#culture

This waiting for Godot sh-t is for the birds!

Got the email about survey results for Ops. None of the areas for improvement cited garbage pay. None of you wrote about that? Wild. Unless they ignored that complaint. And they would never do that.

The good news is that "Team space" has been decommissioned.
The bad news is that it has been replaced by an upgraded version: performance.

Over the years, Cisco has remained obsessed with these pointless games.
Put simply, there are just too many managers who do nothing but talk big.

V2MOM is now everywhere.

Nike was preaching that each dealers to show customer regarding attributes of the Nike product and give one to one service.

In typical Nike fashion, they completely erased what they said and it never existed.
(if you are with Nike long enough, you will see what I mean).

And replacing great Independent dealers who had connection with local community with ROSS, TJ MAXX, Marshall, Costco and Amazon is not building a passage to the future.
Can anyone answer me seriously how Nike can charge a pair of shoes for $200 when you know that it will be in discount outlets above in 6 months?

Since Nike sla-ghtered all quality independent dealers in their hubris while back.
Maybe solution for Nike will be to go out open more independent dealer again.
Or at least try to franchise the independent doors with more freedom when it comes to offering of the products.
Because a store in Bronx, NY cannot be same as LA, CA. And Nike as corporation is not nimble enough to cater different product for different region.

And that is why Nike's idea of one style for everyone in 50 states has failed.

COLLECTIVISM HAS FAILED EVERY SINGLE TIME BUT NIKE IS DOING SAME THING AND PUZZLED WHY COMPANY IS GOING DOWN.

When I was job seeking out of college my recruiter said "apply to DST last". Its the last place you want to go. Well I ignored the recruiter and went to DST. He was right. It was a poor option. Then ti have DST flub up the Cundiff/pension plan and get into a lawsuit....very bad form.

Sarah or anyone from her team, please provide clarification on what is happening? You preach transparency, but as you can see from this Forum, employees are feeling confused, uncertain and obviously need answers and what is happening to make good decisions about their future with Centene. PLEASE, provide more answers to your employees!

I have been with Schwab for 6 years, and still do not understand why people think that they are nice to each other?

There is not a day that goes by without people being rude, not doing what they promised, or just ignoring emails.

So, on to the next bandwagon Jim is jumping on: automation, and hard. AI is suddenly the solution to all our problems. Outsourcing is great, but in 5 years when 85% of white-collar jobs are in India and the remaining 14% are on H1B visas here in America, who is going to replace them?

I wouldn't be too worried; these things go in cycles, and Jim has to look busy and visionary for his boss. What just amazes me is how they haven't caught on that the company's real profit-makers weren't even conceived by him. Zero ideas hatched by him and his team have actually done anything positive.

I'd be a little more concerned with the executive team, their friends and new hires. A criminal has managed training in both Marketing and now oversees Finance training. Look it up—she's been convicted of defrauding companies. But hey, she may be sadistic to employees, but she's a friend of the new CFO, you know, from that tiny car company (or was it a software company? Not sure Lucid even knows...).

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2005/jul/14/advertising1

This company has gone in a very weird direction. We have LL2s with no common sense or understanding of what manufacturing actually looks like, and C-Suite individuals with zero understanding of manufacturing, coming from companies that weren't even best-in-class for their own areas.

DEI was fun while it lasted. Interestingly, a significant portion of the current LL3 and LL4 leadership secured their positions through this initiative. Now, some appear to be distancing themselves from their past involvement, as it has become evident that a few individuals actually we-ponized their influence against others.

Ford — Start treating your people with dignity and respect. Use some common sense, like your parents did, and you might eke out survival. Quit playing politics (you're all terrible at it), or hire some political consultants to help you clean up your act. Fire the incompetent, fire the criminals, and fire the ones that don't embody good, old-fashioned family values and morals. At least show the public you've turned your act around to save yourself a shred of dignity in the community.

Centene: We're "streamlining operational efficiency" and "mission simplify" and blah blah blah by investing in AI!!! (For example, the new contracts with Cognizant.)

Also Centene: Let's post a cr-p ton of Claims Analyst openings in Workday!!!

Unless I'm missing something, is this not contradictory?

"Surging oil and gas prices drive Chevron to $12 billion in adjusted earnings, quadrupling last year's results."

Come on Chevron, invest in employees...they are doing more for less and still making pre-covid wages! What is the incentive for employees to do more for the company? Keeping the workforce held down...

Wow that PPD townhall was my first time watching Harmeet speak. My god, talk about monotonous, boring and uninspiring.

Seriously when people ask questions like how will people who lost their skip level or direct managers be fairly assessed on their work this year, the response shouldn't be a plain "yes they will be assessed for their work throughout the year". Duh, people are seeking clarity on the HOW, for goodness sake. Talk about how you already drew up the relationship graph of people remaining in the org, how you guys took stock of how the entire ecosystem of projects fit together, how teams are going to be assigned under new leaders who are genuinely excited at what they have to provide.

What's the point of these townhalls if you're going to be as vague and sombre as possible? When people ask questions about motivation, you don't just tell them to sit with their feelings for this week and look forward to the future. Tell us what exactly we should look forward to, and if layoffs are done for the foreseeable future, then use that to motivate remaining workers. Give people a carrot or something! When people asked if alternatives were considered, talk about how existing employee benefits cuts were considered, whether costs regarding AI models (why are there 80 available models btw) could be cut, whether this was made accounting for that crazy phase of token maxxing, will leaders personally taken salary cuts / pay increases this year during such a "sad and difficult time" as they claim.

Do these people even know how to motivate or show empathy at all? Have they been in genuine leadership positions outside of the corporate world where you actually have to inspire to get people to follow? In the military you have servant leadership (personal sacrifice) at the core, on sports teams captains are expected to display leadership by example, these people have no idea what any of these concepts mean!

They're genuinely soulless puppets, you can see it in their eyes, Harmeet, Rajat and whoever that HR minion brought up to speak during the townhall was. Actively applying for other roles right now, whatever culture Al Kelly instilled is completely gone.

How many Dell PMs does it take to implement a feature?

Ten minimum

• One PM to ask engineering what features they’re working on given the PM roadmap is just whatever engineering accidentally mentions in Slack.

• One PM to get permission from engineering to talk about the feature followed by a mandatory disclaimer from engineering stating no commitments or guarantees the feature will actually be delivered.

• One PM to break the feature into 13 micro‑features so engineering can ship 1.5 micro stories per quarter and claim iterative customer value even though it doesn't work yet.

• One PM to update the roadmap no one sees, trusts, or uses because it changes so often it’s basically a weather forecast.

• One PM to create a 67‑page PowerPoint deck his manager will present as if he personally invented the feature, the product, and possibly storage itself.

• One PM to plan the release date four years from now, which will later be delayed because engineering discovered “unexpected feature creep."

• One PM to schedule a customer advisory call to validate the feature, then ignore all feedback because engineering thinks the customer is wrong.

• One PM to rename the feature three times so marketing can claim it’s AI‑enhanced.

• One PM to write the requirement and five more PMs to argue whether the requirement should exist at all or be replaced with a vision statement.

• One PM to present the feature in an exec review where leadership will ask why it isn’t already shipping, why it isn’t generating $400M ARR, and why it doesn’t run on ARM.

How many people at TR have already silently quit? The amount of people who do absolutely nothing is amazing. I personally know of 2 people who are double dipping—been working another full time job for months whilst still collecting a TR paycheck. There are probably many, many more people doing this as well!

Too big to fail is a comforting lie. The bigger they are, the harder they fall.

HR isn't here for us. They're here to protect the company from us.

So many folks at Nike don't complain, don't cause trouble, just do their work consistently and on time, and they get rewarded by being buried in even more work. Management sees your quiet competence as capacity for more. I speak from experience. Since I started complaining and saying no to more work, my life has improved significantly.

I nearly blew up at a coworker yesterday over this. If you want to leave so badly, then quit. Don't tell me and other people you wish you were laid off after we've watched so many excellent workers lose their jobs and seen how devastated they were over it this week. Read the room, people.

An Open Letter to Shane O'Kelly, the Executive Leadership Team, and the Board of Directors of Advance Auto Parts

From one of the thousands of leaders in the field.

Today, another respected leader is gone in RVA.

Whether you agree with the decision or not, field leaders across the company are asking the same question:

Have we reached the point where a Vice President's, DMs', GM's, TM's career can be defined by Project Pack sales?

If that perception is true, then we have lost sight of what is actually wrong with this company.

I honestly don't know what's more disappointing.

The previous leadership team that many employees believed focused on corporate initiatives while the business continued to deteriorate...

Or the current leadership team that appears to believe Advance Auto Parts can fight its way back by demanding more Project Packs, more attachments, more scorecards, and more pressure.

This isn't a turnaround strategy.

It's a distraction.

Selling more Project Packs will not fix years of declining market share, inconsistent inventory, operational challenges, technology issues, staffing shortages, customer frustration, or decades of strategic mistakes made far above the store level.

Those problems weren't created by Store Managers.

They weren't created by General Managers.

They weren't created by District Managers.

They weren't created by Vice Presidents.

Yet somehow, the people closest to the customer continue to carry the burden.

Every quarter there's another initiative.

Another metric.

Another conference call.

Another dashboard.

Another leader gone.

Meanwhile, the fundamental questions remain unanswered.

Why do we continue to lose experienced leaders?

Why do we continue to replace homegrown talent with outsiders who don't understand our culture?

Why does it feel like accountability flows only downward?

And where is the Board of Directors in all of this?

At what point does the Board stop measuring PowerPoint presentations and start asking why so many dedicated field leaders have lost confidence in the direction of this company?

The people in the stores are not asking for miracles.

We're asking for leadership.

Real leadership.

Leadership that listens before it mandates.

Leadership that fixes broken systems instead of creating new scorecards.

Leadership that values people more than weekly KPI reports.

Most of us have dedicated years—some, decades—of our lives to Advance Auto Parts.

We have missed birthdays.

Worked hurricanes.

Opened stores before sunrise.

Closed them after dark.

Worked weekends.

Covered vacancies.

Helped struggling stores.

Trained future leaders.

We stayed because we believed in this company.

We still do.

But belief alone cannot carry a company forward.

If today's events have taught us anything, it's this:

Fear does not inspire performance.

Pressure does not create loyalty.

And no company has ever KPI'd its way back to greatness.

Advance Auto Parts deserves better.

Its customers deserve better.

Its shareholders deserve better.

And most importantly...

Its people deserve better.

A Concerned Advance Auto Parts Leader

Other SBGs hear that BA is the promised land. How are things there, really? What is the leadership like and what is it like to work there?

What does it say about a manager who does not partake in the Truist anniversary celebrations for his/her direct reports? Is this business as usual at Truist or a symptom of undesirability within the management ranks?

I'm glad I could clear that up for everybody.

But then they ask the next question, which you dread, So who are you working for? And you say Cengage. The not so polite people say what? Wait, how do you spell that? And then I found my trick is I say it's like a C and then the word engage. And then the lethal third question comes, So what do you do at Cengage? And then typically, I don't know about you, but for me, I was always struggling a little bit.

So what I want to do today with a very specific purpose is give us collective understanding of not only what we do, but why Cengage is an awesome company and why we deserve to win in the battle for the hearts and the minds of our customers.

We have an engagement survey and I can only implore you fill it out. I really do not care what you say.

Meaning it doesn't have to be like, Oh yeah, everything is great and like, but engage with it and like, say what's wrong, say what's right and engage your help with each other and help each other also not only in the survey, but also in the day-to-day, like interact with the product group, interact with the marketing group and make sure that we have a highest level of engagement because that really is a prerequisite for our productivity and our success.

I hear that Jira Boards are being heavily scrutinized to see whos' doing what

Is anyone on this meeting with Marissa??? What is happening….. why are they allowing people to change their minds. What a poorly lead organization. This is PHCO. We can also request a negotiation of our separation date…………

Executives all hire the same consultants and do the same thing. How is their pay justified when they all just follow each other and do the same thing like a bunch of sheep?

https://www.upstreamonline.com/people/bp-to-slash-700-jobs/2-1-2022872

All new hires WW have to be approved Alvind and he wants a genuine business case. He doesn't even trust his direct report to sloths to make a good hire.

CTX is the worst. I don’t know anyone, other than a handful of a$$ kissers that don’t do any real work, that are happy. One of you leaders with some b@lls needs to step up and make some positive changes before all of the good people are gone or too burnt out to care.

How is the mood in the office?

Ignore the 25% loss in market value of the company. Look over here at this shiny bauble.

https://www.wsj.com/cio-journal/ibm-claims-new-era-of-quantum-advantage-92e3d5d4

Big Blue is racing to show that its quantum computing business can be profitable following a historic stock tumble

By: Belle Lin | July 30, 2026 6:00 am ET

International Business Machines said Thursday its research shows “quantum advantage”—a point at which quantum computers perform computations beyond conventional ones—and that these results can be rigorously validated.

The findings, which mark a step toward practical application of the nascent technology, were published in a trio of papers by IBM and its research partners. These include the University of Chicago, Japan’s RIKEN national research institute, and the quantum computing software firms Qedma, BlueQubit and Algorithmiq.

“We’re in the quantum advantage era,” said Jay Gambetta, director of IBM Research. “Scientists can trust it. Now it’s moving from people benchmarking the systems to using these for science to look at applications.”

The news comes as Big Blue races to show that its quantum computing business can be profitable.

Earlier this month, the company suffered its biggest share drop in history after it issued a profit warning citing a shift in customer spending from software to AI hardware and memory chips. IBM said the performance of its software and infrastructure business fell short of expectations in the second quarter.

Since then, IBM Chief Executive Arvind Krishna has offered an optimistic take on the company’s future, arguing quantum computing will begin to power its growth in a matter of years. The company’s first-mover advantage in quantum could boost its fortunes the way being a first mover in GPUs did for Nvidia, he recently told The Wall Street Journal.

IBM is going up against tech giants like Microsoft and Google, but also a host of startups in the quantum space.

While IBM is hardly the first to claim quantum advantage—the quantum computing company D-Wave made the claim last year, and Google said it showed “verifiable quantum advantage” in October—Gambetta said IBM’s latest papers are notable for demonstrating that its results are provable.

“They have methods that make sure that what is running on the quantum computer is giving you correct results,” he said.

In the Qedma and IBM paper, for instance, the companies said they showed how quantum computers can be used to explore the physics of materials, and that the results were confirmed using various methods, including on a Quantinuum quantum computer. “Think of this as a new physics that is being demonstrated on a quantum computer where classical methods fail,” Gambetta said.

Unlike traditional computers, where outputs can be validated by running the same problem on other computers, some quantum computer outputs push beyond the limits of what classical computers can verify.

That’s partly why IBM’s latest announcement is significant: The ability to replicate a quantum computer’s results shows that the systems are becoming more reliable and consistent, according to Heather West, an analyst focused on quantum computing at research firm International Data Corp.

Thursday’s news also helps put IBM further along the path to a fault-tolerant quantum computer, a milestone it has promised to achieve by 2029.

For businesses, though, the most significant takeaway is whether practical applications—from solving optimization problems to making breakthroughs in areas like materials science and medicine—will be possible with quantum computers.

Gambetta says IBM’s latest findings are a step in that direction.

“Having a trusted foundation allows you to start to do the application research, and as we inject more capable machines, it will allow us to scale those applications to ones that matter for business,” he said.

IDC’s West described IBM’s results as “another milestone in the way towards being able to use quantum systems to solve complex problems that are beyond the limits of classical compute,” and help solidify the company’s position as a strong player in the quantum market.

But reaching quantum advantage won’t be a singular moment—and certainly not in the way that the release of ChatGPT set off the artificial-intelligence bo-m, West said.

“We’re going to see future announcements that build on top of these,” she added. “Maybe in a month from now, or six months or a year, these particular findings will be overcome by findings that are a little bit more advanced, and that’s the way it should be.”

IBM said it encourages debate over quantum advantage, and Gambetta said he anticipates scientists will come up with newer classical methods and compare them against IBM’s findings. “I’m not going to say they’re bulletproof,” he said.

“What has changed is that we’re in a point where we can get trusted outcomes so that scientific debate can happen,” he added. “Over the next couple years, it will predominantly be a scientific debate, exactly like AI was debated in the universities using GPUs to look at neural networks.”

My only question is: why do we need so many stakeholders to get anything done?

Many companies today are looking for technically strong product leaders who own both the customer experience and the underlying technology. At Verizon, however, it often feels like too many non-technical stakeholders control the UI and experience decisions, which creates bottlenecks and slows down execution by the engineering and product teams.

If we’re not going to build experiences that fully leverage the technology we’re investing in, then what’s the value of building those technical capabilities in the first place?

I went from being a confident, successful professional to having to seek therapy and medication after working at US Bank. Worst experience of my life. The company is chock full of good people who have turned mean for survival. Thank god I’m no longer there, but the ptsd is real and is taking much longer than I thought it would to heal from. I hate how hard I was on myself when I worked there. The company is culture is messed up. Everyone there needs to be kinder to eachother.

The school is firing faculty and staff but opened a campus in India? They’re broke and will be closing, it’s obvious. They have treated their students, staff, and faculty like garbage.

How many Dell software engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?

Five: one to write the ticket, one to reproduce the issue, one to say "works on my machine," one to schedule a meeting about it, and one to close the ticket as "won't fix."

how many dei employees did aap originally hire? and how many do we still have calling the shots?

I am curious about was the LR and pressure is in this sub org on sbg

Remove all parasite "leadership team" elements.

What value do they add to the operation of the company?

All some of these people do is go to meetings, spam worthless information on "YAMMER", and re-post the rubbish that their friends have published on LinkedIn .

Some of these people are job stage 8 and 9 . . . . How are these positions justified?

Next week is Culture Week, everyone! Get ready for the toxic leaders of one of the world's most contemptible, companies to gaslight their employees into thinking we have a culture that goes beyond mistreating people, devaluing them and underpaying them. You really can't make this sh-t up.

Just awful!

I’m seriously at my breaking point with this company. While i know it’s my choice to stay and deal with it, it still doesn’t take away that the way we are treated here is so gross. The administration, the higher-ups, whatever you want to call them, are once again not filling in roles for people who leave the company. I’m so tired of the corporate culture. They work us to death, they consolidate positions adding more workload and stress without compensating us fairly or not even at all and in return, we get an email that basically says “we hear your gripes so in return, here are 5 more refrigerators for your pantries. Are they effin for real? The people are doing all the heavy lifting, get crapped on while Tony and people 3-4 tiers below him are making a nice salary and bonus. It’s absolutely ridiculous and disgusting. A company that used to pride themselves on work and life balance has back pedaled on that significantly.