#worklifebalance

Does anyone who has an ear to the C-suite or close to it know if another VRP offer will be coming in 2026? I am eligible for it based on age and trying to weigh my options as to whether to wait and see if I get an offer, or just retire from this dumpster fire. This work environment is so toxic and it's not worth it anymore - it hasn't been for a long time actually. Appreciate any insight anyone may have.

Just rest and vest

Don't ever forget it. You're more likely to get laid off if you're skilled, experienced, and outperform than if you're an average slacker who's just good at office politics. The better you are, the higher the chance you're deemed too expensive for a company that cares neither about the quality of its people nor the quality of what it delivers.

AC not working in Burlington everyone is complaining, its so miserable. We're all jammed into these smaller rooms I'm sure all the body heat is not helping. How about let us leave an hr early instead of having this 1 hr social hr!!! The A side is working of course because no one is working over there.

Do IP logs only count during certain hours?

People at my area, secure, with same people , picking same desk are now coming in Friday. Leave computer on over weekends, come in early Monday.

The 2 days on weekends count

Brilliant system by USBank

Earth day eh? They encourage people to to leave laptop on all day and drive to work

For the activity monitoring skeptics. Given how hard charlie fetishizes JPM, still think this concept isn't coming to Wells eventually?

https://fortune.com/2026/03/24/jpmorgan-monitoring-keystrokes-video-calls-meetings-junior-investment-bankers-its-for-employee-wellbeing/

Curious if anybody else works on the weekend and isn't seeing it reflected in the time tracking. I don't work weekends regularly, but need to be in the office for certain software changes/deployments. I've, with my managers acknowledgement, treated this as part of my RTO days, but now I'm out 2-3 days what was previously shown.

I FINALY RELEASED WHAT THE MOTO MEANS.

I heard this moto many times in All hands meetings, they essentially say "Do More with less" in the context of AI, to encourage you to feed your work details to AI so they can train capable models to replace you eventually.

BUT from talking to many engineers in EMEA, which haven't seen a promotion in years now despite having good reviews.

Did everyone in lake Mary get told to wfh? Does this mean what we think it does?

I'm not going to waste time going on and on about the same things but who is actually going in to work at 8/9 and staying till 5pm? Obviously RTO 5 days means working from the office all 5 days but there's no way in he-l the majority is willingly going to go from WFH to now commuting to an office just to sit there for 8 hours.

Everyone I know from 40 to 45 lately has been moving to lateral or even jobs they're overqualified for. Has anyone in this age range been able to move up in the last year or so?

Epam HR and internal big brother tooling make work environment absolutely toxic and anxious. Now we all fight for one position which advertised as “any location”. As a full stack lead, I need to self apply to many so called open roles, to find that i am one of dozens of candidates, pass interviews and find out that my rate card is above SOW. Or someone is better fit, or project postponed, or backfilled etc etc. Total chaos with constant HR pressure, forced vacation days use. I know many people who quit on this torturous conditions like myself

In 2024, when we were hybrid, I used to be genuinely happy going to work. I was energized, motivated, and excited to contribute to the largest telecommunications company in the United States. But after nearly a year and a half of the five-day return-to-office mandate, I feel completely drained.

Every day is a battle — fighting traffic, searching for parking, and then scrambling to find a desk. To make it worse, people schedule meetings during my commute, which makes no sense.

Back in 2024, I felt bright, energetic, and enthusiastic about the work. Now I feel like Squidward, doing the bare minimum just to get through the day. Whenever I am asked to go above and beyond or deal with some ridiculous request, my response is basically that I am commuting or that I will get to it once I can actually find a desk. The whole thing feels like a joke.

To make matters worse, everyone on my immediate team and in my department seems endlessly enthusiastic about chasing more wireless and fiber gross adds. Maybe some of that excitement is real, but a lot of it feels rehearsed. I look around and see people acting energized and engaged, and it is hard not to wonder whether they actually feel that way or are just playing the part. Honestly, the only place I ever see people expressing what this experience really feels like is on this site. In person, people seem scared to say it out loud. It often leaves me feeling like I am the only one being honest about how exhausting and demoralizing all of this has become, especially because I am overshadowed by so many coworkers who seem enthusiastic about their jobs and about taking AT&T to the stars.

Did it all get pushed back to accommodate for layoffs and WFH weeks?

Does anyone actually find any value in this process or is it just TD ticking a box?

PORTLAND GUY DAY:

Show up between 930 and 10 as a group. Almost everyone wearing sunglasses in the office like complete tools.

Immediately take a coffee break in the Cafe with the entire group until 1015-1030.

Take an hour lunch 12-1.

Leave between 2-3 PM.

Curious has anyone been around long enough to remember the last time corporate gave the employees some good news? Feel like its been nothing but bad news the last 10 years. Offices closing, forced moves across the country, returns to office, replaced with people overseas, forced realignments due to corporates unwillingness to staff and retain properly.

Id say the last "good news" was us working from home during COVID, which wasnt exactly good news but maybe the only positive change I've seen in like 15 years. Ok i guess they did the math and so few people were having children they increased maternity benefits like 5 years ago.....

Cant wait for this weeks bad news meeting either way.

Can anyone explain why such high turnover in claims has been acceptable for so long? Assuming they will be moving people from jobs that are not 100% horrible to a claims department that is.

I am the manager of three former ExxonMobil employees:

The first is desperate to please me and shows strong “boss-pleasing” behavior. It’s frustrating because I need him focused on productivity, not on feeding my ego. His results are what matter.

The second reacted strongly when I asked for help moving a table, saying it was a safety risk and refusing to do it.

The third seems to be living in the past. I hear “when I was at ExxonMobil…” at least five times a day.

I’ve started to notice a pattern. Former ExxonMobil employees often seem like they’ve gone through some kind of conditioning and struggle to behave normally in a different environment.

I don’t know what the company is doing to its employees, but it feels intense. They all come across as somewhat distressed, almost like they’ve developed an obsessive or overly rigid mindset.

I’m not sure what to do. They seem like capable employees, but their behavior is unusual, and I don’t want to fire them.

Any ideas on how to “reverse” the ExxonMobil effect?

P.S. They all say they left due to strategic changes, like departments being moved to other countries, not because of performance issues.

There's clearly a willing contingent that would instantly take them up on it.

Instead they choose to sever people who might really need the job, throwing them into the crocodile pit of the current job market.

Or they push to make working conditions annoying enough that people who have options voluntarily leave (this part of it makes zero sense to me, these are typically the people you can least afford to lose).

Meanwhile the people who stay are made increasingly miserable, both as a result of the voluntary attrition measures, as well as having to operate for years in an environment with zero job security and no end to the layoffs in sight.

How is any of this better than just yanking the bandaid off, and letting workers have a hand in their own fate?

It feels very "the cruelty is the point" to me

Does anyone know how many sick days per year employees in the US get ? If unused, do sick days accumulate ? If so, does it accumulate to a max number of days ?

Its not clear to me on walgreens tolerance on people working a second job in parrelel. Also is any one doing it?

Personally would rather have a back up in case I get fired 💀

I’m told I can’t have my phone out at my desk even if it’s just to pull it out and turn on music while I work.

Meanwhile, the people who sit in the next row over talk all day and it’s so distracting. I have no idea how to get anything done. And I have people from other areas walking over to them all day long as well and all these people talk about are their lunch plans and then complain about their peers at other sites.

I need to put my AirPods in and listen to something that helps me stay focused- the way I see it. I’ll get fired either way… either from pulling my phone out to turn on Spotify or because my work is not as productive as it used to be because of these geniuses that sit around me who have zero respect for others.

So I’m guessing the bank went back to assigned seating? I’ve been out on sabbatical and just returned to our new space, but all of the seats appear to be assigned and I have no idea where I should randomly sit.

It doesn’t feel good to start my day like this every morning, trying to search for a place to sit that isn’t near the break room. But I’m told all the other spaces are neighborhoods. I can’t continue to take calls from a desk next to the break room so people keep asking me to go on mute because I hear all the noise, but then I have to forget to go off mute to start talking and lose my opportunities to speak up. This is ridiculous.

Those teams sitting in a neighborhood who are not on the phone all day. Need to have their dedicated seating over here. I don’t know how they got away with giving them the prime seats.. but I can’t continue working like this and I will be figuring out a way to work from home if this continues.

• Jacksonville, Florida

Are people really in the office 5 days a week or is there flexibility/WFH allowed?

Apparently, a family member having a medical emergency that requires someone to be present isn't a valid reason for a remote work exception! I learned my lesson, I'll just call off sick instead of giving a damn about this sc-mmy org.

Why the he-l does workday never actually work. I have to click the buttons 16 times for it to take me to the time off section

What’s up with word floating around that the in office requirement is being updated to 9 hours for the day to count?

It felt like I was signing divorce papers from a bad marriage. I'm very glad to be out of that company. The max severance package and unemployment are like having a hot girl say she just wants to hang out with you after your divorce but nothing serious, just casual fun. After that, retirement and traveling around with the actual love of my life. I ran the numbers, it's like getting a ~$100K payout into retirement. I'll happily take this over a retirement card and going away gift at a pizza party.

Assuming more layoffs are to come, and if and you're in a similar time in your life, I highly recommend trying to manage the last days of your career aiming for a layoff rather than announcing a retirement date. If I would have told them I was retiring in May, I don't think I would have been laid off, so keep that info to yourself. Don't tell a soul because it WILL get out if you do, and that could be a very costly mistake.

Copy and paste link below to view post. Don't accept "NO".

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7427118095061819392/?commentUrn=urn%3Ali%3Acomment%3A%28activity%3A7427118095061819392%2C7447726858751746048%29&dashCommentUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afsd_comment%3A%287447726858751746048%2Curn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A7427118095061819392%29

Historically, it’s always been a professional courtesy to give two weeks notice before leaving. However, as recent layoffs have shown, companies are giving no notice (Oracle). This has and will become the norm. And before someone says, well it’s courtesy to your colleagues, just remember that it comes at a cost to you and your family for being nice.

So with that said, why continue this legacy practice of giving two weeks notice? Again, if it helps the employee pack up and wrap up, sure. But otherwise, I think it’s time to reevaluate the practice. Just because society followed the same rule for so long doesn’t mean it’s correct in today’s AI world.

Love to hear your thoughts, including how you would advise your own kids if they were in the situation.

Nobody's exactly clinging to this place. A voluntary package would have takers, lots of them.

They've got us stressed out constantly. No breaks, no rest, no relief. This company has completely taken over our lives.

I used to stay late learning new skills. Used to take on extra projects to grow. Then I watched three people who did exactly that get laid off anyway. Now my full potential is doing my job well enough to not get noticed, because getting noticed here isn't safe anymore.

There's no rock bottom here. There's always one step lower to go.

I keep hearing management say we're now "leaner and stronger." Leaner for sure. Stronger? Ask me after I've slept through a full night without worrying about my inbox.

We can't go on like this forever. There has to be an end to layoffs. Are we supposed to stress over potentially losing our jobs for the rest of our working days?

I see people coming into the office before lunch and leave office before 3 pm. Sometimes it makes me wonder if they are really "working." I also see people in their office glue to their work computer for HOURS with the lights OFF = ALL of them were SAFE on this round. Maybe we should follow their pattern to survive

Where or What is your worth?
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https://experteditor.com.au/blog/d-bt-i-worked-for-thirty-eight-years-and-when-i-finally-stopped-i-sat-in-my-kitchen-on-a-monday-morning-with-nowhere-to-be-and-cried-not-because-i-missed-the-job-but-because-i-realized-the-job-was-the/