Below are all the posts — topics as well as replies — that mention the hashtag #collaboration.
Mention #collaboration in your post to continue the discussion!
Anyone else getting sick of being retired to come into the office, just to spend all day in Teams meetings, never taking to anyone face-to-face?
95% of my day is solo work, email/Teams messages, and Teams meetings, because there's always at least one person in some other location, so every meeting needs to be over Teams.
Why are we in the office if everyone is wearing headphones, only taking to each other online?
How is this improving productivity or culture?
I no longer use MS-Teams, if everyone is supposed to be onsite no need to use it. Sorry GFSE and Dresden team, you know where my cube is.
Just one year ago, FLD told us that collaboration was fantastic. A tremendous success. The best collaboration anyone had ever seen. But now, apparently, one year later, collaboration has gone bad. Very bad. Nobody knows why. Nobody understands it. So naturally, the solution is to drag everyone back to the office. Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant! Because nothing boosts productivity like spending two hours commuting to sit at a desk, wearing headphones, attending virtual meetings with colleagues sitting 10 metres away. Incredible innovation! And the best part? It's all about collaboration. Believe me, nobody collaborates better than people who are forced to be in the same building. We are going to make offices great again!
What if we all start a new health service company? We have the skills and know what works and doesn’t. How can we make this happen?
Is AT&T's five-day return-to-office policy really about collaboration, or is there another reason behind it?
Michael,
Since the first letter, the comment threads have filled with anger, name-calling, and blame. The frustration is real, and I share it. But I'm still here because I believe in this company and in the people in it, so I'd like to point that frustration somewhere useful. I'm writing because I'm craving direction on two things: strategy and culture.
This organization has always been too heavy, with too many layers, too many overlapping roles, and too much process between an idea and a customer. Some of the cuts were right.
Right or wrong, Technology & Product has been taken apart and is moving into the business. That puts real weight on the business to say clearly what we are building and why. Technology was never the only thing that needed fixing. A lot of the engineers asked to leave this week were our junior talent. I wonder how clear the direction and priorities they were given really were.
That's why it's important to understand who owns our strategy, and whether we have one. Who is leading the ship right now? It feels like everyone and no one. I need two hands to count the SVPs who say they own "AI" or "agentic". When everyone owns it, who is accountable? And where does our junior talent look for direction when our senior leaders can't agree?
The same goes for culture. Changing one leader out is a step, but it doesn't change a culture. The habits that leader modeled can outlast their time here, carried on by the people they shaped and by the way the rest of us learned to operate. What has remained is a culture of fear where there should be trust, blame where there should be ownership, and protecting turf where there should be helping each other win. That tone is set by the executive team, and everyone below learns it by watching. What I'm hoping for is a culture where credit is given, problems are solved before they're blamed on someone, and a good idea is safe to raise early.
To my colleagues reading along: I know many of you feel this too. We are still here, and still willing. All of us on this website need to acknowledge that we are a company that has to relearn many of our basic fundamentals as a company if we are going to move forward.
Michael, we were all excited you were back. Please help us. We need you now more than ever.
A Comcast employee who still wants to stay
My location, I'm yet to speak to anybody outside of my manager for longer than a few words. Still have plenty of online meetings, though. So the whole RTO experiment is pretty pointless. But we all already knew that.
https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/spacex-seeks-access-80000-us-cell-sites-wireless-network-bloomberg-news-reports-2026-10-22/
Faculty at Commonwealth University are urging administration and state officials to halt planned layoffs. The university faces a significant recurring deficit, potentially leading to the dismissal of up to 175 employees. While initial estimates suggested 75 faculty layoffs, union representatives report that around 114 notices are being issued. Professors express concerns about the impact on academic programs and local communities. The faculty union is requesting emergency state funding and collaborative discussions to find alternative solutions.
https://radio.wpsu.org/2026-10-22/commonwealth-university-faculty-call-on-administration-state-lawmakers-to-prevent-planned-layoffs
IBM has spent the past week flooding the zone with Nanostack headlines just days before its October 21 earnings report. TIME’s invention-of-the-year recognition. A Nanostack PDK announcement. A Siemens collaboration. Three headlines, one obvious question: where is the commercial traction?
Let’s be clear: announcements are not adoption. A research collaboration is not a manufacturing commitment. A PDK announcement is not proof that customers want to design with the technology. And a prestigious magazine mention is not a purchase order.
IBM is doing an excellent job of publicizing the possibility of a business. The public evidence that it has built one is considerably less impressive.
The TIME recognition deserves scrutiny, too. Did IBM pay for it? I have seen no evidence establishing that, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. But the distinction between editorial recognition and paid promotion matters. What were the selection criteria, and how does Nanostack’s actual technical and commercial maturity compare with competing approaches from Intel, Samsung, and TSMC? I am sure those three have some thoughts on the Time’s award. A trophy is not independent validation of manufacturability, customer demand, or economic viability.
Then there’s the PDK. Who, specifically, is using it? Which external companies have committed engineering resources? Where are the disclosed design wins, production roadmaps, foundry commitments, or customers willing to put money behind the technology?
Not another collaboration announcement. Not another roadmap. Not another promise that an ecosystem is coming.
Customers. Revenue. Manufacturing commitments. Results.
That is the scoreboard.
The concern is that IBM is trying to manufacture the appearance of an ecosystem before demonstrating that a meaningful market exists. The industry does not adopt a technology simply because IBM announces a PDK and hopes everyone else will show up. Designers and manufacturers have their own roadmaps, economics, technical constraints, and competing solutions. They need compelling reasons to abandon or supplement what they are already developing.
And this is where the Albany research playbook deserves particular scrutiny. The familiar pattern is to announce collaborations, celebrate joint development activity, and present technical engagement as strategic momentum. But a JDA is not a production product, and a partner’s willingness to explore an idea is not proof that the partner intends to commercialize it. When the headline is the achievement and the commercial outcome remains perpetually somewhere over the horizon, the distinction becomes rather important.
Anderon’s quantum PDK announcement also raises the same fundamental question. A PDK can be announced, demonstrated, and discussed at conferences. The real test is whether independent customers can use it successfully, whether it meets their needs, and whether they will continue investing in it. Technical claims should survive scrutiny outside the organization promoting them.
The timing of IBM’s publicity blitz is certainly convenient with earnings approaching. I cannot establish that the announcements were scheduled to influence the earnings narrative, but investors should absolutely distinguish between a burst of favorable headlines and measurable business progress.
Arvind can point to TIME, Siemens, and a PDK. Fine. But what do these announcements actually change about IBM’s commercial position? What has been secured? What has shipped? What has generated revenue? What has moved beyond research collaboration into something customers depend on and pay for?
Until IBM answers those questions with evidence, Nanostack’s publicity campaign looks a lot more like an effort to sell future potential than proof of present success.
The semiconductor industry is full of impressive technologies that never became successful businesses. IBM knows that. Its competitors know that. Investors should know it, too.
The headlines are real. The technology may be promising. The commercial success remains to be demonstrated.
When IBM reports on October 21, watch the guidance and listen carefully for actual customer commitments and commercial results. Don’t confuse publicity with progress, partnerships with demand, or research milestones with a viable business.
If Nanostack is the next big thing, IBM should be able to demonstrate it with customers and results not just headlines.
After the acquisition of touch surgery (which became digital technologies under surgical) , the surgical org became somehow isolated from the rest of Medtronic really forcing silos and no collaborations. It feels like they’re a different company to this date with such a toxic culture. Why did this happen?
University of Wisconsin-Madison's biology departments have merged, leading to staff concerns about job security and the future of botany. Employees expressed worries about increased workloads, lack of support, and potential marginalization of botanical studies. Some former staff cited negative interactions with a department administrator as a reason for departure. The university acknowledges staff desire for greater input and community building. Despite these issues, leadership aims to foster collaboration and maintain academic programs.
Madison, Wisconsin
https://www.dailycardinal.com/article/2026/10/uw-madison-biology-merger-raises-staff-concerns-over-layoffs-botanys-future
there is useful stuff on this board, there is a lot of rumors but if you read between the lines i see new stuff all the time. do your team members know about the site? i guess we'd all benefit if more people chime in and share what we know. i am also hoping that someone high up will contribute as well, i am certain they know more. spread the word.
Since this company loves RTO and in-person “collaboration” are there any plans to build a new regional site? Would a new campus possibly be built somewhere closer to civilization and not in the backwoods of NH or KY?
Every team seems to communicate in its own little bubble, and the information rarely lines up. Half the time, nobody can tell who's responsible for what.
https://ir.appliedmaterials.com/news-releases/news-release-details/applied-materials-and-intel-collaborate-accelerate-chipmaking
As we all know VCA2 is coming to an end so what are they doing to protect their jobs? They’re attempting to take over. break fix Operations.. They have no clue What our Job consists of and they think they could just hire any GC off the street to do it for them… I have news for you.. Construction and Break fix are 2 COMPLETELY different worlds!! Quit with asking to be collaborative when you have no intentions of us working on CX you just wanna save your pathetic jobs when it’s all said and done.. Many have come before you and we are still here… there’s a reason for that mabye you should figure that part out 1st and they wonder why we’re so far over budget and the year is not even up yet?!?!?!?
Need a new Michael Jordan/Travis Scott. Who would you go after?
Are all groups now on Teams? Is Zoom
Now becoming disabled ? When will it be required to use Teams? I heard in a meeting that they are starting Teams up mandatory for SLOD first on 10/1 is this true?
It would be nice to share the 30 year knowledge I picked up from my masking tape division with some Chinese factories, anybody have any prior knowledge of how i can contact them and earn a few bucks getting their QC up to western standards.
collaboration.
we work better together
it’s important for the company
all bs because the company is in dire trouble and it’s clearly made zero difference
it’s all just smoke and mirrors so they can use badge swipes to fire the best round of people
I’m not aware of any other companies that do this, low to employees about why and have been so ineffective regardless
moral is in the toilet and the company is in deep trouble
would 1 day a week remote hurt them or help them.
I think we all know the answer.
there’s no better together
I was genuinely happy to see that we are finally building a GCC for a bank—something we have all been looking forward to. However, as we have moved into execution, it increasingly feels like a single-person agenda. It no longer feels like a Truist GCC; it feels like a “T-GCC.”
The leadership style has been non-collaborative, with a lack of maturity and, at times, an abrasive communication style. There seems to be a strong personal agenda to maintain 100% control, creating significant friction and politics very early in what should be a long-term strategic capability.
I have always had great respect for SA, but I feel he has placed too much control with T. I am not sure whether he—or others involved—fully recognize how much friction and a negative culture have already been created.
We are already behind on this initiative, and I am concerned the current direction is taking us further away from where we need to be. I am becoming skeptical about moving my function into the GCC because I genuinely question whether it will help us achieve what we intended.
It is also surprising that HR, Risk, GSD… are allowing this to continue. what is our GCC partner doing about it ?
What we seed today will grow within the GCC. If we continue to seed friction, politics, and a lack of collaboration, that is the culture we will ultimately build.
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/sk-hynix-talks-with-intel-about-deal-make-memory-chips-us-first-time-sources-say-2026-09-16/
This question is mainly to the hWP folks. What pros and cons have you noticed so far in working with hGP processes and people?
Seattle's mayor has established a new task force to address the city's current economic challenges. This initiative aims to support local businesses in starting, remaining, and expanding within the city. The task force will explore strategies to strengthen the economy and foster resilience. Its creation comes amid concerns about tech layoffs, office vacancies, and shifting regional growth patterns. The mayor emphasized the city's "fragile moment" and the need for collaborative solutions.
Seattle, Washington
https://komonews.com/news/local/seattle-mayor-katie-wilson-g-n-violence-economy-bellevue-consulting-organization-economic-assessment-tech-layoffs-2027-175-million-businesses-public-safety
AFSCME Local 1072 leadership is aiming to mend ties with the University System of Maryland and the University of Maryland following a difficult summer. Recent layoffs and a lawsuit over delayed pay raises have caused employee frustration. The union hopes to engage in productive discussions with administrators to address these concerns. Negotiations for a new contract are set to begin soon. Both parties express a desire for collaboration moving forward.
College Park, Maryland
https://dbknews.com/2026/09/14/afscme-umd-usm-relationship-strained/
Where's the collaboration they promised with RTO? I only talk to people remotely, never in person, outside of the random meeting that I might as well skip. I even eat my lunch alone. It's a joke.
In a tough environment, your colleagues can really make a difference. With all of the rapid fire changes, collaborative, experienced and, sure, funny colleagues are what helps the most.
What’s your experience with BTC and KLTC in terms of general competency?
If given the choice, which of these colleagues would you want the o collaborate with?
I’ve only had experience with BTC, not so great but haven’t had a chance with KLTC.
How’s is everyone’s team building, collaboration, and efficiencies improving with the anti-WFH initiatives in place while having half of your core working group in Pune?
From the ITS newsletter: "The Future Platform Evaluation initiative, led in partnership with Huron Consulting Group, will conclude in early September with recommendations and a high-level roadmap for our future direction. This effort has been shaped through close collaboration between ITS leaders and partners from across SNHU and will provide an important foundation for future decision-making."
Anyone else worried that layoffs are coming?
How do you make friends here? part of my job is actually to help people do less manual work but it seems that everyone loves manual work. And when I ask my manager if I can reach out to some other teams, he/she said: oh. Please don't, we just do not talk to each other.
I was like, how are we going to do the projects? Can anyone shed some lights here?
To report corporate collusion or anticompetitive market manipulation to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), you must use Form TCR (Tip, Complaint, or Referral).
How to File Form TCR
https://www.sec.gov/submit-tip-or-complaint/tcr-disclaimer
https://www.sec.gov/files/formtcr.pdf
Important Details to Include
To report corporate collusion or anticompetitive market manipulation to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), you must use Form TCR (Tip, Complaint, or Referral).
How to File Form TCR
https://www.sec.gov/submit-tip-or-complaint/tcr-disclaimer
https://www.sec.gov/files/formtcr.pdf
Important Details to Include
RTO is getting exciting. My work area is over capacity, so I’m assuming the normal agenda is:
8:55 - Make awkward eye contact with someone already sitting in a chair
8:57 - Still searching for a chair
9:00 - Find a chair
9:15 - Defend chair
9:30 - Establish territorial boundaries
10:00 - “Collaboration”
10:15 - Someone steals my chair
Next time put Musical Chairs Corporate Edition, in the calendar invite.
I’m exploring alternative workspaces. Current availability:
My assigned desk - occupied by someone who got here before sunrise
Conference room - booked through 2047
Phone booth - currently housing three people and a flute
Break room - apparently eating lunch is considered “collaboration”
Lobby - security says I can’t plug my laptop into the revolving door
Cafe - one table, 37 people, and someone has already claimed the outlet
Stairwell - “not an approved workspace,” despite having excellent acoustics
Bathroom - HR has asked that I stop referring to Stall #3 as my “private office”, also has excellent acoustics
Parking lot - Wi-Fi signal mysteriously disappears once I cross the property line
Elevator - currently occupied, but I’m confident I can squeeze in with my laptop and spend the day riding between floors while aggressively maintaining eye contact on Zoom
My car - becoming the strongest candidate
I’m sure leadership has a flexible solution.
Apparently “return to office” means return to the general vicinity of the office and figure the seating situation out amongst yourselves. Our return was planned, but seating wasn’t.
Is Baker looking to merge locations in Houston with Chart.
If executive logic dictates that the office is a temple of collaboration, the reality on the ground often resembles a sensory nightmare. The most glaring flaw in sweeping return-to-office mandates—at Fidelity and across the multinational financial sector—is a fundamental miscalculation of modern organizational geography.
The modern financial workforce is inherently distributed. A Vice President in Boston is rarely working exclusively with a team sitting on the same floor. Their direct reports, stakeholders, and project partners are spread across regional hubs in Rhode Island, Texas, Ireland, and India.
This creates the defining absurdity of the 2026 RTO push: the "Zoom-in-a-Room" paradox.
Workers are suffering grueling commutes, paying inflated prices for parking and gas, only to arrive at an open-plan desk to strap on noise-canceling headphones. They spend their required eight hours on the exact same Microsoft Teams and Zoom calls they would have taken from a quiet home office.
The Degradation of the Physical Space
The physical reality of the office has also degraded. During the pandemic, firms aggressively reconfigured their real estate, embracing "hot-desking" and "hoteling" to cut costs. Now that they are forcing the workforce back, the infrastructure is buckling.
Employees report arriving to find no available desks, forcing them to work from noisy cafeterias. The promised amenities that supposedly make the commute worthwhile—subsidized cafeterias, high-end coffee bars, dry cleaning services—have often been drastically reduced or eliminated entirely. Instead, workers describe environments that are loud, crowded, and lacking basic privacy.
When an employee says, "it's loud, it smells, and the services are terrible," they are pointing out the hypocrisy of the mandate. The C-suite demands a return to a premium, collaborative environment that simply no longer exists.
The Verdict: A Crisis of Purpose
This is the ultimate failure of the blunt-force RTO mandate. You cannot mandate cross-continental collaboration by forcing a local employee into a cubicle.
When workers are commanded to commute simply to stare at a screen and speak to people in different time zones, the office ceases to be a hub of innovation. It becomes a deeply inefficient call center.
If executives like Abigail Johnson truly want to foster mentorship and solve complex problems, they must acknowledge that the geography of work has permanently changed. Pretending that a Boston turnstile swipe somehow improves collaboration with a team in London is an exercise in corporate fiction. Until leadership recognizes that the office must serve a specific, intentional purpose rather than acting as a mandatory holding pen, the divide between the C-suite and the workforce will only widen.
Sharing of knowledge is like shucking oysters. You'll get nothing from anyone unless you pry it out. Everyone feels they have the upper hand if they hold the secret sauce.
Products and solutions are being built the same way. In a vacuum. Little collaboration until they stumble and need a shovel to dig themselves out.
I'd be better off learning three chords and singing the truth on College Avenue.
Looks like Bunch of fiserv folks coming to toast …
So my boss left last Friday, and not gonna lie, I think a lot of people are wondering what happens to the team now. He was basically the person driving most of the strategy and a lot of the ideas, and he was always pushing us to question the process or just find a way around it if it was getting in the way. Which honestly was sometimes really helpful, but I also think it rubbed a lot of people the wrong way and he probably burned a decent number of bridges. I’m still pretty early in my career, but it’s hard not to look at all of this and feel like the bigger issue is that there just isn’t a super clear strategy from the org. I’ve heard way more people frustrated about the lack of collaboration and alignment than I would expect, and now that the person who was basically setting the direction is gone, I think everyone is kind of sitting here wondering who’s actually going to drive things now. Feels like the writing is kind of on the wall....