#culture

I've been through many, many layoffs at Optum and seen many talented people let go. It's tough to watch, but I've also seen a clear pattern where a lot of those people ended up in much better positions elsewhere. They found roles with better pay, better culture, or just more respect. Just something to keep in mind.

Captains Log 01092026. What a joke with this return to office mandate. There is zero consistency.

Getting back $.70 on the dollar for everything Stankey touches is a win. ATT Campus in this day and age. What products does ATT pitch and for what reasons? You can't make up just how extreme the company's do as I say customers but not as I do.

Go on…be honest

Hey everyone! Tell us about the new grades.

You stayed at dell to long and you working for a company like Dell never turns in anyone’s favor unlike if you worked for a company like tootsie roll who takes care of there people like family

Do you think they track us going to the office or not? What do you guys think/do?

All day today I was like "what to do: quiet quit or really quit without any job to move into??". I used to really love software and engineering before Dell.

Now I think this is my first job where I really hate it, mainly because of our "great": tools,processes,managers and yesman crowd. oh ye and cant have a single meeting without AI AI AI bs and some other random 10 words nobody use outside of Dell.

I did literally nothing today and plan same for rest of the week, got another id--t task which description was written by manager on dr-gs and it will be "always NOK" so I plan just commit some MicroSlop and will "hide" till rest of sprint like the rest of them.

No FTE opportunities, management is.. aloof

This latest request to fill out a form in preparation for a town hall at the branch level is a classic example of a "disconnect" in leadership. After two years of managing a team, a leader is expected to have moved beyond surface-level resumes and into an understanding of their team’s specific strengths, career aspirations, and personalities. When a manager asks for a bio this late in the game, it signals that the recognition might be performative and just a check box that she did it.
We now know we are just a set of bullet points and that she is more concerned with the optics of the meeting than the reality of our team’s work.

This all started with Babb when he move the corporate headquarters to Dallas to spend time with his grandchildren. Then he put Farmer in place and he is totally incompetent at running the organization. Now everyone will lose their jobs and he will ride off with millions. What a shame for the employees that care about the organization, the history and their customers.

We made it through another year, but I hate what this company has become. Biweekly check-ins with inexperienced managers who now get to define your worth. Verint installed on our laptops, where five minutes of inactivity is enough to trigger a flag. Quality metrics attached to every single employee.

There was a time when working hard and being productive actually meant something. Now, every action is scrutinized. The good employees have become the problem, while inexperienced new hires are pushed through boot camps that teach them the wrong way to do the job. Then they’re sent to us with questions, and we’re expected to train them on top of everything else.

The place is a mess. At this point, I’m just counting the days until retirement—or a layoff.

I read a Forbes article on employee happiness and company performance, and it feels very relevant right now.

The research is clear that companies with higher employee happiness consistently perform better over time. Not just culturally, but financially. Engagement, innovation, productivity, retention, and customer experience all improve when people feel supported, trusted, and connected to the work.

Right now, it’s hard to ignore that employee morale at Nike feels low. At the same time, the stock price reflects broader challenges and uncertainty. Those two things are often more connected than we want to admit.

The article reinforces that compensation and perks aren’t the main drivers. Leadership trust, clarity, purpose, growth, and how decisions are communicated matter far more. This feels like an important moment for EH and TH to seriously reflect on how employee experience is being navigated and how it’s landing across the organization.

Nike has always been strongest when people believed in where we were going and felt proud of how we got there. Rebuilding morale isn’t just about culture, it’s about long-term performance.

For anyone interested, here’s the article:
https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbescoachescouncil/2024/10/04/happiness-at-work-the-new-competitive-advantage/

“To create connection* – with each other, with what people need to thrive in their everyday lives, and with stories and experiences that matter.”

• Our company’s product enables people to do anything they want from anywhere in the world at anytime of day or night - and to prove it, we require our employees to suffer lengthy commutes into dangerous parts of town in aging buildings 5 days a week to join their Teams call from their desk. We call this “Collaboration”.

Our leadership are all straight from Idiocracy

CVS culture is extremely toxic. I left my job last month! There is nothing but corruption, favoritism and cover ups. I love how some employees can end up on performance plans and then moved to different roles to protect their friends, but others if they’re not friends with the manager are scrutinized and micromanaged! If you’re still working at CVS I pray you find something new very soon.

Lots of projects are made stagnant with word "No New initiatives" or approvals required.
These projects are the major targets for upcoming layoffs

When investors realize this company was not reborn, but callously dismembered like Hannibal Lector victim leaving nothing but employee ill-will, it will be too late.

Eliza is a solution seeking a problem, all gains falsely propped up through a culture of degradation and constructive termination. Market makers cant see this yet, but they will.

You know what you have done.

I have worked for three companies before this one. Each had its flaws, but each, in its own way, understood something basic about decency. When I came to CVX, my fourth, I was told, again and again, that the culture was different. Healthier. Kinder. A place where people stayed because they were valued.

I believed it. For a long time, I wanted to.

Six years in, I can say without hesitation that this is the most hostile environment I have ever survived and I started on a rig in Midland, TX.

What makes it dangerous isn’t incompetence or chaos, it’s intention. Everything here is calculated. Smiles are worn like disguises. Praise is given only when it can be reclaimed later as leverage. If your work is good, someone else will quietly attach their name to it. If your ideas land too well, they stop being yours almost immediately.
And if you are noticed, truly noticed, by the wrong person, especially your boss, the consequences are swift and surgical. Threats are not confronted; they are dismantled. Slowly. Invisibly. By the time you realize what’s happening, your reputation has already been rewritten without you in the room.

Gossip is the real currency here. Cruelty, its favorite language. Personal lives are treated as public property, mined for weaknesses. An affair. A secret. A truth shared with the wrong person. Even something small, once discovered, is inflated until it becomes unmanageable. Stories grow teeth. Context disappears. Suddenly, survival feels like something you have to apologize for.

This is not a place where mistakes are forgiven. It is a place where they are archived.
I used to think cultures were defined by mission statements and values posted on walls. Now I know better. Culture is what happens in whispers, in meetings you aren’t invited to, in credit you never receive, in silence when you need protection.

If this place has taught me anything, it’s that the most dangerous environments are the ones that insist they are safe.

For those who are managers what is being said about the absolutely dismal state of rhe company and the rock bottom morale? Productivity will be at an all time low as no one cares at all anymore.

Eliza™—the AI mascot of workforce reduction—just completed her annual performance review, and the results are shocking to absolutely no one.

Despite eliminating 400 jobs before lunch and auto‑generating three “We value our people” emails, she was rated BELOW EXPECTATIONS.

Why? Leadership cited her “need for constant supervision,” “poor teamwork with humans who still exist,” and “unacceptable integration costs,” which is rich coming from managers who can’t integrate a calendar invite with a coherent thought. Her accuracy and reliability were also flagged, mostly because she occasionally deletes the wrong department or callously schedules layoffs during Christmas holidays.

But the best part? Eliza™ isn’t even PIP‑eligible. HR confirmed she cannot receive a severance package, a farewell lunch, or even a sad little badge‑deactivation ceremony. She’ll simply continue roaming the digital halls, glitching ominously like a haunted Roomba vacuum, waiting to “optimize” the next unsuspecting team.

A true icon of corporate underperformance—yet somehow still praised for her “limitless potential.”

If it's anything like the posts that are already on here from their meetings, then I guess today we are all in for a real treat...

Pretty hard to work in an environment like you do...wondering what is happening or going to happen. Sad

They're part of the old regime, and complicit in a lot of the things that FB did to the company. Are they still there?

2025 was a harsh and bitter year of layoffs and departures from Corel. Most notably the Vice President & Principal Architect of Parallels left after rearchitecting Parallels for success. The worst part is Christa takes credit for the success of the product line without mentioning his name. Also Senior Vice President of Product and Engineering and the Vice President Of Engineering decided they'd rather not report Christa Quarles CEO at Parallels & Corel due to poor decisions affecting revenue and layoffs of software engineers.

Layoffs and firings are spread across the Canada, US and Mauritius. Directors and managers were made to layoff their entire teams, then they themselves were laid-off. Specifically the Product teams have been hit very hard. Staff turn-over in Mauritius is very high amongst those who are native to the country.

Christa Quarles an American business executive, she has shown zero expert knowledge as a CEO who knows how to manage a company. Christa lead the change of the Corel brand to Alludo in 2022. As of December 2025, Alludo is gone as the brand name, Corel has been returned to keep the focus on Corel branded products. Millions of dollars wasted. No announcements provided as to why

There are two chief of staffs and one executive assistant. Yet the product team have have been decimated by layoffs as has the marketing team.

Christa Quarles CEO of Corel has run out of friends to hire. There are continued complaints from customers of shady business practices associated with the quiet subscription model campaign. Now we wait in 2026 for the next layoffs.

Wow. How is that man the new leader for a tenured sales organization? Technologically challenged right out of the gate and completely unprepared.
Not to mention he made it point to insult those who chose a different path besides college to gain their education. Did he stop for a minute to consider a major of those who don’t have a traditional education most likely served in the military? I can’t see this going well for him.

Stankeyville, Stinktown, Stank’s Folly, The Mistake by Lewisville Lake, Stankeygrad (kind of makes sense for a narcissist like him).

Let’s have some fun.

Nothing fundamentally changes. Layoffs still loom, your manager's just as terrible, the office drama is equally exhausting, most of the work is meaningless garbage with processes that are completely broken, and you're still unhappy. Swear to god, even the damn walls looked the same at my previous two places. It's a necessity, but almost never an improvement. Pretty bleak.

I went back to work a few months ago, and what I’ve seen is heartbreaking and infuriating. Most of the team is gone, and the way it happened is outright unethical. The best people were put on PIPs and eliminated. How? Simple: the harder you work, the more mistakes you make and the more “productive” you appear so you get canned.

Now we’re left with people afraid to work hard, terrified of PIPs. Productivity has tanked, and the top talent, the people who could get another job in a heartbeat are already gone. Dell is the textbook example of what a company shouldn’t do. And they are dumping everything they can at us, like a stupid gorilla throwing his sh-t at the zoo, and in the end, they’ll probably tell us they can’t find talent and outsource our teams abroad.

The company went global, sure, but at the expense of employees under constant pressure, all for financial decisions. People on my team have emailed upper management about working conditions and treatment. Nothing. Upper management refuses to acknowledge the problem, yet they enforce return-to-office policies while they work from home. Meanwhile, some employees are still on payroll and haven’t touched their computers in ten months.

2025 has been brutal. My paycheck no longer covers my bills. While Wall Street celebrates record profits, the average employee is crushed. After 20+ years at Dell, I’ve never seen management fail so spectacularly at handling layoffs and treating people. I’m done. I’m looking for another job. I can’t watch this abuse continue.

Reposted from @bd+1kdx0h388, an on point post.

Read this article about the CEO of Waste Management, who regularly shows up to early-morning safety meetings, rides with frontline crews, and spends time in the field talking directly with employees and customers.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ceo-90-billion-waste-management-071200219.html

It made me wonder whether we’d ever see anything like that at Fidelity Investments. Would Abby Johnson meet with advisors or phone reps, sit in on client calls, or get out of the C-suite and actually see the business up close, instead of managing the firm through dashboards, executive briefings, and carefully scripted town halls?

Feels like two very different ideas of leadership. Curious how others see it.

https://x.com/The_TUC/status/2008145671535116525

Somebody legitimately wrote this paragraph and thought, "Yeah this makes total sense" and clicked send to the entire company. I get from this that mass layoffs will be coming before the 1/14 meeting (in particular the last line), but who knows.

"To grow boldly, we are launching our 2026 theme: “Transform as ONE.” I have chosen
this because true, sustainable transformation is not an individual pursuit; it is a shared
journey that requires us to be aligned in purpose, unified in action, and strengthened by collective ambition. Under this theme, we will pursue our directions of Exceed and Excel, Agility and Action, and Discover and Do through “One for All” Communication and
Collaboration. We must operate with the understanding that finding efficiencies is not
about doing more with less, but rather about doing better with purpose."

Imagine it’s 2030.

The wealth management industry has gone fully digital, fully personalized, and somehow still feels… human. Clients rebalance portfolios with a voice command. RIAs fully own the client experience, and their book of business. Account opening takes 90 seconds and a selfie.

At Edward Jones, a meeting is being scheduled to discuss forming a segment to accelerate the path to industry parity.

Allowing FAs to own their book is briefly considered as a way to slow attrition, until the ELT realizes that might require sharing economics. The idea is politely declined.

Edward Jones advisors are still praised for playing it safe, putting client goals at risk, but protecting GP deep pockets.

Associate pay has barely improved. Compensation decks are refreshed, grades are “recalibrated to the market,” and leadership celebrates low-single-digit increases as “competitive”. Associates who once believed their entire careers could be built at Edward Jones discover those careers aren’t being filled with opportunity, but with quiet, compounding regret.

The systems barely work, largely because leadership changed strategic direction five times in the last decade, then decided to pursue everything at once.

By 2030, competitors have built fully remote, national teams, pulling top talent from anywhere. Productivity is measured by outcomes, innovation, and client impact. Associates aren’t babysat. They thrive as a result.

At Edward Jones, all associates are required to be at their desk five days a week. Badge swipes are tracked. Keystrokes are counted. Reports are run. Leaders celebrate home-office presence as culture. A top candidate declines an offer because relocating to St. Louis or Tempe makes no sense for their family.

The industry talks about scale, speed, and optionality.
Edward Jones talks about how great things will be once…

The competition is building for where clients are going.
Edward Jones is optimizing for where employees are sitting.

Imagine it’s 2030. Edward Jones introduces “Imagine it’s 2040”, a new campaign to reach market parity.

DC is at the helm and promises to outsource everything, generating record short term profits for GPs. “A penny saved is a penny earned”. Penny agrees.

With all the money that execs have burned on RTO, a new Global HQ, and the stock tanking because that’s all Stankey knows how to do, how are feeling about bonuses?

Are we going to be paying for RTO, new HQ, and our horrific work culture out of our bonuses?

Don't you all have your SIX SIGMA Black Belts!!!! Don't you all know how to code after 2020!!!! c'mon each initiative by Executive management have really delivered!!! You all can go into the ring with ANY color SIX SIGMA belt I am sure of it!!

Ever wonder what it feels like to work inside a corporation that’s shrinking, expanding, consolidating, offshoring, rebranding, cost‑optimizing, culture‑eroding, “thriving together,” recharging, refreshing, and “strategically transforming” all at once—while leadership insists everything is BAU and perfectly normal?

It’s like watching a building burn while someone in a branded polar fleece calmly assures you it’s “just a controlled enhancement to long‑term stability,” right before the ceiling collapses behind them.

And because it’s a new year, leadership has prepared a cheerful continuing resolution —delivered with the warmth of a broken space heater and the sincerity of a captured strongman awaiting arraignment for crimes against humanity:

“Expect increased toxicity, more layoffs, more offshoring, and steady gaslighting to brighten and warm your spirits.”

Truly inspiring. Afterall, nothing says fresh start like a forecast of cultural decay wrapped in corporate confetti and lightly dusted with the faint aroma of smoldering ethics.

But wait—leadership wants you to celebrate.
Yes, CELEBRATE!

So plaster on your best “I’m totally fine” smile and go take a few selfies and post on social media.

And don’t forget to hashtag your favorite EC member—you know, the one hiding behind “strategic pillars” like a kid playing corporate hide‑and‑seek. Extra credit if you catch them mid‑pose for their next phony empathy post, those perfectly curated LinkedIn masterpieces where they pretend to care about employee well‑being while quietly checking their bank statements and discreetly approving the next round of “optimization.”

Because nothing captures the modern corporate experience quite like being told to “embrace the journey” while knowing your organization is in a sharp nosedive.

Tray tables up, folks!