#leadership

The last couple of years under the current regime has been a disaster the current "leadership" of AS, MC and CH has run this business into the ground

The best leaders of the last 10 years have been laid off.

It's all meetings about meetings and reports about reports. It slows everything down. Not that anybody among leadership cares, mind you. It's just the new way of doing things.

It used to be that if you got hired here, you had a future. Different roles, regular raises, promotions from within. Real job security. Leadership today doesn't seem to care about building a stable workforce. That old model means nothing to them now.

Supported you? Managed thoughtfully? Tried to understand people's strengths and assign work accordingly? Do they even fully understand what your team does?

Mine might as well be from another planet. Great at office politics, useless at the actual work, and convinced that passive-aggressive behavior equals authority. I don't think anyone would notice, or work would suffer, if they were gone tomorrow.

I've never seen or heard of a private equity takeover that didn't gut the company. Always ends in disaster. Unless you're a cash cow with zero effort, which we're definitely not.

I've worked here five years (it feels much longer, though) and I'm still surprised by the decisions leadership makes. It's like common sense goes out the window once you reach a certain level. They roll out policies that actively make our jobs harder. They invest in technology that doesn't work. They promote people who have no idea how to manage. I don't know if it's always been this way or if it's getting worse, but the overall stupidity is hard to ignore.

I've noticed a significant shift lately. There's a huge focus on tracking work instead of doing it. We spend hours building decks to show productivity while actual tasks sit waiting. Meanwhile, there's a push to reduce small benefits that made the place at least tolerable. Sadly, the people who suffer most are the newer hires. They're thrown into projects without any real guidance because the seasoned leaders are too buried in administrative work to mentor anyone. It's a frustrating way to run things.

I started with the company back in 2015 and I've seen four different management structures. The pattern is always the same. You get a manager who is charming in meetings but completely absent when you need support. I recently had a weekly catch-up that started giving me a knot in my stomach. It was never about development or help, just a list of things that needed to be done yesterday. I finally updated my resume this week. It feels like the only way to protect your peace is to leave.

To those who are feeling anxious about layoffs, I want to share my perspective after spending more than a decade at the company.

In many cases, decisions during layoffs are not purely based on performance. Managers and senior leaders often try to protect themselves using the power and influence they have, unless you happen to be very close to top leadership. At times, it becomes more about internal politics and job preservation than merit.

At the same time, no company defines your entire career. It is important not to become overly attached to any organization. Companies may make decisions that do not always reflect your value. If you are affected, focus on preparing financially, continue building your skills, and work hard to find the next opportunity.

One concern that deserves attention is when Oracle layoffs affect citizens while H1B employees are retained, even when both groups are working equally hard. If such patterns exist, they should be carefully examined by leadership and policymakers. The responsibility for these practices lies with certain managers, directors, senior directors, and VPs, not the company as a whole.

Only new visionary leadership at the top; EVPs, SVPs, and GVPs especially those with strong AI and technology perspectives, can help guide teams into the future.

Layoffs may sometimes be unavoidable, but the process must be fair, transparent, and thoughtful. Otherwise, companies risk losing talented and dedicated people who contribute greatly to their AI success.

If you are affected by layoffs, it does not mean you are not talented or that you performed poorly. As discussed above, many factors influence such decisions. You are talented, and that is why you were valued in your role.

You will find another opportunity. Take this time to relax, manage your spending, make the most of your severance, take care of your mental health, and get insurance coverage through Covered California. Use this period to upgrade your skills, especially in AI and emerging technologies.

Then start applying. The job market may take some time, but persistence pays off, and you will eventually land the right role. Stay positive, never give up, and good luck. You have got this.

Now Ed Garden, one of Fortune Brands largest shareholders, disagrees with the new pick of CEO Amit Banati and has a list of his potential candidates that will allegedly be presented at the next shareholder meeting.

While shareholders are critical, tunnel vision focus on share price alone allows for short term goals and does not set up a company for long term success. Share price is the reward of doing everything else correct including, but not limited to, having the right people, the right plan, and executing the plan.

Store managers, District Leaders, and Regional Directors, please remember this:

When a dedicated, loyal, hardworking employee gets the same "3" rating (and same cr-ppy raise) as a slacker employee who skates by doing bare minimum nothing, all motivation for hard work is lost when said dedicated employee realizes that hard work is no longer rewarded. STOP lumping everyone together as average and start viewing everyone individually. Every team has those people who go above and beyond and do more than others. They deserve to be rated 4 or 5, not cut down to 3 because everything needs to "balance out". Fight for your people, because that's what a good leader does.

Leadership is laser-focused on OPEX cuts, and every signal points to around 15,000 jobs still being on the line. That's the number floating around, the one nobody's refuted, the one we all know is coming for us eventually. Whether it happens next week or next month changes nothing in the end. It's happening. The only things left to figure out is how many rounds, and who's getting cut. Prepare accordingly.

It doesn't matter in the end. If your number's up, you're gone, and the only reason is the bottom line. Don't ki-l yourself trying to prove your worth. You'll just regret the wasted effort later. Nobody's indispensable to leadership, especially when there's no growth strategy anyway.

Just when you think this man can’t get any more shallow, he blasts out the most cringe, self‑congratulatory “newsletter” ever written. It’s basically a shrine to himself, wall‑to‑wall “me, me, I, I, my, my.”
And then he has the nerve to act proud that he and his leadership team got “partially met.” Buddy, that’s not a mystery. That’s a mirror. Your team’s performance is a direct reflection of your leadership. Ask your smiling as-----n CHRO or maybe BarUp can help you lift your performance. OA’s leadership culture and that tired consulting‑playbook theater are the real anchors dragging the place down. He missed his management plan, maybe the plan was delusional from the start. He forced everyone into individual OKRs, hyper‑individualized, disconnected targets, then turns around and scolds people for not hitting his inflated management plan. A plan they didn’t set. He did. Based on his AI‑fantasy PowerPoint dreams, air‑game, strategy, and “leapfrog on a wing and a prayer” marketing nonsense with a Spineless Tech consultant who talks but can’t do and lives in a fantasy land wishing he was a Silicon Valley coder praying he doesn’t get fired. Now he’s laying off talent and skills that we actually took from cognisant to rebuild our own internal technology capability. Now he’s handing it all back out to same old vendors who have sc--wed us over for years paying more for cr-p quality and same old service because he promised them work in exchange for buying VG’s cr-p products. This regime ignore the loyalty hard work and service of all the hard working teams and lay them off giving work to his “partners” instead. Then has the audacity and mind blindness to realise that he’s two faced telling Davos he invests in people - what an empty suit!! Meanwhile, in the real world, the entire company is already paying for OA’s failure. The share price is in freefall, but he blames “external forces.” Bonuses are below target yet again, and he blames the staff for not delivering on his overblown plan. Employees get a raise barely big enough to buy a Happy Meal, while OA buys himself “garden shed time” at Davos, sipping champagne and pretending he’s a visionary, signing MOU with provinces no one heard of - all theatre ….And let’s be real, bet his “partially met” will still come with a ski trip, nice pile of cash in his bank and more first class flying luxuries the rest of us will never see in our lifetimes despite working all the hours God sends. Maybe that “partially met” is actually the most honest performance review he’s ever had. He can’t deliver on his own plan. The share price is the scoreboard, and everyone can see the score. This is what happens when you hand a real company to consultants who’ve never built anything, never run anything, never delivered anything - just recycled textbook jargon, “pivots,” and Microsoft copycat acting only made worse by their shameless LinkedIn self‑promotion. It’s embarrassing. Oh and let’s not forget he imported in his second‑hand‑car‑salesman sidekick, VG, to sell vapourware and popsicle products no one wants only hitting targets by strong‑arming suppliers into buying before they can even play and calling it “deals and partnerships” what a joke. That’s when you know the ship is sinking. And the final sign? When a CFO who’s served the company for 25 years decides she’s done. Just look at the numbers: under her six‑year CFO tenure, the share price went up 30%. Under his two‑year reign, it’s down 30%. No wonder SJ walked away. She can smell the BS from a mile off. Time to follow in her footsteps and exit this sinking ship.

So I am hearing tech leadership is moving up the ladder ?

Voting Instructions

For the annual meeting of Texas Instruments, please record the following votes:

Proposal 1 – Election of Directors: AGAINST
I am voting against the election of the board of directors, including CEO Haviv Ilan. In my view, current leadership decisions are negatively impacting the company’s culture and employee morale. Strong leadership and culture are critical for sustaining innovation and long-term performance at Texas Instruments.

Proposal 2 – Advisory Vote on Executive Compensation: AGAINST
I am voting against the executive compensation package because compensation decisions appear misaligned with employee outcomes, particularly the reduction of profit-sharing for employees beginning in 2027.

How to Submit Your Proxy Vote

1.  Go to the proxy voting site listed on your proxy card: https://www.proxyvote.com
2.  Enter the 16-digit control number from your proxy card or email.
3.  Select your voting choices for each proposal.
4.  Submit your vote electronically and confirm.

Key executives at Five9 have recently cashed out notable amounts of company stock. SVP & CAO Leena Mansharamani sold 1,926 shares for a total of $34,417. Chief Administrative & Legal Officer Tiffany N. Meriweather executed a larger sale of 5,942 shares, netting $106,183. Meanwhile, CRO Matthew E. Tuckness sold 5,164 shares, generating proceeds of $92,280. These insider transactions highlight a series of significant stock disposals by senior leadership at Five9

OVV has assembled the weakest and most incompetent Executive Team in the history of Oil and Gas! Doug, please come back and clean this mess up!

Considering they demoted the majority of sr managers last February... Which su-ks bc my manager was AMAZING! New manager/director is cool but he has no clue wtf we do on a daily basis and has no personal relationship with any of us.

I've never gotten below a 4% raise so hoping for a 6% this year at least.

I am noticing that threads about certain GTS leaders getting deleted. Just for asking if they are leaving or not.
I do not see threads getting deleted for any other leaders.

Directors that say yes to every request from VPs no matter how ridiculous or last minute the ask continue to survive. They have their head so far up the VPs a$$ hoping to advance their own career with no regard to their team. Truly a good ole boys club at that level. At the end of the day every employee is just a number with a salary that will be the deciding factor in the next round of layoffs. No amount of extra effort will be taken in to consideration, so take your PTO and enjoy time with friends and family.

Is the lack of managerial support a new Humana tactic to quiet fire employees? Have you noticed a lack of leadership? I have and I’m pretty sure Humana is using this new tactic to motivate you to leave.

What’s going on with the abrupt leadership change in AEP Texas?

Downvote for no.
Upvote for yes.

Well between RIF and worse strategic attempts to get people to quit with case loads being unreasonable ir putting people in work plans the oregon and WA teams are about dead and gone.

DCO is a soulless id--t. CSMs are pale images of what they had been in past, all the talent and integrity leadership is gone.
At least competitors are coming in

There’s a lot of negative sentiment here around Thrive Together. That reaction is completely rational. Many people are trying to rationalize the decision - commercial real estate exposure, leadership being out of touch, or executives undervaluing remote productivity. Those explanations miss the point. Thrive Together is a much larger slight against employees than most people realize.

It’s easy to assume the executive team is uninformed or making poorly thought-out decisions. That assumption is wrong. These are experienced business leaders who understand exactly what they are doing. Whether internal metrics show remote work to be more productive is irrelevant. If those metrics supported the narrative being pushed, employees would see them. They don’t, and they won’t. Leadership knows the data doesn’t support the story, and they don’t need it to.

Their only real objective is increasing the stock price.

Historically, one way companies accomplish that is by reducing headcount. The problem is layoffs come with costs - severance packages and payouts of accrued PTO. Thrive Together creates a mechanism to reduce the workforce without formally conducting layoffs and without paying those costs.

Instead of layoffs, the company now has a framework where employees who cannot comply with Thrive Together requirements can simply be labeled as low performers. That label leads to performance improvement plans and eventual termination. The end result is the same as a layoff, but without severance, without PTO payouts, and without triggering the procedures that normally accompany workforce reductions.

Flexible Time Off (FTO) reinforces this system.

FTO didn’t expand a benefit - it removed one. Under a traditional PTO system, employees accrued time off that the company was obligated to honor or pay out. Under FTO, nothing accrues. Time off is technically “unlimited,” but in practice none of it is guaranteed.

FTO can function in a truly flexible remote or hybrid environment where employees aren’t bound by strict office attendance quotas. That is not the environment being created here.

Under the current policy, time taken under FTO does not reduce in-office attendance expectations. For the average employee, that creates a clear disincentive to take vacation because office quotas remain unchanged regardless of time off.

Leadership recently increased the expectation to three days per week in the office. If an employee takes a week of vacation, they still owe those three in-office days somewhere else in the fiscal year. Two weeks of vacation doubles that deficit.

If the company eventually moves to four or five in-office days per week - as many suspect it will - the system becomes mathematically unsustainable. There will be no practical way for employees to take time off while still meeting attendance expectations within a quarter. FTO with Thrive Together is structurally incompatible with meaningful time off.

What’s happening here isn’t confusion or poor planning. It’s a gradual tightening of pressure on the workforce while removing the company’s obligations that typically accompany layoffs. Even better, some employees will leave on their own to avoid the mess.

The plan was always to make you work more while creating a system that results in less time off, lower performance reviews, and a convenient excuse to fire people without severance.

Let’s remind leadership who runs this company!

The company consistently advocates for metal health and talking to someone. Rip the bandaid off and just let everyone know where they stand within the new org chart. The anxiety and stress within our employees is at an extreme high right now. Come on OVV make your decisions already.

Once upon a time, the biggest concern was the lack of ‘good for you’ products in the portfolio. Today, the biggest concern is the lack of good leaders in the organization. How is each function holding up, is there any hope?

One of the most fascinating management models I’ve seen recently is the “mutual admiration club.”

A small leadership circle hires each other, promotes each other, and then gives each other outstanding performance ratings. Meanwhile, the people actually running operations and supporting customers suddenly become “underperformers.”

It’s a brilliant system if the goal is to protect the club and shift accountability elsewhere.

Unfortunately, it’s not a great system if the goal is to run a serious business.

In the long run, organizations usually discover that echo chambers are very good at protecting leadership, but not very good at running businesses.

Board numbers are being reduced https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/sustainable-finance-reporting/outgoing-bp-chief-auchincloss-earned-53-million-pounds-2025-2026-03-06/

They could probably reduce the board further but at least this is a start!

So, exploration will be gone entirely ? Even the VP is done. Is this the right move?

One leader is out and two new ones fill his spot. He stayed less than six months. Cost effective?

Check out this latest news!.

https://www.travelpress.com/sabre-unveils-once-in-a-generation-company-rebuild-ai-first-platform-at-itb-berlin/

Is this a joke?

Look at some of the lines in the article

"Over the last several years, under a refreshed executive leadership team, Sabre has executed a full modernization of its technology stack, moving to the cloud, rebuilding core systems, and unifying once fragmented capabilities under the new Sabre Mosaic™ platform"

"Sabre completed this rebuild while simultaneously strengthening its financial foundation. Disciplined debt management, portfolio actions, and operating rigor enabled the company to modernize without carrying forward legacy constraints.

A focused strategy has enabled Sabre to materially increase its engineering capacity over the past year, accelerating innovation cycles and time-to-market"

This is pure deception and no one is telling the truth!!!!!

Heard that Pharm Systems is at it again. Another wave of VPs and executives leaving. Others (barely any) updating their LinkedIn profiles to "Open to Work" and probably asking competitors for job openings. Europe, US - they're flying out faster than Tom&Jerry in their private jet to Jackson Hole. The sales organization is wiped out - a printed picture memory at this point. The people who actually knew the clients, knew the product, and knew how to close - gone. Last I heard, they now have project managers hunting for device business. Let that sink in. Somewhere along the way, politics ate strategy alive. Then came the massive bonus and commission cuts - looks good on the quarterly report. The PnL is probably on life support by another travel ban. Then Services? Handed to people with 0 experience whose previous team was actually taken apart and promptly set on fire. Those of us who got out are just sitting here with popcorn, watching, and waiting for the "Pharm Systems Acquired By..." press release to drop.

Layers and layers of worthless VPs that have to be let go.

Meeting-

1. So no mention of serving the athlete.
2. Key focus is serving the biz. The biz often doesn’t think big picture or with logic. Not to mention shipping jobs to ITC means a 12 hour time difference. Biz never works outside of 8-4 pst. ITC never starts until 10am ITC time.
3. Not gonna work my dude.
4. Glad our leaders are so intelligent.
5. TPM sr director in the chat offering to train folks on agile. Embarrassing all around.

• Fundamentally broken and needs a full reset.
• There is no clear or credible technology roadmap.
• Leadership and hiring appear driven by internal relationships and favoritism.
• Vendor decisions often look questionable and raise concerns about incentives.
• Systems from acquisitions remain fragmented and poorly integrated.
• Deployments and upgrades move far too slowly for a modern IT organization.
• Overall execution is weak and the group is widely seen as ineffective.

I had high hopes that there would be some improvements with the new regime but they are every bit as indecisive as the last batch of lackeys. The 1B area is a mess with people running around chasing their tails because their new boss lady can't make a decision and the leads are scrambling too. I sure hope Steve Sparkes' powers of observation are sharp and he picks up on the issues in his org soon or he will be the next sacrificial lamb. People are holding on by a thread waiting for change but the good ones are polishing off their resumes and looking externally since the internal postings are a joke.