They all looked like they hate each other and have not exercised in 15 years.

I walked away feeling d-mber for having used my time to attend that meeting. Thank you.

Cisco IQ availability announced today… what is happening with CX leadership?

Why are we letting leadership make unilateral decisions without pushback? The push for full-time office work feels unreasonable and out of touch with what many of us actually need to do our jobs well.

It seems like a culture of fear has been created where people don’t feel comfortable speaking up, so whatever is decided just goes unchallenged. Is there a way for us to collectively raise concerns or push back in a constructive way

Former Consultants who strictly consulted and advised on digital transformation are hired into SVP, VP, and SR DR roles (as well as our favorite EVP AK). They know how to suggest but not lead and execute.

No accountability exists from these people, they don’t know how to lead, because they’ve never had to. Repeat this hiring cycle 100x bc consultants love hiring other consultants, and we are now in this state of being industry laggards!!!!!!

Hopefully an announcement next week. This is beyond ridiculous. Under qualified and incompetent knucklehead.

An Analyst asked on the Earnings call if Meg thought there was a scenario where this discovery wouldn't proceed to development. He started his question by saying how big AF described it to be.

She did not answer the Analyst's question about whether there's a way it doesn't get developed.

CO2 is clearly a know issue with these fields. To not answer and dodge the question by sayijg a great team is working the project sounds like reason to run.

Should we be worried we've dug ourselves into a hole we can't get out of with this biggest discovery in 25 years?

Architecture leadership without architecture, direction without clarity, and decisions without grounding, this isn’t strategy, it’s a slow, well-documented collapse

1️⃣ Lack of Leadership
Employee: “I stopped looking up because there was no one to look to.”

Great leaders set direction, model integrity, and earn respect every day.

2️⃣ Lack of Trust
Employee: “Every time I spoke up, it cost me something.”

Great leaders reward honesty, defend their people, and prove every voice matters.

3️⃣ Feeling Undervalued
Employee: “My work spoke loudly. No one was listening.”

Great leaders notice effort, name impact, and show appreciation often.

4️⃣ No Growth Path
Employee: “I wanted to grow. They wanted me to stay the same.”

Great leaders build clear paths and invest in growth early.

5️⃣ Lack of Challenge
Employee: “I used to feel alive solving problems. Now it’s just tasks.”

Great leaders reignite curiosity by giving purpose, not just projects.

6️⃣ Burnout
Employee: “The more great work I do, the more they expect.”

Great leaders protect energy, balance ambition, and stop rewarding exhaustion.

7️⃣ Lack of Inclusion
Employee: “I was in the room, but never really part of it.”

Great leaders create environments where every voice is heard and valued.

8️⃣ Unfair Pay
Employee: “They said they valued me, but not enough to show it.”

Great leaders match reward to impact and make fairness non-negotiable.

https://www.stephanieshills.com/weeklynewsletteroptin

For those still inside the red machine, what are the early impressions of the Fiddelke regime? More of the same old?

MG: If you’re gonna post an update, can we please drop the phony familiarity and assumption that we know who the he-l you’re talking about? Ridiculous & juvenile tone

All this AI push to make Shell better is just lip service by so-called leaders wanting to save money with reduced headcount. Before long, there won’t be any employees to buy their products. It’s laughable that YL and his merry bunch of “leaders” think employees are stupid enough to believe it’s anything else.

To all the negative people over here.. just ask yourself: Is Hans better than Dan?
Answer is obviously No..
Atleast we are not hiring random people for DEI.. I saw former cooks/ gym instructors getting hired under some program. There was mafia in GTS ( some people are still here) .
I liked Hans for keeping everyone comfortable on a sinking ship without doing anything to help the ship..
I would rather be uncomfortable but save the ship.

WARNING: this post is longer -and possibly more useful- than you may expect.

So, for those who still have meetings to attend, dashboards to ignore, or layoffs to survive, here is the TL;DR:

Xerox tolerated years of weak performance, endless restructuring, and a stock chart that looked like it fell down the stairs.

Then, in February, the company raised $450M through an IP-backed JV with TPG Credit, basically borrowing against part of the Xerox crown jewels.

A few weeks later, creditors were reportedly paying attention, and suddenly Steve B was out “effective immediately”.

Maybe it is all coincidence.

Or maybe poor performance made Steve vulnerable, but the IP deal made him disposable.

Now the full blown post to see if we’ve got this right.

For years, Xerox performance looked like death by a thousand paper cuts - not one clean fatal blow, just endless small wounds: shrinking revenue, restructuring fatigue, disappearing morale, executive-level delusion... until the patient was technically alive but nobody wanted to check the pulse too closely.

The stock was crushed. The core business kept shrinking. “Reinvention” became the corporate version of putting a fresh tie on a skeleton. Employees were asked to run, rush, sacrifice, and also restructure, realign, resize, reskill, re-something every quarter.

Meanwhile, the top of the house kept pumping out “Reinvention” slides like PowerPoint decks could pay down debt, grow revenue, and make the stock chart stop looking like a cliff.

And through all of that, Steve B stayed.

The board tolerated him. The company tolerated him. The market tolerated him less enthusiastically. Employees tolerated him because, well, employees are not usually invited to vote on the circus.

Then suddenly — bo-m.

March 30, 2026: Steve “steps down”.

Louie Pastor becomes CEO effective immediately. No long transition. No elegant handover. No “after a distinguished tenure, Steve will remain through year-end”. Just corporate-speak for: “Please exit through the back door”. Xerox also reaffirmed 2026 guidance in the same announcement, which makes the timing even more interesting.

If nothing was wrong, why the trapdoor?

Here is the part employees should pay attention to.

Six weeks earlier, on February 17, Xerox announced a $450 million IP joint venture with TPG Credit.

Translation for normal humans: Xerox took valuable intellectual property (the sort of assets that make Xerox, Xerox) and put them into a special financing structure to raise cash. Xerox said the deal was designed to strengthen the balance sheet and support liquidity, Reinvention, Lexmark integration, and possibly debt repayment.

In plain English: when a company starts pawning the crown jewels to keep the lights on, people are allowed to ask whether this is a clever financing move or the corporate equivalent of playing your last card.

Now, is that illegal?

Not necessarily. Smart lawyers get paid obscene amounts of money to make aggressive things look technically permissible. Xerox disclosed the deal. Serious advisers were involved. The paperwork was almost certainly blessed by lawyers billing at rates normally reserved for organ transplants and ransom negotiations.

But let’s not pretend this was a normal “strategic partnership”. This was not two companies joining hands to invent the future.

This was Xerox raising money against the crown jewels because liquidity matters when the "balance sheet" drops "balance" and starts looking like "sh*t".

And creditors noticed.

Octus reported that Xerox lenders were preparing a cooperation agreement following the “deal-away” transaction. Debtwire/Ion Analytics later reported that a lender group had signed a cooperation agreement after the $450 million TPG-led deal-away transaction.

That is finance-world language for: “The people who lent money are not calmly sipping herbal tea”.

Why would lenders care? Because if valuable assets are moved into a new structure where new money gets priority, existing creditors may worry that value has been shifted away from them.

Again: maybe legal. Maybe documented. Maybe clever. But definitely suspicious.

So now look at the sequence:

• February 17: Xerox announces $450 million IP-backed JV with TPG Credit.
• Late February: lenders reportedly start organizing after the transaction.
• March 30: Steve B is suddenly out, Louie Pastor is in, effective immediately.
• April 2: Xerox files Steve’s separation terms, including non-disparagement, non-compete, non-solicitation, cooperation obligations, continued vesting, and severance mechanics.

Nothing to see here, folks. Just your average corporate spring cleaning: monetize IP in February, creditors start circling, CEO disappears in March, and everyone smiles for the press release.

Maybe it is all coincidence.

Maybe Steve suddenly discovered a passion for gardening.

Maybe the board, after years of tolerating him as the corporate equivalent of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus Chief Clown, finally woke up one Monday and said, “You know what? Leadership quality matters”.

Or maybe the IP deal changed the risk.

That is the real theory.

Poor performance made Steve vulnerable. But poor performance alone does not explain the suddenness. Xerox had been under pressure for years. The stock did not collapse overnight. The business did not become difficult in March. Employees did not suddenly notice the “Reinvention” machine was mostly powered by layoffs and vocabulary.

The more plausible question is this:

Did the board get scared?

Scared that the IP-backed financing was too aggressive?
Scared creditors might challenge it?
Scared the company had moved from “bad strategy” into “legal exposure”?
Scared that if this thing went sideways, directors might be asked what they knew, when they knew it, and why they approved it?

Boards can tolerate weak CEOs for a long time. They can tolerate bad morale. They can tolerate stock charts that look like ski slopes. They can tolerate employees screaming and leaving.

But creditor lawyers? That is different.

Once lenders start organizing, the room gets colder.

This does not prove Steve did anything illegal. It does not prove the board did anything illegal. It does not prove the TPG deal was invalid. But it does suggest Steve’s sudden exit may have had less to do with “fresh leadership” and more to do with risk containment.

In corporate terms, Louie Pastor may not just be the new CEO. He may be the adult brought in to stand next to the smoking g-n and say, “Everything is under control”.

The official story is simple: Steve stepped down, Louie stepped up, guidance was reaffirmed, please continue working harder with fewer people.

The unofficial employee version is more interesting:

Xerox may have borrowed against the crown jewels in February, creditors started paying attention, and by March the CEO was gone.

Maybe that is coincidence.

But at Xerox, there are no coincidences.

And until the two march in lockstep, layoffs and bottom-basement morale will continue. Each person needs to decide for themselves whether to continue to work for this set of values or not. While I wish the best of outcomes for everyone, I left in late 2023 because I realized that fear and bullying were evergreen in the leadership teams here. Happy to report there’s great opportunity beyond this organization.

DXC does not spin up a truly new platform in 12–18 months, especially given their engineering capacity, budget constraints, and the leadership churn you’ve been tracking.

But here’s the real story:

OASIS is built on the same underlying lineage as Platform X — but DXC is deliberately avoiding saying that publicly.

CarQuest Lifers you know who you are, time is running out time to find a new job…Same for AAP Lifers…..clock is ticking. This company is in shambles and leadership knows it and are just getting that pay check.

There are 50% chances that Dan might fail but there are 50% chances that he might succeed to transform..
I do see lots of negativity among Band 5 leaders.. overheard negative talk on the floor after All hands..
why can’t these middle layer leaders do not want to give it a fair chance ?
Looks like Dan made these ultra comfortable people uneasy and they are not liking it.

This was a leadership change memo received on Friday 24th 2026 to a limited audience. For obvious reasons, names and dates have been redacted or altered before posting to this forum.

To: Selected Leadership Colleagues
From: Office of the **
Date: April 24th, 2026
Subject: Leadership Transition Notice

This memorandum serves to announce a realignment within our executive leadership team. Jnnnnnnn Mtttttt will be departing from her role as Vice President, with her formal affiliation concluding on April 30, 2026.

We acknowledge the tenure of her service and the professional milestones achieved during her time. To ensure a structured organizational transition, Jnnnnnnn has been transitioned away from her current operational mandates, effective immediately.

The organization extends its best wishes for her future endeavors. Further communication regarding the optimization of departmental reporting lines and interim coverage will be disseminated through the appropriate channels in the near term.

Naaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaa

EH will be fired within a year. He came in with more good will than anyone. Employees were ripe for change, and even serious sacrifices. He has squandered that. His tenure will only be known for devastating cuts, backward thinking, and the worst stock performance in more than a decade. Ceding China and Digital will be seen as complete dunderheaded moves when those are the biggest growth areas. Divesting from Tech, when that is what enables innovation in this century. Offshoring and outsourcing jobs when that could not be more politically and culturally toxic. He's had more than 2 years and things are almost inconceivably worse than could be imagined.

She is taking this company so far away from what we once were

So after hundreds of people on here upvoted the damage ac has done and continues to do, he is still here along with all the same vp’s? Assuming JM is still here also. For gods sake….

Is JG still flitting around speaking the game and achieving nothing or has the company finally seen this light weight entitled prima donna for what he is and let him go? Just are not hearing anything on this site about him since leaving a few years back.

My time at Teradata has shown me how resilient and forward-looking this company truly is. Leadership and the Executive Leadership Team have done an impressive job navigating industry changes with a clear strategic vision, keeping the company focused on innovation and long-term growth. While organizational shifts are part of evolving in a competitive market, the company has consistently worked to position employees and customers for future success. Teradata’s leadership communicates a strong sense of purpose, and their commitment to transformation has created exciting new opportunities across the business. The culture remains driven by talented teams, and I’m optimistic about the direction the company is heading under such capable guidance.

Anyone with any insight about when Raleigh will be completely phased out? Leadership has been vague about it (next several years), but no real date as of yet.

I unfortunately was not laid off. Honestly, I would’ve loved to have had 4 to 8 months of severance to get out of this he-l hole.

Unfortunately, I’m stuck behind in a company that’s already dead and doesn’t know it.

The company that Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman created is dead, it’s now filled with a bunch of overpaid mouth breathers, who are politicians more than business people, not the whole company but enough.

Nike’s AI hype is a perfect example. You have a bunch of re--rds running around for three f** years trying to make AI work at Nike and there’s been nothing of measurable value created. The enterprise doesn’t even have a strategy, even though it spent millions of dollars and 100s of resources to do “something” with AI.

Fortunately, the id--ts who decided to go with copilot were all fired or at least most of them. Unfortunately, a new group of id--ts will use AI as some sort of silver bullet to save the company when they have no experience actually doing anything with AI and the company’s problems have nothing to do with AI(at least at the present moment).

It’s just a bunch of people pushing technology they don’t understand, other than it’s a magic word to maintain influence, relevance, and job security.

Don’t get me wrong. Nike was a great company and a great American story. But that company is dead.

So to those of you who got fired, I wish you the best of luck and frankly, I’d rather not be on the Titanic as it sinks.

How many different ways can Venky ruin this company from an operational role? He has a bunch of logistics professionals running sourcing & manufacturing, he is divesting of Vietnam factories to move to India, and now he is outsourcing IT to India. This company wasn't built that way!

Only then there is stock price maxxing

So approximately 8 laid off in ITC and 1392 whq?
Better get to work ITC because those of us that are unfortunately left, who saw knowledge and skill get canned this week are not going to be carrying the workload for you like we have been the last few years.
Tech Leaders - When it’s time for your d-mb panicked questions, ask your chosen workforce at ITC who have zero connection to the biz and no passion for the company.

Yeah, Chevron spends too much on consultants - totally agree. But since this genius reorg there's no one left to do the actual work. Now ELP has to be the guardians of anyone and anything who may use a consultant - oh, except for all the exec consultants who are out of scope. You know, the brilliant folks who designed this mess. $crew you, ELP, and a big eff you to ES.

The company culture is in the toilet and it doesn’t seem like it can be fixed, there are too many unqualified people in too many roles because Abby was too terrified to lay anyone off during the pandemic.

It’s annoying to not know what is going to happen but a massive layoff would be the only thing that could save my group. Managers won’t even show up in the office but then nag and put people on PIPs because of their attendance. Sorry, typo there the “leaders” are leading others to not come in, by example.

Not trying to stir anything, just curious how others see this.

CS sits on the board of Microsoft, and we’re seeing a strong push for Copilot internally.

One Senior Director was asked to deliver the bad news. He did it.
The day after, he was laid off.
The question is: How can you trust?

I have survived so, so many layoff rounds now, and the pattern is always the same. As soon as the last person from the previous round clears out their desk, someone in leadership starts floating the idea of another round. Can we actually have some time to do some work without having to simultaneously worry about our jobs, please?

IAC is changing its corporate name to People Incorporated. Neil Vogel will assume the role of CEO. Barry Diller will become the executive chairman. The company will concentrate on People publishing and MGM Resorts investments. This restructuring plan involves staff reductions.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/barry-diller-shakeup-iac-to-people-inc-neil-vogel-new-ceo-1236578906/

Sounds like all departments in both companies have been told the last two levels of Orgs will be settled in late May through June. This means mass layoffs at this time. Curious if anyone is being told different, later in the year etc.

I know some at the Director level are not being retained and are already aware