#culture

How often does headquarters in BP do layoffs? Looking to join company but would like to gauge job security there. And out of curiosity, do you really need to be "highly extroverted" per the culture. Thx in advance.

This company is so behind its time, pushing against goals and KPIs, working with bespoke systems and thinking they are superior.
Exec management tries to make the workforce more efficient while the common Associate has very limited MSFT Office skills (don’t get me started on AI…).
There’s significant pushback against any organizational changes or growth goals while there is a fatalistic approach that we’re all gonna loose our jobs.
Can’t wait to get the f*ck out of this he-l hole

Way to keep us at peak anxiety all the time.

What is the purpose of RTO - just to burn gas, tires, increase car insurance, increase carbon emissions, stuck in traffic - and again on Teams call...

The slavery mind set of the CXO suite is mind blowing

Gas at $5.50/Gallon + Doubled Car Insurance Rate + Kids, Family and the 2+ hours traffic, but a bare minimum salary..this is majority of us 60,000 employees vs. Gunjan and CXO suite making Millions a year,Luxury travel to and fro paid and expesned to the company. They are the to set the RTO policy but do not have to worry or comply it, its the 90% of us who have to bear the brunt.

OUR (60,000 employees) Necessity is the mother of this invention (leave powered locked laptops at work in secret places), given no other company demands or measures Talent and Performance by the Timestamps and not actual delivery or management of aspects. STUPID and DuB GOONjan and CXO suite

I’ve never seen a CEO so completely disconnected and miss the message employees were trying to send.

Thousands of employees were saying the same thing- morale is declining, flexibility matters, talent is leaving, and five-day RTO is making a bad situation worse.

His response? Employees were told they’re wrong, he’s not, and there “might be a disconnect between you and your current professional choice.”

What really stood out was the characterization of the feedback as “more outliers than we’d like.” … Outliers?

When it’s most employees saying the same thing, it isn’t outliers at all. It’s the majority. The same concerns were being raised across all organizations, teams, and locations. That’s not an “outlier” problem. That’s a leadership problem.

The email read like someone who was genuinely shocked by the feedback…. But maybe that’s the real issue. When you’re surrounded by direct reports blowing smoke up your a$$ telling you everything is working, everyone is aligned, and the policy is a grand success, eventually you start believing it.

Then one day reality shows up in a survey and your mind is blown.

What made the email so damaging wasn’t just the double down on policy. It was the authoritarian mindset behind it.

Instead of asking why most employees felt the same way, he seemed determined to explain why employees were wrong instead of him. Instead of adapting, he doubled down. Instead of listening, he lectured. Instead of taking responsibility, he shifted the blame back onto employees.

That’s not leadership.

Leadership is about recognizing when a decision isn’t producing the intended results and having the humility to change course. What we’ve seen instead is a stubborn refusal to acknowledge reality and accept responsibility, no matter how much evidence piles up.

Since Stankey became CEO, the stock has delivered a negative (-25%) price return. Morale has deteriorated to all time lows. Talent continues to leave. Outside rankings of culture, morale, talent, future readiness place AT&T at the bottom of its peer group and near the broader field bottom as well.

Yet somehow employees are still treated as the problem.

At some point, the board has to ask a simple question- if the strategy is working, where are the results?

Employees are paying the price for decisions they didn’t make- longer commutes, less flexibility, less take home pay, lower morale, increased uncertainty, and the departure of talented peers.

The company doesn’t need more presence reports, more mandates, or another angry manifesto explaining why employees are wrong and to blame for the company’s failures. It needs a leader who listens, adapts, and can admit when something isn’t working.

The most dangerous thing a CEO can do is become so convinced of his own correctness that he stops hearing what everyone else is telling him, and that’s where we are. That’s the disconnect employees have been talking about all along.

Wow. Have you seen this? I just saw it. They’re talking about it all over—everyone is talking about it. Dan Schulman, the guy from Verizon. Great company, by the way, very big, very powerful, though frankly, the signal in Mar-a-Lago could be better. We’re looking into that.

But Dan—fake news Dan—he’s writing love poems. Can you believe it? Love poems! To his wife! And let me tell you, I’ve seen the poems. Total disaster. Weak. No vocabulary. Sad! He tells his wife her eyes have "low latency." Incredible. If I told Melania she had low latency, she’d lock me out of the penthouse. Total catastrophe. Dan is out there dropping calls in the bedroom. He’s got zero bars, folks. Absolutely zero bars. Sad!

Do you have the impression that your current managers in this company are psycopath ?

Seeing a bunch of complaints on Slack about SpaceX and Elon lately.

Be real for a second: If you had to put your own money into just one company right now — SpaceX or Nike — which are you actually choosing?

People keep saying to report problems, but report them where? To who? All I've seen so far is that speaking up gets twisted back on the employee. Every single time. So why bother?

It is very depressing as there are some very good people going because they asked to. Why can’t the organization organize themselves to get rid of dead wood instaesd of not creating an environment where talent and good people feel comfortable.

We were one of the most respected American companies. Now we're nothing but a joke. What a sad reality.

I'm not happy here. But I also know my friends at other companies have it worse. So I'm staying for now. But I'm curious about people who are ready to leave. What would it take? What would be the final straw that makes you quit?

I'll say it plainly. This is a blind company without any real direction. If you think I'm wrong, go ahead and prove it.

I hate what's being done to it. I used to be proud working here. Not anymore.

One day I think we've got what it takes to climb back up. We've still got plenty of smart people and good products. But then I look at how far we've fallen and I wonder if we'll ever get that back. So I'm asking all of you. Do you think we'll find our way up again, or are those days behind us for good?

The only FAST thing that is happening is that as a result of their direction they are wasting company resources on initiatives with no return. In fact not only do they cost us money the things and processes they building attempting to build are making things worse.

As a fresh grad. when I joined CDC design Verification (DV) , team used to have a great, merit based culture where technical decision were driven by logic and data.
Recently, a leadership change at the top for DV ruined this dynamic. The top lead lacks a technical verif. background, makes unilateral decisions, and pushes aggressive deadlines just for his upper visibility and no techincal contribution for him.
We went from a collaborative team to a strict "no questions asked" environment.
Feeling highly demotivated and could sense the same with my peers and leads.
need advise - is it worth speaking about this to the lead? is this kind of one man pushing his view normal across Qualcomm or is it a major red flag and i should start looking outside QCOM?

We finally got approval for a role on the team. How am I going to pick when I sit in on interviews? The worst candidate. With the mandate that someone has to get does not meet I’m not going to help select the best candidate that might knock me into that category for future layoffs. So for people trying to transfer to a new role internally be aware that people are actively hiring fall guys.wouldn’t it be great if we could actually hire the best person so we could do good work?

https://presentofcoding.substack.com/p/please-switch-to-python

Stata can’t. SAS can’t. SPSS can’t. MATLAB’s answer is “call Python from MATLAB.”

even where these tools have some capability, it requires calling Python, or expensive licenses, or both.

I’ve rarely met anyone who learned Python or R after switching from Stata or SAS and said, “I wish I were still working in those.”

Probably the only way out of this mess is to make FOSS illegal or legally cripple its usage within the country and, if possible, around the globe. There are movements afoot…

This used to be a place people wanted to work. Good projects, good reputation, and good future. But now it has turned into a dead end for so many people. Nobody expects to grow or learn or advance here anymore. When did we turn into that kind of place?

Anyone have any thoughts? The guy that "was" in charge of all the cores and is now a segment head is always missing in action. How are we supposed to fix the leakage problems if SVPs are not held accountable? We all have our head buried in the sand thinking problems will go away. Such a mess.

this is so interesting

https://briefglance.com/articles/wells-fargo-exec-told-to-be-less-visible-discrimination-suit-alleges

EH built a huge ticker out front counting down the World Cup and you couldn’t manage to make your shoes different colors than the competitors? It’s literally a sea of pink cleats, impossible to set apart the brands. Nike in a nutshell, who is to blame? Should the color team be accountable? The head of global football? Where is the ticker to determine how many more days we have to watch this embarrassment?

What’s the deal with this new practice of screening candidates with an AI cultural fit exam? What do they even ask on that thing?

I've watched at least five people leave my team over the last few months. I don't blame them, but the company makes no effort to hire new people, so those of us who stay end up doing the work of two or three people. Which means that deadlines that used to be reasonable are now impossible. If this keeps going, I'll be the next one out.

My LinkedIn feed has been filled with pictures and comments about how great the Oracle kickoff was in Vegas this week. Followed by posts and repost of great economic news of a record year of sales.

Am I the only one who finds it offensive that in the face of tens of thousands of people laid off since August of 2025 that our former coworkers and executives celebrated what appears to have been an excellent year while those impacted by the layoff, got to watch both big spending in Vegas and outstanding numbers.

I understand they made a big deal out of the fact that partners footed the bill for the most part for SKO, but the optics are terrible and probably not 100% true.

My last comment would be that for rank-and-file employees that do not benefit the same way that say the new CFO , the C-Suite or other senior executives do reposting that material is hilarious. Don’t think you’re anything more than a name on a spreadsheet.

What it really is is just a stark reminder that these types of companies just keep moving. Meanwhile terrible severance packages versus Meta and longtime employees trying to figure out what happened and why they’re on the outside.

The fact that they went forward after all that restructuring with the week that they did says it all!!!

Is this a new position? And is “Rajiv” H-1B or legit?

While belk is hanging on by a thread, your trusty CEO Don Hendricks is scooping up and selling multi-million dollar luxury real estate in the exclusive enclave of Martha’s Vineyard. Light years away from his dilapidated stores and underpaid, overworked employees.

Senior management have absolutely no idea how to run a tech company.
They repeatedly try the only playbook they have, which is to cut costs by laying people off whilst paying consultants millions to do their jobs, which seems to be simply latching on to the latest hot topic and hoping that fixes everything.
Here's an idea, why not try actually investing in the businesses you own rather than trying to bleed them dry.
Anyone else notice the number of good senior people jumping ship recently?
How's future forward working for you Stephanie?

Just the bottom line. We're treated as items and the company as a carcass.

Are there more clinics closing in California? I called my local clinic and they said they were not taking new patients.

Optum Care? More like Optum Don't Care.

Personally, Cameron bringing in McKinsey will be his legacy and what he will be remembered for.

Someone got into his ear and he took some bad decisions.

Things feel different. Way more now since the WP closure.

Something feels very odd with WP folks. The upper management level seems fake and really trying to cover up something.

It’s just bad times right now.

Maybe someone with ba--s that reads this site can walk into Cameron’s office and bring him to reality of how things are. Well, I can at least pray!

The Oracle Doormat Principle is a term coined by former employees to describe a psychological state where individuals remain loyal to Oracle Corporation despite experiencing mistreatment, toxic work environments, or career stagnation.

Definition: It is likened to Stockholm Syndrome, where employees become emotionally attached to an organization that has abused them, often internalizing the company culture as a "family."
Causes: The principle suggests that prolonged exposure leads to low self-esteem, fear of change, and a paralysis to act in one's best interest, causing workers to accept pay cuts, benefit reductions, and abusive management without protest.
Criticism: Critics argue this behavior stems from low self-worth and prevents personal career growth, with some advising that if a work environment is bad, it rarely improves and employees should leave as soon as possible.
Context: The term gained traction on layoff discussion forums, often appearing alongside complaints about dry promotions (more workload for no financial upgrade) and perceived corporate cultures of fear.

People ask me where they should go to work, and I always tell them to go to work for whom they admire the most. It’s crazy to take little in-between jobs just because they look good on your resume. That’s like saving s-x for old age. Do what you love and work for whom you admire the most, and you’ve given yourself the best chance in life you can.

This year so far was really hard. The workload, the uncertainty, the layoffs, and all the other changes made sure of that. I keep wondering if the second half of the year could actually be worse. Is that possible? Or have we hit the bottom and things will get better? I truly don't know.

I left eight months ago. The top brass don't know what they're doing. If you're not near retirement, staying at T doesn't make any sense.

I see a ton of new positions being posted.

Is this for real?

They keep telling me we are not hiring.

M@rk, Kev, and Sean,

You can go to all the conferences and spin the story how you want, but it is not working. Results speak louder than spin. Investors are not buying it.