#accountability

You would not believe it. There's about 30% of people working their a$$ off.
The remainder either put mouse wigglers on so it looks like they are working 24 hours a day or are just mia.
There is z e r o accountability. No one ever gets in trouble because mgrs just turn a blind eye to it.
I know it's a bad place to work, but come on, have some considerations for your teammates.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is demanding answers about what Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) alleges may be retaliation by leading pharmacy benefit managers against supporters of PBM legislation.

https://www.modernhealthcare.com/insurance/mh-optum-rx-express-scripts-cvs-caremark-house-probe/

Hi folks,I’m thinking about sending this open letter to the CIO and or CFO. Please share you thoughts with me here about how it can be improved.

Dear CIO,

Your recent reorganization announcement identifies many things TIS desperately needs: clearer accountabilities, better collaboration, stronger business enablement, and more efficient delivery.

Those are the right priorities. But for many of us, the announcement was deeply frustrating.

We've been waiting years for these improvements.

The previous transformation initiative was supposed to address longstanding problems with governance, decision rights, processes, and collaboration. It delivered little meaningful change because the executive leadership team couldn't align on what needed to be done.

Then we gave you another year to learn the organization and establish your direction.

You've been with the company for approximately 15 years. You're an SVP with significant authority, a substantial budget, and the ability to bring in whatever expertise was needed. You didn't need to wait for a reorganization to start fixing these problems. That work should have been happening in parallel.

You inherited the dysfunction. But after a year in the role, you own the lack of progress in fixing it.

We've reorganized. What have we fixed?

Your announcement changes reporting lines and leadership responsibilities while acknowledging that significant work remains to determine how the organization will function.

That's difficult to accept.

The same executive team that has struggled for years to resolve cross-functional problems now has substantial new portfolios, teams to integrate, and businesses to support.

Expecting those same leaders to somehow find the time, alignment, and motivation to transform TIS is not a credible plan.

Running TIS and fixing how TIS works are both essential. But the latter cannot remain a side responsibility for the people who have repeatedly failed to deliver it.

Put trusted leaders in charge of transformation

Establish a TIS Transformation Council comprising a small group of directors and managers selected for their credibility with TIS employees, delivery performance, and the trust they've earned across the organization.

You don't need to guess who those people are.

Employee engagement survey results provide evidence of which leaders have built strong teams, earned employees' confidence, and created environments where people feel respected and supported. Combine those results with delivery performance and cross-functional credibility.

Let the council choose its chair. Give it dedicated capacity, a budget for external expertise, direct access to you, and the authority to challenge existing practices.

Task it with fixing the processes, governance, decision rights, and accountabilities that connect TIS. Require practical recommendations, implementation plans, measurable outcomes, and deadlines.

The executive leadership team must remain accountable for implementing the changes, but it cannot be allowed to stall them through competing priorities or an inability to reach consensus.

And listen to the people doing the work. Many have been identifying these problems for years.

Change is about human behaviour. If you want employees to embrace it, put leaders they already trust in charge of making it happen.

Reconsider who you're trusting and rewarding

One of the biggest criticisms of the previous CIO was the perception that loyalty mattered more than independent judgement and that challenging leadership carried personal risk.

Your appointment was supposed to change that.

Yet employees have seen a highly respected, trusted, and effective director leave after demonstrating the courage to challenge senior leadership and stand up for what they believed was right for the company. Not only did you fail to stop it, you've told us you enabled it.

Whatever the circumstances of that departure, its effect was chilling.

Meanwhile, leaders facing longstanding concerns about their performance, people leadership, and ability to deliver meaningful improvements remain in senior positions. Some have even been promoted.

The message employees take from this is troubling: challenging leadership may cost you your career, while failing to deliver results carries little consequence if you retain the confidence of those above you.

Whether or not that's the message you intend, it's the one your leadership decisions risk reinforcing.

Are you rewarding the people who make TIS better, or those who are best at managing their relationship with you?

When employees believe speaking up carries greater risk than underperforming, they stop telling leadership what it needs to hear.

You need to challenge your executives, confront poor leadership, and reward integrity, competence, and results rather than loyalty or personal relationships.

Accountability requires capability

There's another lesson from the previous leadership regime that appears to have been missed.

The former CTO wasn't necessarily the underlying problem. The bigger failure was assigning that position an unrealistic breadth of authority without adequate checks and balances or consideration of the capabilities required.

That was a leadership decision.

And we risk repeating it.

The new structure assigns executives responsibility for broad and sometimes very different technology disciplines. But have we adequately assessed whether they possess the experience and judgement to lead them?

We wouldn't assume a civil engineer was qualified to lead pipeline integrity simply because they held an engineering degree. We'd expect relevant expertise.

Why should technology be different?

Cybersecurity, cloud infrastructure, software development, enterprise architecture, operations, AI, and technology strategy are distinct disciplines. Experience in one doesn't automatically qualify someone to lead another.

Technology expertise deserves the same respect for specialization that we give engineering.

Executives don't need to be experts in everything they oversee. But they must recognize their limitations, understand the expertise required, and empower capable people to exercise genuine authority.

Otherwise, we're setting leaders up to fail and then expecting to hold them accountable for responsibilities they may never have been equipped to fulfill.

As CIO, you're accountable not just for your executives' performance, but for whether you've put the right people in the right roles with the support and authority to succeed.

Stop leaving employees to reconcile contradictory expectations

Your direction appears to give the business greater authority over technology decisions while TIS retains responsibility for architecture, cybersecurity, standards, and risk.

That ambiguity is unfair to employees and dangerous for the company.

People are expected to follow established governance requirements while being criticized for slowing down the business when they do exactly that.

If the policies are wrong, change them. If accountability belongs elsewhere, move it. But don't expect employees to read your mind.

If you want to change the rules, change them in writing. Communicate the new expectations, align authority with accountability, and stop treating employees who follow existing policies as obstacles to business enablement.

The longstanding ambiguity between the BSS/DSS teams and TIS is another example.

You knew about these problems from your years in the business. Yet after a year as CIO, the boundaries, decision rights, and accountabilities remain unclear. Have we moved the needle even a little? It doesn't seem so.

These aren't technical problems requiring years of study. They're leadership decisions that should have been addressed long ago.

Lead the organization. Leave the technology to the experts.

You weren't appointed CIO because you had the deepest technology expertise.

Your value proposition was your business knowledge, relationships, leadership experience, and ability to improve collaboration and organizational culture.

Those are valuable strengths. But we need to see them put to work.

We already have talented professionals who have spent their careers mastering technology, delivery, governance, and risk management.

What we lack is consistent executive leadership that trusts their expertise, removes organizational barriers, resolves conflicts, and supports sound professional judgement.

We don't need you to become the smartest technologist in the room. We need you to create an organization where the smartest technologists can do their best work.

The previous CIO brought technical discipline but struggled with culture and collaboration. Your opportunity was to retain that discipline while fixing the leadership problems that held us back.

Instead, we risk weakening governance without materially improving trust, accountability, or organizational effectiveness.

That's not the change people were expecting.

It's time to raise the standard

Nobody expects you to resolve years of dysfunction overnight. But after a year in the role, we should have a credible plan, dedicated leadership, clear accountabilities, and evidence of progress.

Instead, we have another reorganization that appears to reward the EMT, and another promise that the real work is about to begin.

We need you to establish the Transformation Council or something similar, empower trusted leaders, resolve longstanding accountability problems, and hold your executive leadership team responsible for supporting meaningful change.

We need you to reconsider whose advice you rely on, whose performance you reward, and whether employees can challenge leadership without fearing the consequences.

And we need you to hold yourself and your executive team to the same standards of competence, integrity, accountability, and professional judgement that you expect from everyone else.

There are exceptional people throughout TIS who know how to deliver. They've spent years working around organizational barriers that leadership has failed to remove.

They don't need another announcement about change. They need leadership that finally delivers it.

You have the experience, authority, resources, and relationships to be that leader. But it requires focusing on the problems that only you can resolve.

Stop trying to prove you can lead the technology conversation. Start proving you can lead the technology organization.

We've been ready for change for years.

Now it's time for you to deliver it.

We in TIS deserve better. Enbridge needs better.

Having worked at Fannie Mae for many years, I can speak from firsthand experience. Unfortunately, I’ve seen a difference in the way people communicate and treat others. Some of the messaging from Fannie Mae employees comes across as dismissive, unprofessional, and as though they feel they are above others. In contrast, my experience with Freddie Mac has been that people are more genuine, approachable, and friendly.
It’s disappointing to see a culture where communication can feel unnecessarily harsh and disrespectful. I would never wish a layoff on anyone, as I understand the impact it can have on individuals and their families.
Perhaps, with all the changes taking place, there will be an opportunity to take a closer look at leadership and workplace culture. Organizations need leaders who know how to manage people, not just processes. Strong leadership means treating employees with respect, fostering accountability, and remembering that behind every role is a person who deserves to be treated with professionalism and dignity

Any progress to report? I see a lot of promises but nothing material happening. Seems like it is a scam to get hipos promoted.

Strategy has been an absolute failure. What do you expect from a stereotypical used car salesman? If VBG misses the net add target, it’s 100% his fault.

Nothing here works or functions as it should. Systems are clunky, frequent outages, and there is no ownership/accountability from teams that are supposed to be the ones maintaining things. Every thing is reactionary because apparently it’s better for things to break and fail constantly than proactively maintain and improve.

I’ve never seen a more clunkier, inefficient, poorly integrated tech stack than at Truist. ML, teammates don’t bank here because things are broken! But I guess being in-person and offshoring is going to fix everything!

AT&T stock is down over 15% this year, and John Stinkey’s big priority is forcing employees into the office five days a week and tracking our hours like we’re his fu-k!ng prisoners. Apparently, badge swipes matter more than results.

Meanwhile, he dismissed SpaceX as “not viable,” and now SpaceX is reportedly pursuing access to 80,000 cell sites to build a potential nationwide wireless competitor. AT&T can beat earnings expectations and still watch its stock get hammered as investors worry about competition and the company’s future while stink laughs it off. Maybe the market is trying to tell us something, M0r0n John

You can’t preach a “market-based culture” built on capability, contribution, and commitment while treating employees like children and obsessing over attendance instead of competing and saying things like “loyalty is dead”. If leadership wants accountability, start at the top.

Stop policing employees and start running the fu--ing business. Resign.

Performance reviews often feel like a joke when the feedback collected through 360-degree reviews is overridden by the lead, without adequately considering input from other internal and external team members. HR should be present in these discussions as a neutral party to ensure fairness, transparency, and accountability. Assigning ratings based on tenure in a role rather than actual performance undermines the entire purpose of the review process. Such practices raise serious concerns about the fairness and integrity of the performance evaluation system.

If their actions contradict what they say, you're being lied to. It's that simple!

They say they want to have the best network and delight customers. They say they are bursting at the seams with integrity and they're dedicated to treating employees fairly.

Do their actions support these lofty statements? In my experience they do not and it's not even close.

The protection racket around certain incompetent managers has gone on way too long. Hopefully that shield is finally starting to crack and accountability starts mattering more than decades old relationships and loyalties

Hey John, if you read this, how about considering some accountability for your actions and decisions and leadership? You were right there losing $30B because of DirecTV. You led the $40B lots of Warner, which then appears to have recovered it's losses when it was then sold again. You might not have been the primary person, but you were in leadership were you could have affected the loss of $4B payout for not closing the T-Mobile deal and the billions lost in Mexico. Instead of saying the analysts don't understand, we don't have the right culture, customers haven't caught on yet, the other guys from ten years ago are an at fault, how about acknowledging what you did and how the company would look very different without all those losses.

The chaos was understandable directly after the spinoff but what’s the excuse now? Processes change constantly, they’re inconsistent and inefficient. God forbid you bring it up to management, they just gaslight you into everything being your fault. There’s no curiosity to understand the issue much less resolve it. Customers are leaving our platform due to frustrating support experiences. Partners are frustrated working with us because of our ridiculous quoting process. Every tiny ask is met with resistance. Not to mention, I haven’t had any cost of living increases, no merit increases, nothing. They routinely reduce our 401k match.

Omnissa is lucky the job market is awful right now otherwise half this company would be gone.

John says we need to “stand behind our products and services” and use them ourselves if we expect others to switch to AT&T.

Here’s the problem, John. We literally implemented 5x RTO because apparently we don’t believe our own employees can work effectively from home, even though we sell the very services that make remote work possible.

How the he-l are we supposed to sell people on the benefits of AT&T when our own leadership doesn’t seem to believe in them enough to let its employees use that flexibility themselves?

Maybe we’d be more enthusiastic about our own products, more likely to use them, and more willing to recommend them to friends and family if we actually experienced the benefits firsthand instead of being forced into an office five days a week.

You want employees to stand behind AT&T? Start by giving us a reason to believe in what we’re selling. You can’t preach the benefits of connectivity and flexibility to customers while refusing to trust your own employees with it. Practice what you preach.

So...CDW added a new board member that was a high ranking C level at Deloitte.

Another consultant. Go read what it's like to work at Deloitte. Seems like CL and team want to double down and reshape CDW by outsourcing more and paying coworkers less.

Customers will be left with a lower quality of service since the company doesn't want to actually pay for the best in the industry. What will be left are people too desperate to quit/leave to go elsewhere as they can't afford any lapse in income or health benefits. Basically a workforce of desperate coworkers being held hostage fearful of their bosses rather than coworkers that respect their bosses. What a way to run a company.

At this point...just outsource everything to India. Get H1B's to run the warehouse. I'm sure customers will want to pay more for the same Tech and Services. CDW charges more for the same Goods & Services than others but now will provide a lower quality of everything in terms of account management. So what is the value add anymore.

AT&T could have a warchest but Stankey squandered that, shareholder wealth, and many good employees. Elon's army would probably bid up their stock against AT&T simply out of spite against Stankey.

https://thebaynet.com/fire-rips-through-verizon-facility-in-waldorf-damages-27-vehicles-and-causes-3-8-million-in-losses/

One wonders if there were any fire alarms triggered to NOC/on-call folks as 'most' facilities would have systems designed to send an alert for something like this? Unless the system was never properly tested for alarm.

Cutting humans and 'replacing' or outsourcing to save money looks good on spreadsheet - how will explaining what happened and getting these vehicles replaced look on a spreadsheet? AI was supposed to be superior for most all job duties, including writing poems to everyone's wife.

I work remotely, and ever since GitHub Actions was taken down, I have been experiencing a critical network connectivity issue that has severely impacted my ability to work. Although I can connect to the VPN and access support.uhc.com, virtually all other network traffic is blocked by Zscaler or the corporate firewall.

It has been nearly two weeks, and IT has still failed to identify or resolve the issue, despite numerous troubleshooting attempts, multiple incident (INC) tickets, repeated escalations, replacing computers and countless hours wasted.

The level of incompetence, inefficiency, and lack of accountability demonstrated by the ESRO, Mac Support, Zscaler and IT teams is unacceptable. Their inability to diagnose and resolve a critical connectivity issue after nearly two weeks raises serious concerns about their technical expertise, troubleshooting capabilities, and overall effectiveness.

What makes this situation even more frustrating is the complete lack of ownership and urgency. Instead of providing a meaningful resolution, the issue continues to be passed around without any tangible progress.

is anyone else in same bot?

Leadership has employee Lead program managers to track Project managers and PE’s on doing data entry on IMS! Well guess what, they input IMS data and they find out that a macro or system updates have changed the data! Focus should not be on making PMs be data entry clerks, and focused on bringing in parts! Just absolutely mismanagement! We need profit, and they wanna take our eye off the ball of getting parts built, with updating a metric for leadership to look at when all the data is not going to be accurate! Man made inputs, up against macros changing the data, and PMs constantly having to correct it all day everyday has taken the focus off of getting parts from suppliers and to the production floor! Just silliness!

Is anyone surprised by Rich Harbison’s letter acknowledging the deficiencies in this company? Specifically Action taking, AI Impact, Recognition, Career Opportunities, and Ethical Standards amongst the lowest scoring elements.

https://dell.service-now.com/arc?id=arc_catalog_item&sys_id=db988ba7475ade10c2164511516d43e7

Statement of Misalignment and Systemic Risk:
This submission highlights an insurmountable contradiction between Dell Technologies’ publicly stated corporate values, its compliance enforcement, and its executive compensation practices over the 5-year reporting period (FY 2022 through FY 2026).

1. Wealth Disparity: Median Pay vs. Executive Holdings & Dividend Cash Flow

In official SEC filings (DEF 14A), Dell reports a median employee annual compensation of $78,796. Juxtaposing this baseline against executive capital growth and quarterly passive income reveals the extreme magnitude of internal wealth divergence:

Lifetime Earnings vs. 5-Year Capital Growth:
Average Employee Career: Working a full 40-year career at Dell’s median annual wage yields $3.15 Million in gross lifetime earnings.

Jeff Clarke (COO & Vice Chair): Generated an estimated +$592.09 Million in 5-year capital growth (reaching an estimated holding value of ~$825M on grants worth $232.91M at award). This capital gain represents 188 times an average employee's total 40-year career earnings.

William Scannell (Pres., Global Sales): Generated an estimated +$254.92 Million in 5-year capital growth (~$308M total value) — 81 times a median employee's lifetime earnings.

Richard Rothberg (General Counsel) & Yvonne McGill (CFO): Generated 5-year capital gains of +$191.70 Million (61x lifetime earnings) and +$48.16 Million (15x lifetime earnings) respectively.

Passive Dividend Generation: At Dell’s current quarterly dividend rate of $0.63 per share, executive stock holdings yield massive passive quarterly cash flow: Holding ~1.65 million shares and equivalents, Jeff Clarke generates an estimated ~$1.04 Million in cash payouts every single quarter in dividends alone. A single quarterly dividend check to the COO exceeds 13 years of full-time gross wages for an average Dell employee.

1. Performative Values vs. Downsizing as Risk Offloading

Dell frequently cites core principles such as "Winning Together" and "Doing the Right Thing." However, SEC filings confirm that "winning" is an asymmetric outcome reserved exclusively for equity-holding officers, while financial risk is transferred entirely to non-equity-bearing workers:

FY 2024: 13,000 jobs eliminated
FY 2025: 12,000 jobs eliminated
FY 2026: 11,000 jobs eliminated

5-Year Aggregate: 36,000 workforce positions eliminated;a 27% total net reduction.

When strategic missteps occur, executives bear no personal financial consequences—insulating themselves through title reorganizations and board-sanctioned grant adjustments. Instead, 36,000 workers lost their livelihoods while remaining employees absorbed wage compression and operational burnout.

1. Passive Competitive Tracking vs. Structural Wage Suppression

While Dell publicly frames itself as an industry leader, operational pay decisions reveal a pattern of passive competitive tracking when addressing rank-and-file compensation.

During a past corporate all-hands meeting, when executive leadership was questioned regarding wage adjustments to match compounding inflation, the official response was that "no competitors have announced plans for such adjustments, so Dell will not either." Selectively invoking market competition to suppress wage growth while claiming industry leadership represents a clear operational contradiction. Workers are left with below-inflation raises, while their primary "reward" for high performance is simply avoiding the next layoff cycle- maybe.

1. Incentive Misalignment & Compliance Double Standards
   Dell’s compensation model systematically limits wealth accumulation for non-executive employees:

Discretionary Cash Bonuses: Cash bonuses do not compound into base pay over time, are taxed at supplemental income rates, and give managers insufficient budget to retain top technical talent.

Equity Exclusion: While leadership argues that executive stock awards are necessary to incentivize innovation, withholding broad-based equity from rank-and-file workers directly contradicts this logic. If equity drives performance, excluding the workforce actively suppresses long-term value.

Compliance Asymmetry: Dell’s Code of Conduct strictly enforces gift bans and conflict-of-interest policies on frontline workers to eliminate even the "mere appearance of impropriety." Enforcing strict penalties on employees for minor administrative issues while board structures enable executives to extract hundreds of millions of dollars by eliminating 36,000 livelihoods creates an institutional double standard that destroys internal trust.

Action Requested:

This report requests that the Audit Committee, Compliance Officers, and the Compensation Committee of Dell’s Board of Directors:

Formally evaluate the reputational and cultural risks of executive equity structures tied to workforce reductions.

Recognize layoffs as a FAILURE of leadership and punish it accordingly.

Address the structural double standard between frontline compliance enforcement and executive enrichment.

Re-examine employee compensation models to align actual practices with public statements on corporate values and leadership.

Over one hundred students and employees gathered to protest recent layoffs and perceived mismanagement of the university's budget. Demonstrators voiced concerns that Temple is prioritizing infrastructure over educational resources and student support. They demanded greater transparency from the administration regarding the $1.3 billion operating budget. Speakers highlighted the negative impact of staff reductions on classroom environments and student retention. The protest called for increased staffing and accountability from university leadership.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

https://temple-news.com/ditch-mitch-employees-and-students-protest-layoffs-and-administration/

I’ve been struggling with two questions. Thoughts?

1) ER was meant to restructure the organization and right size it. Phase 1 was focused on Senior GPs picking their leadership team. How is it a year later that 30ish GPs get reassigned and some to roles where they have no background in what they are leading. When will the Senior GPs get held accountable for lack of delivery, you can’t just keep blaming the next level. You hand picked them!

2) I’m newer to EJ, but LP is explained as ownership but very much feels like just a bond offering. If I owned a part of the company I would also gain in appreciation of the market value of the company. My understanding is only GPs participate in this. So if I accept the LP offer, I give XX,X-X and earn I profit(interest) on it. If after years or decades I want out, I’m returned my principal and no appreciation of the company of those years or decades.

Anyone have insights that I’m missing?

Dst was blind to subaccounting. A vp put together contracts that ignored subaccounting and cost dst a bundle. My manager was blind as a bat and refused to acknowledge i knew more than him. He was a tantrum throwing immature guy

Netflix loves talking about freedom, responssibility, radical candor (ouch)... Oh, talent density. This sure as he-l sounds awesome on paper. But... employee reviews keep telling a different story. Backstabbing, politics, nepotism/cronysm/favoritism, never-stopping reorgs, and just about 0 job security. Being liked by the right manager can matter more than doing your job well - being brilliang, delivering and contributing more than anyone else.... A high-performance culture, now do a podcast and write a book about it. If i was to define it i'd say it's 100% corporate political gamesmanship dressed up as excellence.

But I like the $$$. That's the trap - golden handcufs.... $$$ salaries, PTO, great bennies. But also the long hours, burnout, and non-stop anxiety about being the next person out - it catches up with you, sooner or latter.... Then diveristy between teams - Some are great, others are miserable, plain horrible in every sense. Your experience depends 100pct on who you report to - it's similar at other cos but here its more pronounced... i call it a lottery, some get good mgrs, some dont. Some mgrs are plain nuts, but i'll cover that in another post... those golden handcuffs get pretty uncomfortable when you realize what you're putting up with and how much abuse u have to tolerate to take home whatever they give u.

This brings me to the 1K cut that's in focus right now... with MOST (not many, not some) people questioning why experienced, highperforming employees are among those leaving. Here's my Q. Who holds mgmt accountable? When priorities constantly change, teams get reorged, and good people leave, why is it always the employees who pay the price? Does the famous keeper test apply to leadership too???? Or do execs and mgrs get to keep their jobs while everyone else keeps proving they deserve theirs????

The irony is that Netflix still has a large pool of exceptionally talented people. this makes this whole thing even more stupid. You can't keep burning through talent and expect high salaries & free lunches, and a culture memo to make everything OK. The execs and mgmt should stop preaching accountability and start practicing it. Like right now.... Because right now that famous/cherished Netflix culture is starting to look like a well planned marketing campaign for a pretty ordinary corp machine.

Peace out

sometimes i have moments of clarity after grinding my a-s off on things where i look around and realize im like 1 of 2 people grinding their a-s off, and there's 10 people above us with better compensation, perks, work life balance, kinda just reporting the status of our work. Then theres people that report the reporting of the status of our work. Wtf?

how does a structure like this even survive any kind of audit for waste

He should start with himself!!!

Leadership teams are plagued by the wrong people. They care only about personal ambition and looking busy, wrapping every failure as a "success." Business value and key metrics are not even taken into consideration, and decisions are rarely backed by data. It is a complete mess that needs to be cleaned up as soon as possible or it all goes to he-l.

The problem, however, is that those who have the power to change things are exactly the same: corrupt and compromised.

As far as I’m concerned when I’m in the office and at home, they can track me all they want. I don’t care because I’m doing my job. My question is we have someone in our world who comes in the morning signs intohis computer walks around so everyone sees him and then he leaves we don’t see him all day then he comes back back right at the 7 1/2 hour Mark and works the last half hour and leaves. On Teams he does appear as being seven hours away. So everyone knows he leaves, gets in his car - why arent they tracking that?

Organizations succeed when decisions are timely, priorities are clear, and the people doing the work have the resources and authority to deliver.

Too many layers of approval can slow progress. As problems move up the chain, critical information can get delayed or diluted. Management decisions made without a clear understanding of the actual technical work, actual workload, and operational challenges can create unrealistic commitments.

Frequent reorganizations and unclear ownership add overhead instead of solving problems.

L3Harris has publicly emphasized urgency, delivery, and meeting customer demand in its 2026 business outlook. Achieving those goals requires aligning commitments with available resources, addressing risks early, and listening to the people closest to the work.

In defense contracting, oversight, quality, and compliance are essential. But excessive risk aversion can be just as costly as taking unnecessary risks. When decisions take too long and opportunities are delayed, we risk losing business to competitors who can respond faster.

When approvals multiply, priorities conflict, and accountability isn't matched with authority, the organization becomes less effective—not more controlled.

Good management isn't about adding layers of oversight. It's about removing obstacles, making informed decisions, establishing clear priorities, and empowering people to deliver.

Ultimately, this is basic business: give people the direction, resources, and authority they need to meet the mission.

How can we possibly be in October and still have claims from January unprocessed? How can that be allowed or legal? If I talk to Operations at all, there are still 7 different leaders for the 7 different LOBs we have. How could we let this happen where they could maintain the SBU set up in core? Makes no sense and is inefficient.

The whole point was to consolidate and they are as split up as ever. And, according to what I've heard, apparently every possible metric that the Association measures us on is at all time lows. When will anyone be held accountable for this unbelievable execution?

I can't find anyone who is helpful over there.

If BNY really believed its own cost‑cutting gospel, the Executive Committee would be the next “efficiency lever.” Consider that a U.S. senior executive package easily runs $3–6M+ when you add salary, bonus, equity, benefits, and perks. An equivalent leadership role in Pune or Wroclaw costs a fraction — often 70–85% cheaper when you factor in compensation norms and lower fully‑loaded costs. If BNY is happy offshoring engineers, ops, QA, onboarding, and client service, why stop at the people making the decisions???

Would Wall Street cheer? Absolutely. Cutting a few million in executive comp barely moves expenses, but it sends a loud message: “We’re serious about margins.” And BNY’s stock already jumps when they squeeze labor — imagine the reaction if they squeezed their own.

Will it happen? Almost zero chance. Afterall, offshoring is for everyone else and of course not for those who go on African Safari trips. :0 The cost savings are real, but the appetite for self‑accountability at the top is nonexistent.

So I’m on the Medicare UM centralization team and there was just a meeting under our associate directors teams where the manager makes a comment that we’re expected to know these policies they’re just reminding us of these policies that are in place, but none of them are in writing. Can you please explain that to me? How is something not in writing for how we’re supposed to do something. We’re just somehow supposed to know that we’re supposed to go to this really hard place that they call mentor to get instructions, but there aren’t any instructions on how exactly to apply what it says there but somehow we’re just supposed to know and we’re accountable for it but they’re not gonna put it in writing for how to do it make it make sense oh wait maybe it’s because if they don’t put it in writing then they’re not accountable for it and then they can use it as an excuse to lay off nurses? I mean, make it make sense folks, not in writing how do you have policy and not put it in writing and then tell an entire group of people they were expected to do it and understand it and remember how to use it but they’re not putting it in writing. I don’t know why I even stay anymore. Oh wait that’s right. I’m actively looking for a job and this is why. And then she makes this comment about how they know we centralized a year ago and things will probably change again next week, but we’re just now figuring it out. It’s been a year folks. What the heck do you mean you’re just now figuring it out. I probably need to look a little harder for a new job because this was so discouraging. I feel so set up for failure and I know other people on my team do now as well.

OpenText has spent almost 10 years building and running our FedRAMP environment. In my estimation, we must have spent at least $30–45 million on this entire exercise. And how much revenue have we generated? I will be very surprised if it is even $2 million in total. That also with our usual margins of around 30–32%.

Now you tell me, in which universe does this make any business sense?

But apparently, our great leadership looked at this fantastic financial performance and decided, why stop here? Let us take this same wonderful business model and expand it further! So we went ahead with IRAP in Australia and Protected B in Canada.

What a brilliant idea, no? If one environment is losing money, let us build two more. Surely three loss-making initiatives will somehow become profitable. Excellent strategy, sir. Absolutely outstanding.

And just when you think, okay, surely by now we must have learnt something, along comes Steven L and convinces our executive leadership that sovereign compute is the next big thing.

So once again, we are spending huge amounts of money, adding infrastructure, complexity, operational overhead and ongoing costs. Revenue? Profitability? Return on investment? Arre, why worry about such small things when we can put together a beautiful PowerPoint presentation about our strategic vision?

Now some of you may be thinking, why should I care? This is management's problem, no?

Unfortunately, no. It is very much our problem.

Because when these wonderful strategic decisions fail to deliver, who suffers? Certainly not the people who approved them.

Management has only one solution left. Cut people. Cut budgets. Stop hiring. And then tell the remaining employees that they must somehow manage everything.

Earlier, the magic word was efficiency. We were told to do more with less. Now the magic word is AI. Suddenly, AI is supposed to solve every problem, eliminate every inefficiency and allow five people to do the work of twenty.

Boss, please. At least give us some credit. We are not fools.

Call it efficiency, transformation, optimisation, AI or whatever fancy terminology is fashionable this quarter. The reality is the same. Management makes poor investment decisions, burns through millions, and then expects ordinary employees to compensate for those mistakes by working harder with fewer resources.

And the best part?

The same executives who approved these decisions continue collecting their big bonuses, stock awards and handsome compensation packages. Very nice.

Meanwhile, the rest of us are expected to be grateful for a 0–2% salary increase when the cost of living has gone up by around 30%.

Wah. What a fantastic arrangement.

The people making the mistakes collect the rewards. The people who had nothing to do with those decisions are made to pay the price.

And if you complain? You are not being positive. You are not demonstrating the right mindset. You are not embracing transformation.

Arre bhai, what transformation? We are simply rearranging the furniture while the entire building is on fire.

Management, seriously, wake the fu-k up.

First, please look at these regulated environments properly. FedRAMP, IRAP, Protected B, sovereign compute. Show us the actual numbers. How much have we invested? What is the revenue? What is the operating cost? What is the realistic path to profitability?

If the business case is not there, then why are we continuing? Just because somebody made a commitment in a boardroom does not mean the rest of the company should keep paying for it indefinitely.

Second, look at our product portfolio. We have so many products, platforms, technologies and overlapping capabilities that even internally it is becoming difficult to understand what we are supposed to prioritise.

Reduce the portfolio by 50–75% if necessary. Focus on what customers are actually buying, what generates sustainable revenue and what we can realistically support.

Instead, we keep adding more products, more requirements, more complexity and more commitments while simultaneously reducing the number of people expected to deliver everything.

How exactly is this supposed to work?

You cannot keep removing people from engineering and then act surprised when delivery slows down, technical debt increases, incidents happen and customers become unhappy.

And please, do not tell us again that AI will magically fix everything. AI is a tool, not some divine intervention that will compensate for ten years of questionable management decisions.

Those of us in engineering are already stretched. People are working ridiculous hours, covering multiple responsibilities and constantly trying to keep things running. And somehow, every quarter, we are expected to deliver even more.

Boss, there is a limit to everything.

We are engineers, not magicians.

And one more thing, which management really needs to understand.

Engineering is not your enemy. Engineering is probably one of the most valuable assets you have. But you need to know how to use us.

If you take a hammer and try to start a fire, or take a sc--wdriver and try to drive a nail, obviously it will not work. But then you cannot turn around and blame the hammer or sc--wdriver for being useless.

The problem is not the tool. The problem is the person who does not understand how to use it.

Give engineering a sensible strategy. Give us clear priorities. Give us realistic resources. Remove unnecessary complexity. Stop funding initiatives simply because somebody senior thinks they sound impressive.

And most importantly, listen to the people who actually understand what it takes to build, operate and support these systems.

We want the company to succeed. We want to deliver value. We want our customers to be successful. We are not sitting here looking for excuses.

But you cannot keep making bad decisions at the top, passing the consequences down to employees and then giving everyone lectures about accountability, efficiency and ownership.

Accountability should start with the people making the decisions, not only with the people doing the work.

Help us help you, yaar.

Because right now, management is behaving as if engineering is the problem, when in reality engineering is the only reason many of these questionable decisions have not already become complete disasters.

And please, for once, instead of asking us to do more with less, how about giving us less nonsense to deal with so we can actually do something meaningful?

That itself would be a very good start.

The workplace has become more political, with little room for employee ideas and almost no accountability. No wonder good people are looking for the exit as fast as they can. Who in their right mind wants to stay in this environment? I had high hopes when Hans was replaced by Dan. Those hopes are gone now.

One impact of getting rid of capable managers in many HC10 locations is that the high paid Houston Execs are getting exposed. Nobody knew what they did before and now everybody knows for sure because they don't understand their own organizations and only seem able to make increasingly d-mb decisions based on nothing more than a feeling.

We need a comprhensive investigation of visa approvals over the past 10 years to determine how many were obtained through fraud... falsified credentials, or misrepresentation or good ole lies... accountability cannot stop with the visa holders. Anyone who knowingly facilitated this fraud should face criminal prosecution, including prison time where warranted. Start with corporate executives and HR departments, then work through the immigration system to identify officials who may have ignored warning signs, failed to conduct proper checks, or simply rubber-stamped applications. Holding everyone involved accountable would be a powerful deterrent.

The investigation should also examine student visas, particularly cases involving questionable academic credentials from India, where fraudulent degrees and diploma mills have been documented. Credentials should be independently verified, and institutions or intermediaries involved in fraud should be investigated.

Finally, follow the money. Examine high-priced real estate purchases in states like California, Texas, and New Jersey, particularly transactions involving large transfers of funds from overseas. Where the source of funds cannot be legitimately explained, investigate potential corruption, tax evasion, and money laundering. Foreign investment alone is not evidence of wrongdoing, but suspicious transactions deserve scrutiny.

The objective should be simple - uncover fraud wherever it exists, prosecute everyone who knowingly enabled it, and establish consequences severe enough to discourage these schemes in the future.

What are you gonna do about it. The client loves me and keeps extending me. And, yet, no more $$$ or bennies for me. What to do? You gotta change something. You get rewarded when you hit financial goals and your customer (the shareholder) is happy, I just want Tata to treat me the same way. Peace out.

Playing devil's advocate, are the managers and below the problem and not the leadership?