#culture

It is obvious they do not see us as people. I wish everyone here could leave at once because none of us should settle for this treatment.

What would turn this place around? New leadership? New strategy? Something else?

I’ve learned the hard way not to get emotionally attached to a company. Treat it like a job, not a family or a mission. Give your best at work, but don’t let it control your life or define your self-worth. Trust me, nothing good comes from being a company cultist. You'll be laid off just like the rest of us when the time comes.

Where is the great culture Accenture talked about? I was discriminated and treated real bad. Horrible company.

So here in the NE Management came up with the idea to canvas areas around COR as the penetration rate was not up to par. So with that D2D indirect went door to door ( even in areas where no solicitation was allowed ) and sold our products with false pricing, false promotions and outright lying. With that, our reputation both locally and nationwide got destroyed. Neighbors talk. Lets face it, I bet you talk to yours. So now our little store has very little traffic, only those who got ripped off from D2D. But we still have the same numbers to hit. Not that we can offer the same promo's that D2D offers, or online, or over the phone - but yet we must still compete with our own. And yet all these sales channels say the same thing to every customer ......just go in to your local store - they will set up everything for you ; just go to your local store - they will exchange the phone for anything you want ; go to your local store and pick up your gift card there ; go to your local store, they will waive all your activation fee's. So are we suppose to do sales or cust service as we are confused - cause all that's left is crumbs.

But if I do stay, what’s the point of getting invested in my work? Hard work and skills aren’t rewarded here. They’re punished. Because in the end, they just come with a higher price tag.

Hi all, It's really cool that we can all share information anonymously here but it bothers me that this is totally public. I think that it makes sense to move these important and sensitive conversations to a place where only Illumina employees have access (maybe Glassdoor bowls?). There is no way of knowing if the information posted here is coming from a good place or being planted by competition or outsider haters (fu-k you Alex Di-kinson). We all know that our conversations and sentiment here leaks out to Linkedin and may end up having an impact on how our company and teams are perceived externally (investors, competition, etc.) and that may make our work even harder. What do you all think?

After a few years at Oracle, I was let go, not because of performance but because of this AI nonsense. Still, I’m not surprised when I took this job, I knew this company didn’t care much about their employees, but I was happy to have a paycheck and lucky to pay my bills. I'm just very disappointed…

Below are a few takeaways:

My coworkers were amazing. Everyone was great to connect with.
Significant amount of training..
Compensation was below average, but it paid the bill.
Great healthcare.
Work from home.

The negative:
My management was mediocre. Some teams had great managers, but mine was a total disappointment. All he cared was to look better for his director.
No raise, work harder. No one get a raise.
The amount of work to meet your metric was nonsensical. Always under the g-n!
I worked over the weekend to do a great job, and that is the thank you!!
You learn a lot in the first year, but you get stuck in a role you will never move up!! Your skill get stagnant.
The manager only selects a few for a raise.
Manager control the amount of work you get and purposely try to sabotage you it seems. No transparency.

Bottom line
I'm sad I'm gone, but it's better I deal with this now, than waste another five years of my life in this company which I would have done.

I see many posts asking if the layoff will be over.
Be realistic with yourself. Oracle will lay off more people next year to fund its investment in AI. It's a high-debt company, and they need to trim peoples. All you can do is have a safe backup plan and upskill. Don't work hard for this company!

Oracle is all about cutting cost now, and to increase its stock value. Their new Ai platform is already a total mess. They don't care about their customers or improving their tool set.

Maybe I'm wrong with all of this but that my interpretation.

Wish everyone the best!!! Don't stay too long there!!!!

To: All Employees
From: Leadership Communications
Subject: Reinvention Update

Dear Team,
As part of our ongoing Reinvention journey, we want to take a moment to recap the tremendous progress we’ve achieved, which on closer inspection looks suspiciously like chaos:

• Q2 Results: While our financial performance was pure garbage, we see this as a powerful opportunity to demonstrate resilience and accelerate the pace of transformation, because turning failure into a buzzword is cheaper than fixing the business.

• Leadership Evolution: John B has transitioned from his role as COO to continue serving on our Board, which sounds like a noble continuation but in practice means his head was required on a silver platter. He will chair the new Integration Committee, which is a committee no one asked for but looks reassuring in press releases.

• Leadership Innovation: Our Chief Disruption Officer, Deena P, has announced she is leaving to spend more time with her family, which is the universally accepted code for “thank you for the selfies, now please go". We are grateful for the inspiration and hashtags she brought to Reinvention, because nothing drives shareholder value like social media content.

Looking forward, we are excited to announce the next step: a global headcount optimization initiative. Executives have been tasked with submitting names by end of Q3, at which point 3,600–4,800 colleagues will be invited to explore career opportunities outside the company.

As a global enterprise, we are committed to fairness, but also math: it is dramatically cheaper and faster to fire people in the U.S. than in other countries where local laws demand notice periods, unions, and dignity. Accordingly, our American colleagues should expect to play a leading role in this Reinvention milestone, because your jobs are legally the easiest to erase.

We understand there is hope that reductions will focus on less-productive management layers. While that hope is touching, history has shown us that those compiling the lists — along with their friends, spouses, siblings, and Saturday tennis partners — somehow never appear on them.

Thank you for your ongoing commitment to Reinvention. With fewer people, less stability, and more recycled jargon, we are confident that together we can continue to deliver bold PowerPoint slides that tell a story our numbers cannot.

Warm regards,

Your Leadership Team

Visa must be buying Best Place to work awards and most ethical company in the world trophies. Visa has very poor leadership ethics and culture as a workplace, and have been like this for many years. Some leaders considered very successful have s-xual harassment habits and cases on their record and are protected. Other employee harassment habits at VP and above levels are enabled and empowered by HR. So anyone applying to Visa for leadership roles, thinking of ethical Visa, please do check your values and culture. If it aligns with these leadership behaviors, dive in and join us, you will be successful and will quickly climb the executive ladder at Visa.

Allstate sounds like the same useless sh-t hole that State Farm has become! Used to be a great place to be but has turned into an unbearable h-ll hole! Same Execs just different place as they all run in the same circles and listen to the same Consultants. Progressive will pass us to become the #1 auto insurer in the 4th quarter or at the latest, first part of 2026. Not only that, if they write 8 million new autos again they will be almost 9 million ahead and SF or anyone else will ever catch them. Everything the play they call fails they call it again and again at SF! It's always the employees fault, never them and their plans. During in-office weeks over the last several months, we have ambulances pulling up because someone has stroked out at their desk due to al the stress. The whole industry has just become toxic! Best wishes! Go Progressive is out motto at SF! Serves the right!

They are handling employees so much better these days. It must be some management change or strategy change

This company has changed in the last few years. Theres a clique of people hired in by their mates and now theyre slowly dragging the company into mediocrity

STEPHAINE

Selfish
Tyrant
Egotistical
Predatory
Heartless
Amoral
Insensitive
Narcissistic
Evil

Post here your most incredulous example of executive position in IBM which has limited or no impact on IBM's growth trajectory yet somehow remains entrenched in IBM-Lore as a relevant and essential part of the machine. Examples can include those who are WFAWBO (work from anywhere but an office); those who have "robust team" of 5 direct reports (including their Admin) who they never meet; those who spend more time on LinkedIn than W3; and those who seal clap great leader style every time an SVP holds a meaningless 'oldies-but-goodies" townhall. Let the fun begin!

What fun it would be if they introduced an internal ‘anonymous’ blog like this and employees could post to the leadership - would they read it and, more importantly, would they listen.

For anyone thinking the change to Sycamore is going to lead us to better things anytime you need to be ready. They’re preparing to walk the new CEO through the budget for this year but aren’t letting anyone with actual insights into the room. He’s going to be fed a load of BS that can’t be delivered and everyone will be left with the fallout.

Unless the new owners want to actually hear from the few of us that have ideas to reinvent this company, the beatings will continue.

I'm amazed at how many co-workers I talk to weekly that absolutely despise this place and hate every single aspect of their job but still pay State Farm thousands every month in premiums? Is it Stockholm Syndrome?

This company is a total living sh-t hole and the Executives are the absolute sc-m of the earth that abuse people? Not only that, we are too expensive? Can some explain why? Makes no sense, cancel your State Farm insurance and go somewhere else! Place is a he-l hole! Get them in their own "Accountability Cycle" - Fu-k that place!

It feels like Yong-Hee has visited every location, region and remote worker over the last two weeks. Squid Games is real and we know LE and Catz are the ones in the masks calling the shots when it hits RED. The only ones left getting Mr Piggy are the not the workers thats for sure.

It’s about treating your workers like excr-ment and telling them (begging them practically) to leave if they don’t like it.

It’s about urging managers to take an OHI survey to gauge the culture, and promising to share the results and then burying them and lying about why.

It’s about stating out loud that your workforce is still too old during a live town hall and then deleting the recording.

It’s about getting dismal feedback and engagement on an eNPS survey, and then sending an email late on a Friday to every management employee telling them their feedback on said survey isn’t valid, and (again) that they should leave if they don’t like it here...and then tasking your lowest level management to come up with action plans to "fix" it.

Layoffs are happening, quietly, here and there. I've seen a few people being let go just during the summer months. They will continue happening until 2030. You either find another job or make peace with the possibility of being laid off and collecting severance check. That's Cargill now days, pretty toxic!

Bumping this from @2es+1k33rmqyn for info.

The founders of EJ (including Ted himself) knew this and used that understanding to build a virtuous cycle of success that became Edward Jones. Trust built commitment, commitment fostered ownership, ownership supported loyalty, loyalty fueled business results…and so on…

At the hands of the abhorrent leadership in place today, EJ is now fully in the throughs of a vicious cycle. To be clear, enterprise reimagined is a symptom of a disease that started when Penny (who has to be among the worst judges of talent) appointed leaders to her exec team who were entirely incompetent to lead the firm forward in a new competitive landscape. Some were homegrown incompetents who Penny was foolishly loyal to (eg Cella, Dolan), others like Chubak were opportunists who actually have sophisticated firm experience but weren’t on the c-suite track in their former companies, usually due to leadership flaws or excessive levels of ego/self interest.

As the firm began to lose market share in core midwestern strongholds, those leaders in turn appointed other weak GPs (with preference to good “order takers” who wouldn’t provide constructive challenge to their insecure superiors). This had the effect of further shielding the realities of the day to day field/HO experience from senior leadership.

While GP returns grew largely due to cost cutting, underlying business performance (net new assets, new clients, FA retention) deteriorated. Leaders who have no track record of successful business transformation responded by pushing change even faster, eroding trust and confidence. Field turnover spiked, more panic set in, assets slowed further…and a vicious cycle had begun by 2022/23.

Enterprise reimagine is hatched in 2024 by the same leaders to mask their own failures, secure GP earnings and further consolidate “control” which these leaders felt they had lost. Similar to other changes, this was slapped together “loose and fast” by ELT members who have never led a restructuring and informed by 30 something consultants who can see the vicious cycle with dollar signs dancing in their heads.

Trust, confidence and loyalty is now even further eroded, effectively destroying the foundation culture Ted established the firm on. Tenured and some newer EJ leaders who challenged the path that brought us here were shown the door.

The culture that was the root of the firm’s virtuous cycle is now gone, the victim of bad leadership starting at the top. Replacing it is a vicious cycle that will now be nearly impossible to break without a sea change of leadership at the top - and an enormous rebuilding effort.

Clients, Associates and Partners, you deserve so much better.

I’ll never understand the mindset of people who think their job is validated by swiping into an office instead of actually producing results. Walking past a turnstile doesn’t make you valuable. Sitting in a cube doesn’t make you productive. And bragging about being “present” doesn’t make customers any happier.

The real measure of worth here is what you deliver — the problems you solve, the customers you help, the value you create. That used to be obvious. But now we’ve got folks acting like their contribution is measured in commutes and cube hours. That’s not work, that’s theater.

AT&T doesn’t survive on badge swipes. It survives on results. The sooner this company remembers that, the sooner we stop bleeding talent to competitors who already figured it out.

How do long timers at Cisco feel about the acquisitions taking over instead of assimilating?

1 this too shall pass eventually
2 will make Cisco better
3 can't wait until they go away
4 give them a chance

There were very few people that decided to spend the first week RTO as required by Intel couldn’t even make it four days. It shows the caliber of Intel employees

Whenever we hear someone is leaving the firm, the first question is always “leaving on their own?” It is not right that our brains have been trained to think this way.

The impact of poor mental health from a toxic workplace can last a very long time.

Incoming new hire here. What’s the current culture at Citi within HCOL offices in the US? Specifically NYC/Boston offices? Is the whole bora bora project (mass layoff) still going on?

the return to office push is really a quiet layoff.

during covid many companies overhired. now instead of open cuts, they pressure people back into offices under the culture excuse.

here’s the kicker...... 70%+ of companies will demand 3+ days in office by end of 2025. that’s almost three quarters making attendance a downsizing trick with no official layoffs... voila.

meanwhile remote, proven to raise retention and productivity, is being ki-led off. companies want control of bodies, not more value. it’s a squeeze, not a focus shift. this isn’t about better work. it’s about cutting headcount without hr drama.

and if you hear chatter like oh we’re an office culture, right before they talk comp, take it as a warning. if execs push for 5 days or dangle perks for facetime, stop and ask: is this really culture, or just a quiet exit plan.

look through the haze and fu-k them…

Nothing like some good ol big brother trying to figure out who wrote what. Post about an HR exit keeps getting removed 2 times now.

For those who don't currently work at Ford, you may think the posts about having a chair taken, restrooms in disrepair, parking lots on overflow, and people camped out in cafeterias that were not made for working are all an overstatement. As a current employee I'm here to tell you they are absolutely true and being reported by our coworkers on an increasingly frequent basis. I have personally witnessed each of those things in my building in Dearborn.

Current employees, I encourage you to join the viva engage channels where folks are sharing their experiences from around the world. You can share your experience, you are not alone.

In Mexico, they are commuting 1-2 hours each way due to the traffic congestion around the location where the Ford campus is located. In Dunton, a 20 mile drive can take 1-2 hours with traffic.

These are not employees looking to complain for the sake of complaining. These are employees who have done what was asked and showed up to their assigned location, only to be continually failed by leadership and Ford Land.

Someone posted about occupancy limits and fire code violations. They are cramming so many people into spaces that were not meant for people to be sitting at. Cords are draped across tables and the floor since there are no power outlets on tables that were meant to eat lunch at.

It doesn't have to be this way and it shouldn't be this way. Please speak up. Use the onsite feedback site that I'm sure has been shared in your channels. This is not healthy, it is not productive, and for those of us who truly want to see the company succeed, it is accomplishing nothing but tearing us apart.

The wider we share our experiences, the more chances we have to put some real social pressure on those who made these decisions.

To all of those showing up, hang in there and know you're not alone. And also, I'm sorry, we used to be so much better than this.

Ford’s crawling with shameless a-s-kissers who couldn’t do real work if their lives depended on it.

Still supporting many incompetant LL5,LL6, supervision. Why?

LL4- sure want to rid many GSR but living incompetent, arrogant, self serving employment in their own bubble.

“That’s capitalism folks. You either succeed or fail or someone could buy us”

I heard that from CEO in person about 4 months ago.

We have become a case study for students!

ExxonMobil is one of the largest publicly traded international oil and gas companies in the world. So why is this successful 140-year-old company dealing with an allegedly toxic organizational culture?

What is organizational culture?
Organizational culture is a firm’s shared values, beliefs, traditions, principles, rules, and role models for behavior. Also called corporate culture, an organizational culture exists in every organization, regardless of size, organizational type, product, or profit objective.

COVID-19 exposes cultural problems
According to a Bloomberg article, the pandemic was a difficult time for Exxon employees thanks, in part, to low crude oil prices. Salary increases were halted, benefits were reduced, and the company faced layoffs.

Morale was low, so after about a year and a half, Bill Keillor, global IT vice president, wanted to help. His leadership teamed arranged an awards ceremony and promoted it on the company’s internal social network Yammer. According to anonymous reports, the award ceremony, which was largely virtual, turned into a tense town hall with attendees voicing concerns and asking tough questions. Exxon is known for having an authoritarian, top-down culture, so this did not sit well. Allegedly, Keillor snapped at attendees and brushed off their questions.

Turnover
After the event, employee-created memes circulated private chats, slowly making their way across the company. Some joked about quitting, but for others, it wasn’t a joke. The company’s turnover rate is the highest since 1999 when Exxon merged with Mobil. In the last two years, 12,000 employees have departed, less than half of which were from layoffs.

According to an Exxon statement, every company has experienced attrition in recent years due to the Great Resignation, and the oil and gas company does not consider this to be a long-term trend. Revelio Labs, an intelligence company that uses public employment records, says Exxon’s turnover rate is in line with the nationwide average but higher than competitors, including BP, Chevron, and Shell. Exxon disagrees with this analysis.

Inside Exxon’s culture
Bloomberg Businessweek’s investigation suggests there may be a deeper problem at Exxon. The publication interviewed more than 40 employees (current and former) and reviewed dozens of Exxon’s internal documents, and found evidence that Exxon has an insular, fear-based culture that is out of touch with the outside world.

Exxon uses a performance ranking system. Previously, employees were ordered from 1-to-100 on a bell curve, but the system was reworked in 2020 to make the processes more transparent and helpful to employees. Instead, employees are placed in performance categories. Anyone in the lowest category can choose between a performance improvement plan or severances. According to Reuters, about 5 to 10 percent of the company’s workforce is assigned performance improvement plans. Employees in the lowest-performing tier can save their job by improving their performance, but a significant portion of them will leave.

A senior corporate advisor says the system should not be feared or a source of anxiety because it helps employees succeed and keeps their performance in line with organizational objectives. On the other hand, some individuals say the ranking system makes employees hesitant to share bad news or unpopular opinions.

According to an analysis by CultureX, an MIT organization that uses artificial intelligence to evaluate organizational culture using Glassdoor reviews, Exxon faces toxicity challenges and ranks below 143 out of the 196 industry benchmarks CultureX measures. The most frequently discussed cultural values, according to more than 1,400 Glassdoor reviews, are agility, performance, and execution.

Exxon on the defense
An Exxon spokesperson responded to these criticisms, saying they were unfounded. The spokesperson pointed to the number of new employees hired every year and how long people tend to stay with the organization. She suggested Bloomberg’s investigation made broad observations with few data points.

Despite these questions about ExxonMobil’s organizational culture, the company is performing well financially with its stock nearing a record high. If there is indeed an organizational culture problem, Exxon will have to address it to attract and retain the best talent.

In the Classroom
This article can be used to discuss organizational culture (Chapter 7: Organization, Teamwork, and Communication), morale (Chapter 9: Motivating the Workforce), and turnover (Chapter 10: Managing Human Resources).

Discussion Questions

Define organizational culture, morale, and turnover.

What evidence is there to suggest ExxonMobil has a negative organizational culture?

If ExxonMobil has a top-down, authoritarian culture, why do you think employees spoke up during the award ceremony about their concerns? Why do you think more than 40 employees agreed to speak with Bloomberg?

This article was developed with the support of Kelsey Reddick for and under the direction of O.C. Ferrell, Linda Ferrell, and Geoff Hirt.

References:
"ExxonMobil," Sloan Review, https://sloanreview.mit.edu/culture500/company/c289/ExxonMobil

Jennifer Hiller and Shariq Khan, "Angst at Exxon as Managers Begin Employee Performance Reviews," Reuters, June 21, 2021, https://www.reuters.com/business/exxon-cut-us-workforce-by-up-10-annually-bloomberg-news-2021-06-21/

Kevin Crowley, "Exxon’s Exodus: Employees Have Finally Had Enough of Its Toxic Culture," Bloomberg, October 13, 2022, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-10-13/exxon-xom-jobs-exodus-brings-scrutiny-to-corporate-culture

https://www.mheducation.com/highered/blog/2024/06/does-exxon-have-a-culture-problem-march-2023.html

John Stanley has we-ponized the 5-day RTO and turned AT&T into a corporate Hunger Games.
🚗 Long commute = the opening obstacle course.
🪑 No desk = fight for survival.
🅿️ No parking = bonus round.
🏢 Sh---y buildings = final boss.
🏴‍☠️ Low morale = the prize.

Stankey wants a market based culture, but it’s a 2 way street and we need to give them the same. Just so the bare minimum to get paid and save any effort and energy you have for when you move on to your next company.

People just want to be told what the plan is. The company should just quit with the management speak and tell everyone what the plan is. They want attrition right? Maybe admitting what the future looks like will help some people on the fence decide to leave.

Hahaha! Do you think he is transparent. Haha. He is just waiting for some luck haha

In the gilded towers of BNY a bold new vision has emerged—one that promises to revolutionize banking by replacing logic with leveraged cost ratios, and employees with AI bots. The mission? A 25% displacement goal so ambitious it makes someone with an unusually large head look like a walking Super Dome.

This is not just a transformation. It’s a crusade. A cost-efficient, culture-energizing, AI-powered march toward oblivion.

RTO: Return to Office or Return to Obsolescence
The EC’s flagship initiative, Return to Office (RTO), is less a policy and more a spiritual awakening—one that beckons employees back to the fluorescent-lit temples of productivity. Not because collaboration improves, mind you, but because empty buildings are bad for optics and worse for lease negotiations.
Employees are given two choices:

1. Return to the office and pretend the vending machine is a coworker.
2. Voluntarily resign, thereby forfeiting severance and preserving the sacred cost-to-income ratio.
   It’s a masterclass in corporate jiu-jitsu: force attrition without triggering WARN notices, all while claiming “voluntary turnover.” HR calls it “strategic realignment.” Employees call it “gaslighting with a badge swipe.”

Leveraged Cost Ratios: The New Religion
The EC’s obsession with leveraged cost ratios has reached theological proportions. Every decision—from layoffs to latte restrictions—is filtered through the holy spreadsheet. If the ratio improves, it’s divine intervention. If it worsens, blame middle management or the interns.
To meet the sacred 25% displacement goal, the EC has deployed a three-pronged strategy:
• Radical Offshoring: Because nothing says “client intimacy” like a 13-hour time difference.
• Real Estate Consolidation: Turn five buildings into one, then fill it with crowded parking lots and free ice cream.
• Geographic Darwinism: Employees must relocate to “low-cost hubs” like Pittsburgh, Lake Mary or “somewhere near a functioning airport in Poland.”
Those unwilling to uproot their lives are gently nudged toward “career transitions,” which is EC-speak for “LinkedIn Premium trial.”

Offshoring: The Great American Job Evaporation Act
In a move that would make Machiavelli blush, the EC has embraced offshoring with the fervor of a startup chasing Series A funding. High-paying U.S. roles are being shipped to India and Poland faster than you can say “knowledge transfer.” Now tell that to your son or daughter with a new Comp Sci degree and a huge student loan!
The rationale? “Global talent optimization.” The reality? A 3 a.m. Teams call with someone who just inherited your Jira board and thinks “Agile” is a yoga pose.
Meanwhile, U.S. employees are asked to train their replacements with a smile, a script, and a non-disparagement clause. It’s like being asked to decorate your own guillotine.

Real Estate: Consolidate, Congest, Confuse
BNY’s real estate strategy is modeled after a game of corporate musical chairs—except the music is a fire alarm test and the chairs are pulled with barely a WARN notice
Entire floors are shuttered, cubicles are repurposed as “collaboration pods,” and thermostats are set to “Arctic Ambiguity.” Employees who once had offices now share hot desks with the ghost of productivity past.
The EC touts this as “space efficiency.” Employees call it “a dystopian WeWork with free Starbucks coffee.”

AI: The Messiah of Mediocrity & Risk
To distract from the mass exodus and morale collapse, the EC has unveiled its pièce de résistance: artificial intelligence. Not the kind that solves problems, but the kind that generates code fixes and sends and endless stream of calendar meeting invites.
AI is heralded as the “game-changing solution” to banking’s future. Never mind that it can’t distinguish between a compliance breach and a cat meme. It’s here, it’s expensive, and it’s definitely not replacing the EC anytime soon.
Investors are told that AI will “energize culture.” Employees wonder if that means replacing the annual bonus with Eliza-generated haikus.

Investor Relations: Fiction Meets Finance
In quarterly earnings calls, the EC paints a picture of a vibrant, energized workforce—one that’s “leaner, more agile, and deeply committed to innovation.” This is technically true, if by “leaner” you mean “unemployed,” and by “agile” you mean “dodging layoffs.”
Analysts and interns nod approvingly, spreadsheets and dashboards sparkle, and stock prices flutter upward like a paper airplane in a hurricane. Meanwhile, the actual workforce is Googling “how to fake enthusiasm in Teams meetings.”

Corporate Absurdities That Deserve Their Own HR Memo
To truly appreciate the EC’s strategic genius, one must examine the absurdities baked into the day-to-day experience of surviving their vision:
• Buzzword Bingo: “Let’s circle back after we socialize this idea.” Translation: We have no idea what we’re doing, but we’ll pretend to have a plan once enough people nod.
• Perks That Feel Like Punishment: Free kombucha on tap—but new high priced benefits premiums and no dental coverage and no payment for unused vacation.
• Performance Reviews by Ouija Board: “You exceeded expectations, but we’re giving you a ‘Meets’ to keep your raise under budget.” “Your leadership score dropped because you didn’t smile enough in Teams meetings.”
• Office Space Shenanigans: Hot-desking in a building with no available desks. Hot seating means stall #3 on the 11th floor. “Collaboration zones” are of course next to the expensive coffee makers because by design this is where innovation happens. Open floor plans are designed by someone who’s never worked in one.
• AI Adoption Theater: “We’re using AI to streamline operations.” Translation: We bought a chatbot that can’t answer basic questions. “We’re training AI on our internal data.” Including the EC’s lunch order history and passive-aggressive “word salad” emails.
• Layoffs Framed as “Strategic Realignment”: “We’re right-sizing the organization.” By removing everyone who knows how the systems work. “This is a growth opportunity.” For the remaining employees to do three jobs.
• Relocation Roulette: “You can keep your job if you move to Lake Mary.” With 10 days’ notice and no relocation support. “Remote work is no longer aligned with our values.” But offshoring is.

Culture: The Energized Mirage
The EC insists that culture is thriving. There are town halls, virtual scavenger hunts, and mandatory quarterly mindfulness fireside chats led by designated talking heads, but when it comes to answering questions about people issues and layoff concerns…. Guess what, sorry folks we’re out of time!
But beneath the surface lies a culture of fear, fatigue, and forced optimism. Employees speak in hushed tones, Teams channels resemble support groups, and “career development” means surviving until Q4.
Still, the EC remains undeterred. After all, nothing energizes culture like a 25% headcount reduction and a chatbot named “SynergyBot.”

Conclusion: The Cost of Cost-Cutting
BNY’s EC team has achieved something truly remarkable: a strategic plan so aggressive it makes a hostile takeover look like a bake sale. Through RTO mandates, offshoring, real estate consolidation, and AI evangelism, they’ve redefined what it means to “optimize.”
But in their quest for cost efficiency, they’ve forgotten one thing: people. The ones who built the systems, served the clients, and made the spreadsheets sing.
So here’s to the displaced, the disillusioned, and the deskless. May your severance be generous, your next job be remote, and your AI overlords be slightly less passive-aggressive.

The sad thing is, despite the reorg, nothing will change. We need a bigger shakeup at the top if we want to right this ship. A much bigger shakeup.

Dell has 800k employees current and past that would never return to work for dell. Tootsie roll has never laid off its family and it workers don’t leave