Thread regarding Verizon Communications Inc. layoffs

I would say the finance complexity was created by very juvenile power battles at the sr leadership levels, incompetence and lack of ownership clarity for years. Anything that went wrong was blamed on external consultants that began finance transformation instead of actually aligning amongst the leaders themselves. Problems continue today as VP level would rather burn out their own team instead of consider the holistic support between all the finance teams with sensible stakeholdering. But burnout doesn’t matter as there is always someone younger and cheaper to step in to cater to workaholic demands and chaos.

@by

Some orgs create complexity by accident. Others institutionalize it.

In one such case, finance was quietly split into three streams: core, FP&A support, and something called shadow finance. The idea was agility. The result was inertia.

Shadow finance held operational intelligence—contract knowledge, vendor nuances, buried costs. But it didn’t have the pedigree. Not part of the inner circle. Not seen as “official.” So it was sidelined. Until things went sideways.

Then came the scrambling. Contracts no one else could interpret. Ownership no one wanted to claim. Three teams presenting three truths. Vendor delays. Budget friction. Silence from leadership.

What emerged was a system where visibility was a threat. Institutional knowledge became a liability. Accountability dissolved into PowerPoint.

This isn’t rare. It’s just quiet. It doesn’t make headlines. It makes entropy.

And the people who actually knew?
They’re gone. Or ghosted. Or ghosts.

Finance needs a reckoning too with the acquisition. Verizon gives each business unit 3 different finance teams to choose from - shadow finance, finance and FPAS. Finance which is supposed to find efficiencies is a blatant disgrace of bloat and overlap in plain sight. It's been a who's on first disaster of RACIs for years. There are many great people, but the problem is at the top that has continuously failed at basic organizational leadership. What's worse is the 30+year finance veterans that are powered and empowered to create chaos with no accountability. VP level that use shadow finance as a derogatory term, yet it's shadow finance that provides the inputs for copy and paste by an army of managers. It's time for that style of toxic leadership to go - right? right? right? right?

Frontier NOC guys only know how to open tickets with other carriers

Another week, another “realignment.” Hans is reportedly hard at work—by which we mean sweating through another McKinsey deck, popping antacids, and stress-scrolling through LinkedIn posts about “agile pivots.” Meanwhile, real employees are packing up boxes… again.

Departments with “overlap”? Please. This is corporate Darwinism disguised as strategy. Back office, IT, HR—anyone not parroting transformation buzzwords is disposable. The only thing growing under Hans is the consultant bill and his anxiety every time someone mentions Q3.

The man can’t articulate a vision without a script, a coach, and a Xanax. And yet, somehow, he still thinks throwing more execs with “transformation” in their titles at the problem will save this sinking barge of a company.

Let’s face it: if Verizon’s future is in Hans’s hands, we better start practicing carrier pigeon communication.