#collaboration

I'm a LL6 in a very tech-heavy area of Ford. Often times, I feel like there are cultural issues where India coworkers don't listen to anybody who isn't above them on a pay grade (i.e. a LL6 won't listen unless instructed by a LL5 or higher). They also feel like it's okay to get in your face and try to micromanage you even if they're not your boss, not to mention their accents are very difficult for the average American to understand. I've seen many conflicts between American and Indian colleagues on the same projects, likely stemming from differences in cultural norms on work collaboration.

Anybody else feel this way?

Executives are coming for our jobs and we have to come together to stop it. We need a white collar union!

In high-trust societies, people assume good intent. Information flows freely. Collaboration feels natural. In low-trust systems, the opposite happens: people protect themselves first. Energy shifts from building to guarding.

Consider modern Russia. Decades of opacity and centralized control have cultivated widespread skepticism toward institutions. Citizens often rely on private networks rather than public systems. Information is filtered. Incentives are distorted. When trust erodes, talent adapts by becoming cautious, political, and self-protective.

Our corporate environment shows similar warning signs. Competitive ranking systems pit colleagues against each other. Information becomes currency. Feedback is filtered for safety rather than truth. Instead of asking, “How do we win together?” people ask, “How do I avoid losing?” Innovation slows because risk feels dangerous. Collaboration weakens because vulnerability feels unsafe.

Over time, this trajectory leads to silos, quiet disengagement, and eventually mediocrity. High performers optimize for optics. Emerging leaders learn to manage perception instead of outcomes. Trust, once depleted, is expensive to rebuild.

If we continue reinforcing internal competition over shared success, we shouldn’t be surprised when initiative declines and politics rise (and one may say that we are already there). But the reverse is also true: when trust increases, performance compounds.

The future of our company will not be determined by strategy alone, but by whether we choose fear-based competition or trust-based collaboration. We sit in a moment when the system to identify future Management is hindering the ability to run the organization. Perhaps its time to not burden the majority of the organization with PDS classifications and let them operate with a stable performance reward system. No system is great but we sit in a time of history where a credible change is necessary.

The official currency of “collaboration”

Backed by real assets:
• Badge swipes
• Commute exhaustion
• And that one empty desk you finally found at 9:17am

Consensus mechanism: Proof of Presence.
Work done from laptop at home = imaginary.
Same work done from laptop in a loud, freezing open floor plan on a Teams call = shareholder value.

Utility features include:
• 100-mile daily commute burn rate
• No assigned seating battle royale
• “Collaboration” with a team scattered across three time zones
• Logging into virtual meetings… from the office
• Productivity throttled by noise and fluorescent lighting

Tokenomics:
• 5-day mandatory lockup (upgraded from 3 after “listening to feedback”)
• Top talent automatically migrates to competitors
• Remaining supply consists of people too tired to update LinkedIn
• Missing McKinsey culture survey results exist on the chain

Whitepaper highlights:
“Culture through compliance”
“Trustless architecture”
“Results secondary to attendance”
“Loyalty is dead-dead”
“Macro conditions responsible for everything”
“Market-based Mayhem”

Mining rewards:
• Pizza slices
• Wellness webinars
• Inspirational emails about resilience

Quarterly earnings integration:
Solid metrics = proof the model works
Stock down double digits since mandate = totally unrelated
Buybacks at higher prices = visionary capital allocation

Roadmap:
Phase 1 – Announce bold future
Phase 2 – Double down
Phase 3 – Talent drain labeled ‘normal attrition’
Phase 4 – Strategic reset

Final Act:
🚨 Executive liquidity event 🚨
Golden parachutes unlock and Rug-Pull.
$COLLAB insiders exit at peak compensation.
Employees left holding five-day lockups, commuting bills, and coffee machine credits.

$COLLAB Coin — because if we can’t measure value creation, we’ll just monetize misery.

Diamond hands required. Remote wallets permanently banned.

“This February, something big is coming. A moment that reminds us why coming together matters, and why our work has meaning far beyond the walls we walk through each day.

On Feb. 25 at 9:00 a.m. CT, we gather for our first Optum Insight Town Hall of 2026. Picture the feeling right before the opening ceremony of the Olympics. The lights lower. The music builds. Teams from around the world step forward with one mission, one goal and one shared purpose.

That’s us.

As one global team, we will come together to celebrate who we are and what we stand for. Trust. Discipline. Teamwork. The power of many moving with one shared purpose.

This year will demand focus, courage, and collaboration. This Town Hall is our rallying point. Our chance to reconnect. To look ahead. To feel the energy of what we can accomplish together.

Get ready. The spotlight is warming. The music is rising. And our story for 2026 is about to begin.”

The writing’s on the wall. That’s all, folks.

After all the talk of AI, re-orgs, non performant BUs the time for talking will end next week.
Hearing Collab is heading for a 20% haircut which is long overdue. Will be targeted mostly at high cost locations.

https://apple.news/AB3GL7V95R7qXMGPLPTdnqw

I forgot my laptop at home and didn’t realize it until I got to the office. It’s kind of hilarious how there’s literally no work to do without it. No systems. No tools. Nothing.

Which exposes the flaw in the whole RTO and “collaboration” argument. If presence alone created value, being here would still matter without a laptop. But it doesn’t. All the actual work still happens digitally, exactly the same way it does at home.

If the office adds no functional capability beyond what a laptop provides, then forcing people to commute just to open the same apps on a different desk defeats the entire purpose.

Quantum is coming, just keep waiting. . .

https://www.barrons.com/articles/ibm-quantum-computing-research-nvidia-amd-0dd74344

By: Mackenzie Tatananni
Updated Jan 29, 2026, 12:26 pm EST / Original Jan 29, 2026, 12:01 am EST

It might seem natural to pit the capabilities of quantum computers—often touted as the next big technology—against today’s supercomputers. But scientists have a different, more collaborative vision for the future.

Rather than outright replacing classical machines, quantum systems will likely be built on top of existing architecture to enable more powerful computations.

This perspective was captured in new research from International Business Machines, which showed how classical graphics processing units, or GPUs, from leading chip makers could work alongside quantum processors to execute problems faster.

“It’s important for the world to see that quantum computers aren’t just these things that [will] replace your computers,” Jerry Chow, IBM’s chief technology officer of quantum-centric supercomputing, said in an interview with Barron’s. “They’re really part of the entire computing infrastructure.”

Two papers co-authored by IBM researchers detailing the results were posted to Cornell University’s arXiv, a research-sharing platform for papers that have yet to be peer-reviewed.

The first paper showed how GPUs from Advanced Micro Devices, contained within the Frontier supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, could be combined with IBM’s Heron processor to model complex chemical systems and provide a 100-time speedup over central processing units, or CPUs.

“It’s a notoriously difficult problem for classical computers,” Chow explained. “But we know now, there’s a part of these chemistry problems which are best handled on the quantum computer.”

Follow-up work with Riken, a Japanese research institute, was showcased in the second paper. The study showed how the same chemical systems could be modeled on IBM quantum computers for an additional 20% increase in performance when using a new algorithmic approach on Nvidia chips.

“Overall, they’re all supporting the same narrative, that the future of computing is quantum-centric,” Chow said. As he sees it, it’s the next logical step in a continuous evolution of technology.

Classical GPUs have already proven their prowess at one type of math. The chips perform calculations by breaking large problems into thousands of simpler tasks that are processed simultaneously, through a method called parallel processing.

Meanwhile, quantum processors harness the properties of quantum mechanics, which makes them best suited for complex modeling tasks. This explains why most quantum research consists of some kind of modeling problem—and why quantum is expected to have an outsize impact in the areas of dr-g discovery and materials science.

Classical processors are “the technology behind everything that we see today with language models and training and inference and so forth,” according to Chow.

It’s impossible to rule out a distant future “where everything is all based off the same kind of technology,” he added. “But at least from what we’ve seen with how supercomputing has evolved in the last 10 to 15 years, it’s all about composable pieces.”

Jay Gambetta, who oversees IBM’s research effort, shared a similar view in an earlier interview with Barron’s. “We’re imagining a heterogeneous accelerating framework that connects quantum and classical compute,” Gambetta explained during a tour of IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center in October.

Much of IBM’s past research has incorporated hybrids of quantum and classical computing. In September, computers running on IBM’s Heron processor worked alongside bit-based machines to perform a bond trading problem.

One month earlier, IBM and AMD unveiled a formal collaboration to develop quantum-centric supercomputers. The partners indicated they were exploring ways for AMD chips to control errors on IBM’s quantum processors, which could advance IBM’s efforts to develop fault-tolerant quantum computers by the end of the decade.

Crucially, the latest results demonstrate that real-world applications of quantum computers are just a step away.

“We have a number of partners who already have clusters of supercomputers that they know how to access,” Chow said. “To them, it’s like, ‘Now I have the keys to a brand-new car, let me see what I can do with it and how I can work it in with what I’ve been doing.’”

IBM shares climbed 6.8% on Thursday, bolstered by strong quarterly earnings. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell 1.9%. So far this year, IBM has gained 6.1%, outstripping a 0.7% gain for the index.

Last week’s snow related remote work has shown what flexibility actually delivers. Without long commutes and constant office disruption, productivity increases, work gets completed faster, and people are willing to put in more time because they have the capacity to do so. That does not happen under a rigid five day office mandate.

Five days in the office adds cost and friction without measurable gains. Real collaboration can happen in two to three days when needed, which is already the market standard. For distributed teams, forced presence changes nothing except morale.

Talent has already responded. High performers with options have left. Those who remain are disengaging. The employee survey made this clear.

As a communications company, forcing presence while selling “work from anywhere” is a strategic contradiction. Remote work for office roles is inevitable. The only question is whether we lead or fall behind.

So i told my manager I went home because there was no place to sit. The answer is to look at different days where not as many people are there. So we are supposed to go in to the office to collaborate with people but we are supposed to pick days when people aren’t there. Make it make sense.

Wednesday marks the 3rd straight day of WFH for Dallas. How, oh how have I been able to get my job done the last two days without all this inspired collaboration Stankey envokes?

This leadership team is failed. From L3 up to the highest level, including that joke of a BoD. Many of the “leaders”, if they are honest with you or themselves, don’t believe in this direction. They’re just hoping there’s enough cash to not bounce payroll.

I better see MW and MN in the office tomorrow regardless of the weather because we’re all BETTER TOGETHER!!

With this historic storm in Pittsburgh - I wonder if he and his minions are going to be in office tomorrow?? He said he hasn’t missed a day and the parking garages will be empty :((

We shouldn’t risk one day of no collaboration! Work from home is bad!!!!!

After years of productive remote work, I was dragged back to the dog bone farm, and let me tell you, it’s been a total letdown.
All I see are groups of people clustering together, chatting away in their own language, and yapping on their phones right in the middle of work hours. Meanwhile, the rest of us are trying to focus and get stuff done, but the constant noise and exclusionary vibe is overwhelming.
It’s disappointing and downright discouraging. How are we supposed to collaborate or feel like a team when it’s all cliques and distractions? Anyone else dealing with this?

With the push for FAs to share office space, there are FA teams merging to combine AUM into one-book partnerships. All of the "book" will be evenly divided among each FA.

What will the success rate be of these partnerships?

Does EJ have all of the partnership arrangements worked out (legalities) or have these situations been patched together (which is a possibility because management is discombobulated, to say the least)?

I've heard of one branch that has 4 "partners."
2 veteran FAs, an AFA and a brand new college graduate that hasn't passed testing yet (already considered a partner and included in talks).

Curious what the success rate of a set up like this might be? Family members sharing a book sounds like it could be successful, but with 4 distinct unrelated individuals (friends) sharing a book......I am skeptical on the success rate.

Curious what your opinions are on this new EJ drive to "share one book" equally among FAs."

Would enjoy hearing your thoughts on this matter.

https://careers.massmutual.com/job/springfield/global-workforce-management-director/724/89713009728

The Opportunity
The Global Workforce Management Director will be responsible for leading the development and execution of Operations’ global strategies to enhance organizational performance. Establish and implement workforce management standards and best practices to promote strong communication, collaboration, and engagement across onshore and offshore teams, ensuring the organization operates efficiently and effectively in a global environment.

The Team
The team is comprised of Strategic Consultants responsible for developing, implementing, executing, and overseeing global transition initiatives across Operations. Your individual role will have an impact on ensuring we have effective remote working standards, hybrid working guidelines, cultural competence, work location recruiting and engagement strategies, etc.

The Impact
You will be accountable for driving the strategic vision, planning, and management of global workforce transitions, ensuring alignment with organizational objectives and operational effectiveness. As the Global Workforce Management Director , you will partner with senior leaders, business units, and external partners to identify, plan, and execute transitions that optimize the global operating model. This will include communication, change management and readiness considerations.

Key responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

• Lead and Develop Team: Manage and mentor a team of Strategic Consultants focused on global transition activities, ensuring coverage across all operational teams. Ensuring the team maintains effective coordination, communication, and appropriate confidentiality in the work they perform.
• Strategic Roadmap Execution: Develop and drive the execution of the global workforce transition strategy, including the creation of transition roadmaps and governance standards.
• Stakeholder Engagement: Consult with senior leadership and business partners to identify transition opportunities, provide recommendations, and facilitate decision-making.
• Transition Management: Oversee the identification, planning, and execution of work transitions to global partners (e.g., MMI, external vendors), ensuring seamless handoffs and operational continuity. This includes establishing new offshore engagements, modifying existing engagements and coordinating corrective actions for underperforming engagements.
• Vendor and Partner Oversight: Maintain and enhance relationships with external partners, manage contracts, and ensure business satisfaction through regular performance reviews and issue resolution. This includes monitoring SLA’s and operating results, taking the lead on coordinating performance improvement and corrective action planning as needed.
• Governance and Reporting: Establish and oversee standards, KPIs, and reporting mechanisms to monitor the performance and impact of global transitions.
• Enterprise Coordination: Work with the MassMutual Global Business Services (GBS) team to maintain alignment on short- and long-term planning, execution, reporting and governance of offshore activities. Ensure the Operations GWM and MassMutual GBS teams maintain alignment on their activities and avoid duplication of efforts.
• Continuous Improvement: Identify and implement strategies to enhance productivity, mitigate risks, and continuously improve the global operating model.
• Change Leadership: Lead organizational change initiatives, fostering a culture of agility, accountability, and inclusivity.

The Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s Degree or 8 years of experience in operations, strategy, global or workforce management.
• 5+ years of experience in strategic consulting, operations, or managing large-scale transitions.
• 5+ years people management experience or commensurate leadership experience

Let's see if Dario's new role can pay dividends for Big Blew or if this initiative just dies on the vine.

https://www.hpcwire.com/off-the-wire/doe-announces-genesis-mission-collaboration-agreements-with-24-organizations/

Three times a week.

I go in to the office three days a week, I have a short commute and I don’t mind because the gym and stores are on the way so I just get errands done I’d do otherwise. However the office remains unchanged from my remote setup. I collaborate with my team in different time zones including India and customers scattered across various time zones . I’m an Eastern Time employee located in a hub location, my office is mostly deserted every day. People are coming in late and leaving early. Collaboration here is minimal; people are either too busy or stuck in their own silos, making it difficult for collaboration and I don’t think my Director would even want me to just start collaborating with other departments just to do it. We are already busy enough. I find it better to just collaborate with AI, which can be done from home.

But how can we measure success? I recall hearing about company savings when employees worked from home. Shedding costly Realestate. Do we have a measure for the success of the collaboration? In these though times for VZ, how much are we truly saving by having staff onsite? After all, we want to cut CapEx, right? I feel the leaner, scrappier, thing to do would just be to better monitor remote employees to save $.But maybe someone will show me the numbers proving how RTO helps the new strategy.

https://imgur.com/a/4AB5EjR

On LinkedIn, a Verizon Alumni Network Group has been created. This an opportunity for us to connect, collaborate, and share resources for the next stage of our careers.

https://www. linkedin. com/groups/16066009/

Please feel free to join and share with others who have been impacted.

New Chevron slang and acronyms are coming out that are good.

Its truly the change that we need and the things we need to be saying as a company to collaborate and work more efficiently. So here they are:

Going forward if you need to take a number 2 its called taking a MW.

Take a number 1 is a MN.

Start using these to bring us together!

Associates being able to collaborate across time zones and optimize their productivity with flexible hours is especially relevant for global organizations.

Work-from-home can indeed reduce commute time, improve work-life balance, and potentially increase efficiency—provided the right communication and collaboration tools are in place.

I find the ask to wfh next week really icky. What happened to all that talk about connection and collaboration? These are layoffs. There are real people that are going to be affected. Not just another headline.

Starting 2026. Need more collaboration ..

I was laid off years ago from a different company and felt like I did something wrong,
but it wasn't me it was a company much more dysfunctional than CMCSA.
This was not your fault.

However...
Some observations from a former national engineer who lead a team that built a system intended for divisional and DCF usage;

1. Other national and 2 of 3 divisional teams HAD to build their own instead of collaborating with national and all divisions.. e.g. Power hungry.
2. Upper management permitted this to happen. Heck, the west pretty much encouraged it.
3. DCF rolled out new systems with poor naming strategies and a ~70% ability to match names in existing systems.
4. Cable is dying !! And Brian Roberts has realized that the monopoly is over and hired a co-CEO since the next 10 years will determine if CMCSA survives.

Point is, we had too many people building the same system(s) and management let it happen. Upper management was all about power and not about cooperating.

I was at 12, granted my attention was not full.

#collaboration

How does XOM reconcile the narrative of "we need to collaborate and work next to each other" with the design to have remote support teams staffed with people who have no industry knowledge or communication skills? I don't question the case for change but its hard for me to see how moving professionals to Edmonton fixes anything when we already can't set up customers or pay vendors.

So I witnessed to following: I was in WHQ, in an open space on one of the floors. The area had 4 small collaboration tables and an area with workstations. A group of 3 workers sat at one of the collaboration tables to hold their meeting. A man, who was working at the workstation got up, approached the group and told them to leave. He said that they were disrupting him and he couldn't concentrate. The group got up and left but one of the joked about not being able to collaborate. The funniest part is that, within a few minutes after the group left, the man got up and left for about an hour (I assume lunch). I wonder if this goes on all the time.

Isn’t the stated point of return to office that we collaborate with our team in person?

It looks like our team will be divided up across the building. We don’t even sit by each other.

12 people our team. 3 are global. The 9 of us in office are still using Teams like we did at home for our daily team con calls. Only now we sit 3 feet from each other and echo over our headsets (and each other) and that awful feedback and delayed sound. Plus it smells like dirty socks on our row. #collaboration