#company

So many layers, so much waste.

We have, by far, the worst recursive management hierarchy in the entire industry.

And they know it.

Absolutely fascinating data and insights into the gluttonous IBM executive insider trading going back to 1994. Many of the execs are granted tens of thousands of shares of IBM stock and then immediaely sell them for millions of dollars.

https://www.barchart.com/stocks/quotes/IBM/insider-trades?orderBy=amount&orderDir=desc

For example the guy who destroyed IBM when he came in like a king 4-1-93 G Man Gerstner sold $350,000,000 (!) in IBM stock he was awared as grants in just 3 yrs 1998-2001!!!

Perhaps someone much better with data analytics can play with this site and come back and show us to absolute greed these people have done as they cut the IBM US population by 75% +/-. STUNNING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Another example IBM Vice Chairman Gary Cohn (typical slimy Wall St guy and invisible at IBM for the last 5 yrs, 25 yrs @ Goldman Sachs) seems to have been given and then quickly sold $66,000,000 of IBM stock in 5 yrs!

And of course our beloved and humble CEO Arvind...please find a chair...he seems to have amassed (ie awarded himself) 658,000 IBM shares...At closing price of $300....that is $197,000,000!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

When are the layoffs?

UHG is listed as a sponsor for the Freedom 250 event. I mean I’m not surprised.
https://freedom250.org/

What happened today? Why are there so many meetings today? Any announcement coming up ?

IBM is booming. All you naysayers out there. Apologize for your hate and bile.
Arvind is leading us into the Future

ELT, GPs and other senior leaders - Please watch Company Retreat on Prime before you do anything more. It's the sequel to Jury Duty and raises many themes we're all experiencing now. Watch how your families react. Notice which characters resonate with you, your (age appropriate) children, and spouses. Notice who the bad guys are and why.

Associates on this forum, please watch it too, if only to remember what a workplace family can be like, to mourn what we're losing, and laugh a bit too. Remember, most people are GOOD people and not solely in this life for money. Yes, it's a fictional story, but the themes are real as can be and at once topical and old as time.

OMG am I sick of seeing and hearing and worst of all seeing that id--tic Lego looking thing Bob. Since Robbie Thomas will soon replace the dinosaur that Arvind is now 4 years past IBM's tradition of leaving at 60, why the heck did they at least call it Rob? These are the mtgs and debates IBM's army of DEI execs and legal and finance teams now have. 6 months of mtgs and 4,000 people involved and they land on Bob. What a dumpster fire IBM-Bob-Rob is. Sad.

Cracks are starting to appear in the AI will save us so much money narrative.

https://www.businessinsider.com/google-ai-cost-tokens-gemini-flash-openai-anthropic-gemini-search-2026-5

Sorry to the dedicated people of NJ as your leaders let you down. Come join NJ’s #1 tech brand!

Yes, you read that right. Twice now I’ve had to watch where I walk because someone decided to de-----e in public. I never experienced that while remote. Before I forget did anyone see the pervert exec on the home page this week. Gosh it’s going to be so uncomfortable when he speaks to us at the June town hall. Hopefully he doesn’t ask us about our boxers or briefs 🥴 >> https://www.thestandard.com.hk/finance/article/167954/BlackRocks-Mark-Wiedman-sorry-for-off-color-comments-to-women-such-as-boxers-or-briefs << When I’m not playing frogger to avoid stepping in sh-t I’m either (1) hoping for my bus to arrive less late than usual (2) watching my back as a woman amongst the crazy people in town (3) witnessing open air dr-g use/dr-g exchanges and public urination (4) avoiding confrontation of any panhandler because I’ve seen the tension escalate to punches being thrown and if it comes down to it I would like to defend myself but I can’t carry a pepper spray deterrent with me and into the building (5) calling the babysitter to let her know I might be 80 minutes or 120 minutes before I get home (6) chatting with my son to see how soccer practice went since I can’t be there as often (7) hoping that my vehicle didn’t get damaged sitting at the park and ride lot (8) wondering if I’ll have enough time tomorrow to complete what I couldn’t get done in office the previous two days. Plus much more. Don’t ask me how many home cooked meals I’ve been able to make and eat with my family like we usually did before May 4. On the financial side of things I am struggling with this worrying dilemma. Do I cancel my IRA contributions to cover the cost of daycare and a frequent babysitter? Do I cancel my HSA contribution to pay for gas? What can I cancel to pay for my time? Seriously I am drained. This is the 2nd payday under the RTO policy and I am in the negative yet again. Thankfully my enormous 1.25% raise allowed me to buy a few tanks of gas this month. Not sure what I’m going to do next month. Probably have to bring the older child into work to avoid babysitter costs. My team is loosing talent soon. I’m sure my workload will increase. I’m sure I’ll be asked to get things done in the same amount of time. I’m definitely sure I won’t get any additional compensation for covering an empty seat. As of May 4, working here has become financially unjustifiable, incredibly stressful and a waste of time. It would be different if this was a job that physically needed my presence. But it isn’t. Same goes for the rest of my team. We have this futuristic ability to do our work remotely like we were doing for years but now all of a sudden we are needed in office to justify their real estate investment. Here is the best part my team is all remote with respect to each other. We are at least 250 miles from each other. The policy literally makes no sense. It’s causing me to lose cents too, well actually dollars — lots of dollars. So yea my testimony is sh-t is literally hitting the fu--ing fan. So if more sh-t hits the fan we can expect to have to avoid more human sh-t piles. If this is brilliantly boring well I am having trouble finding anything brilliant about it. Maybe I’ve been too generous by meeting or exceeding all expectations every year for over a decade. To Bill: make the brilliant decision to reverse the RTO policy completely before you wreck the careers and lives of more of your loyal employees and customers. The customers who no longer want to bank with us because of this terrible decision.

Don’t forget Bill gets a 30% comp increase and executive security. We get pennies on the dollar and a mandatory RTO five days.

Really cool of the company to not alert us about two people being shot right outside the building this morning. Street blocked off, doors caution taped off, lobby crawling with police and not a peep from anyone at US Bank. We’re in the trenches trying to hit RTO goals.

https://www.globalbankingandfinance.com/exclusive-ousted-bp-chair-met-activist-shareholder-elliott/

Don't know about you, but AM is growing on me. The company needs someone who is willing to give it a kick up the **.

since 2020, the market cap of TMO today is basically the same as Verizon...what a waste of money ($50+) and time (5+ years). Sad, sad, sad...

Anyone know when or if there will be another round?

https://fortune.com/2026/05/29/blue-origin-new-glenn-explosion-nasa-artemis-contract-bezos/

Fancy Name Tags ( especially as if I invented the AI ) doesn't add ANY value to the corporation..

https://www.startribune.com/executives-at-this-minnesota-company-commute-by-airplane-a-shareholder-wants-to-change-that/601847339

That's it

Is it the usual or have they changed anything?

Had seen the golden era of Verizon US, EU and India completely collapsed. In last few weeks many of my VZI folks. With whom I worked closely left the org. Same thing I observed in different domains so many good byes emails.

Cybersecurity company SentinelOne plans to lay off hundreds of employees. The cuts are expected to affect approximately 10% of its global workforce. This totals around 300 employees worldwide. The company faces intense competition and slightly weakened profitability. SentinelOne will announce the layoffs with its financial statements.

https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/bk7cn6rxfx

Do layoffs work like trash days? When there is a holiday, trash pick-up comes a day later than the regular scheduled day. Monday was a holiday this week. Does that mean layoffs will be Friday, May 29 instead of Thursday, May 28?

When do we think the next big layoff is going to be? So many reorgs happening rn

It's really quiet in my org, no notifications, nothing. Is it possibly done already?

We keep hearing June 15th but are now hearing about other dates things will be announced. Anyone know?

It really, really feels and looks like we work for Globodyne. IYKYK LOL

How is this okay? They sit around and share negative opinions about specific employees without any shame. Word gets around fast and now nobody trusts anyone and everyone is scared of being next. That's not leadership. That's bullying, plain and simple.

I've been thinking a lot about the people I've watched burn out here, the ones who stayed late every night, who answered emails on weekends, who pushed through stress headaches and sleepless nights because they thought it was what they had to do. Every single one of them would tell you now that it wasn't worth it. Their health declined, their relationships suffered, and the company didn't reward them for any of it. Your health matters more than their bottom line, and I wish I'd learned that lesson earlier.

We used to do them in June, are they now switched back to March?

A friend of mine just got and email title "Strategy Change" from their Sr. Dir. (she is a GL 28) There are no invitees, it's a BCC: It's for 10AM CDT

He also referred to BP's plans to lay off 'thousands of people', which has not previously been reported.

Source here:
https://www.dailymail.com/money/markets/article-15854489/Ousted-BP-chair-hits-lies-told-colleagues-hide-anonymity.html?ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490&ito=social-twitter_mailonline

But where did the 5/28 date came from?

No wonder they are at Lenovo, Intel didn’t want them! All Hands was a sh-t show!

Nike's turnaround effort has not been a quick pivot, to borrow a basketball term. It has been more like a wobbly slide on a dusty gym floor. The stock price peaked at over $170 in late 2021. It was down to $79 in October 2024, when company lifer Elliott Hill returned from retirement to take over and set things right. Now it is $46, a price investors could have paid nearly a dozen years ago.

There are two more problems. First, although shares are cheaper than they were, they are not trading at a deep and obvious discount, at 24 times projected earnings for the company's fiscal year ending May 2027. A bounceback in earnings would help, but estimates for the years ahead have been slipping.

Second, Hill is already doing the things investors are demanding: refocusing the company on performance shoes after years of shuffling along on casual designs, and repairing relationships with stores after an arrogant move online. There are pockets of success, like a modest rebound in North American sales in the latest quarter. But it has not been enough.

It is a tempting buy when one of history's great growth stocks has fallen so much. A 3.6% dividend is a sweetener. But investors should first consider the possibility that Nike's problems run deeper than they appear.

A plunge in demand from China is clearly a key concern, but there are also questions over whether Nike has lost its marketing edge, amid what might be a shift in the phenomenon that brought it to dominance to begin with: basketball stardom. It may be wise to wait for more progress before buying shares.

## Shoe Drop

An investor who held Nike from the start would have no regrets. Shares sold for 18 cents apiece, split-adjusted, at the initial public offering in 1980. But the price had dropped to 12 cents by Oct. 26, 1984. That was the day Nike gambled a then-unheard-of $2.5 million on a five-year shoe deal with a college basketball star who had not yet played a day in the pros: Michael Jordan. The pact was so transformative that Ben Affleck made a 2023 movie about the executive who landed it, called Air, starring Matt Damon.

It was not just that Jordan won six championships with the Chicago Bulls in the 1990s, or thrilled fans with soaring dunks. The 1990s were the twilight of monoculture, when consumers watched the same television shows and read the same magazines, before the internet splintered audiences.

The 1992 Olympic "Dream Team" showed Jordan off to an adoring world. In marketing, there is a proprietary measure of celebrity reach and popularity called the Q Score. Anything over 20 is excellent, and 40 is a rare pop miracle. In the 1990s, Pope John Paul II, a celebrity pontiff if ever there was one, is said to have scored in the low-to-mid 40s. Jordan hit 56. Everyone knew him, and everyone liked him. He made Nike the place to be for top athletes.

In Nike's fiscal year ended May 2025, its Jordan brand did $7.3 billion in sales, or 15% of the company's total. But that dollar figure was down a painful 16% from the year before.

For years, the brand generated hype through limited releases and instant sellouts of retro shoes, which "sneakerheads" traded on secondary markets. During the pandemic, Nike flooded the market, creating an easy boost for sales and profits, but also suffocating its hard-won hype.

Two disastrous things happened around the same time. Nike's Consumer Direct Acceleration strategy under previous CEO John Donahoe involved cutting ties with middling shoe retailers and reducing allocations to longtime partner Foot Locker, while pitching more shoes online for a higher cut of profits. Meanwhile, consumer preference abruptly shifted away from bulky basketball silhouettes toward running aesthetics, especially dad shoes and tech wear. New Balance, Hoka, and On surged, and stores that had been spurned by Nike were happy to give them shelf space.

## The Skeptic

If there is a measure beyond Nike's stock price that captures its slump, it might be operating margin, which averaged around 13% over the decade through May 2024, and is projected to dip below 6% for the year through May 2026.

Part of the decline is necessary medicine. CEO Hill has pulled back on Jordan retro models, along with an oversaturated basketball low-top turned lifestyle shoe called Dunks. He is also making amends with retailers, which has involved accepting humbler economics. The bull case on Nike - less than half of Wall Street analysts say to buy the stock today, versus more than three-quarters at its 2021 peak - is that margins will revert to normal once Nike regains its footing.

Jay Sole at UBS is not so sure. For one thing, double-digit margins for sneaker giants are unusual. Adidas (ADS) had an 8% margin last year, and it led Puma (PUM) and Under Armour (UA). Also, it is unclear how much Nike needs to shrink to grow. Sportswear, including apparel, has recently been half of sales, Sole reckons, even though the company once said it should never be more than 30%. This risks spending down brand equity that was built with performance shoes, and cultivating a customer base of trend chasers, not brand loyalists.

Stepping back, Sole wonders whether Nike has lost what he calls its superpower: the ability to be all things to all people. "Most brands have some sort of limitation," he says. "They are footwear only or they are apparel only, or they are one country only, or they are one sport only, because that is sort of what they are known as. And it is hard to be more than that."

Lululemon Athletica (LULU, +2.90%), for example, attracts primarily women, and Under Armour attracts primarily men. In past UBS surveys that asked respondents which brands are for them, most topped out at 60%, but Nike hit 95%. It sells to men, women, young, old, suburban, urban, and participants in just about every sport, or no sports.

And nobody is doing anything about this.

This is horrible for the country and every single one of us, in progress at Solventum right now just like in 1000s of companies across the country.

I am unsure why everyone is so blind and we are selling our souls.

Yahoo Sports recently implemented a round of layoffs. These cuts affected several longtime contributors. NFL reporter Charles Robinson was among those let go. Charles McDonald also announced his departure from the company. Yahoo cited strategic goals for these personnel decisions.

https://frontofficesports.com/yahoo-sports-layoffs-charles-robinson-mcdonald/