#culture

Got an offer today after several months off. Couldn't believe what I was seeing. The company offers profit sharing and an employee stock options plan. Sounds like a company that cares about its employees. Not sure why Dell couldn't...or better yet, wouldn't do this for its employees. There are better alternatives out there.

Hey anthem, you will not force or coerce me to volunteer to your chosen causes just so you can can get brownie points where ever you are trying to get them….. I volunteer and have for years, the way people are supposed to….. not for credit!

Reading in one of the posts that there are “reservations” about the helpfulness or productivity of GT EMEA teams hits hard, especially now, in the midst of layoffs that are already testing our collective resilience.

Having overseen cross-geo value delivery teams for years, I can say with confidence that many EMEA teams have matured into highly effective, fast-moving, and quality-driven units. We’ve delivered value; not just outputs, by staying close to our consumers, our business partners, and each other. That’s not a claim; it’s a lived experience!

What I’ve learned from working in a global domain is this: when leadership becomes micromanagement, when governance overshadows trust, and when agility is reduced to a checklist, we lose the very essence of what makes teams thrive. We lose people. We lose purpose.

Simon Sinek puts it well: “You can’t manage people. You can manage a process, a project, a schedule, but you lead people.” Leadership is a human function. It’s about care, inspiration, and connection, not enforcement.

And yet, we’re seeing the opposite. While we speak of agility, we’re letting go of the very people who embody it. While we claim to value empowerment, we’re centralizing control. While we celebrate Nike’s people-first culture, we’re eroding it from within.

This isn’t just about GT EMEA. It’s about what kind of global team we want to be. If we truly care about value delivery, let’s start by valuing the people who deliver it.

I recently had an epiphany of sorts.

Someone on this page shared that many ex ATT employees went to a company called WTT. When I went to their company website I saw a smaller company that thrived by saying it valued its employees. The quote by the CEO was encapsulated within background photos of happy employees. When you look closer at the faces in the photos, you can see genuine happiness.

Here’s the quote.

Our employees are the foundation of our company's success and how we run our business. That's why we are invested in them and their well-being, and why we strive to create a culture that empowers, supports and celebrates all people."

Jim Kavanaugh, CEO and Co-Founder

I said to myself, I remember working for a place like that. Then it hit me. Why am I still here?

I liken it to the frog in the pot. You don’t know you’re cooked until one day you wake up. It happens slowly so it’s hard to see and feel the change. Little by little they’ve been turning up the heat on the stove and I can now feel myself starting to cook.

The question now is, when will I be done? The thought is already placed in my mind.

I can do better. We can all do better.

I’ve worked for a number of media companies but Paramount is, by far, the worst as of late. I’m counting the days until I’m out of this toxic place on 10/31 and thankful that I’m able to retire. For anyone thinking of joining this company- DON’T!

Can we be done with the “proud to work for Cargill” posts on social media? Who are you fooling really?

Finished another week some how. State Farm is just a horrible excuse for an employer and represents all that is wrong with corporate America. For my first 15 years at State Farm I can honestly say I looked forward to going to work just about every single day. These last 10 years have been an absolute clown show. I thought it was bad but it is accelerating at an alarming rate. Everything they do sets you up to fail and ultimately sc--ws the customer over. I'm embarrassed most days to go into work. If we didn't have soo much money State Farm would be out of business within the decade. Please let it be known that 2026 will be the year of a huge exodus (voluntarily and involuntarily) for most people at State Farm. They are trying to get as many people to quit over stress leave. Horrible changes are coming at every turn from the pension, time off, health care benefits, return to work mandates and more unadulterated pressure. They are too cowardly to treat people appropriately and will just continue to destroy lives and careers. There is a special place in h-ll for these people making these decisions. Sold their souls to the devil. Run away as fast as you can, it gets worse!

In the few times the dfw area event has been cancelled there was usually a message about it. Don't recall seeing one this year, not that we go. Just an observation.

I’ve lost count of how many meetings end right where they started. So much talking, no real direction, and when someone actually offers something useful, it gets dismissed. Why is it that the people running things can’t tell the difference between noise and insight?

Someone is finally saying the quiet part out loud https://www.msn.com/en-in/money/topstories/i-ll-never-work-under-an-indian-chinese-manager-qualcomm-whistleblower-slams-anti-american-bias/ar-AA1O3jEh?ocid=BingNewsSerp

For 10 months I’ve been working for a new company, here is a summary of my experience.

Managers are nice, especially in snr exec positions, humble too.

DXC is antiquated - the Tech in the real world is far more up to real world standards

The company I work for has proper salaries for employees, £70k for a PM Lead 4 days a week

Better staff benefits package, similar to perks at work but better discount %

Company paid meals

Manager said casually on a day we were going to be on site that we will go for a meal, I have the company credit card. And it’s not Nando’s!

Company paid Xmas meals (menu ordering)

Company paid fitness classes after work and lunch hour

Company paid proper well being session with people on site

Any training request is approved

Free EV charging on site

Barely any town hall meetings

If someone leaves or retires - the whole company gets an email with a thanks

No expectation to work stupid hours

They are genuinely shocked at my strong work ethic, DXC put you in a constant state of fear, and we have to work damn hard to not show on the redundancy radar, they think I work very hard and super productive.

If you’re under 60, you are wasting your years away here. Apply for jobs, and if you get an opportunity don’t look back.

BAE staff rejecting annual over 3% rise, most people in DXC haven’t had 3% in 10 years. Let that sink in.

Our host today is none other than the '5 o'clock shadow', and today’s question is:

What makes me excited to come to work at BNY every day?

Survey says…
The PEOPLE! (ding, ding, ding . . . great answer!)

Yes, the same people who’ve been driving our culture, transforming our engine, and—plot twist—being systematically offboarded to optimize shareholder value!

Because nothing says “culture” like a quarterly spreadsheet of headcount reductions and a celebratory bell ring when the stock ticks up 0.3%.

Culture now comes with 4 daily badge swipes per week, 54 hours of required new training, and a ghoulish labyrinth-style corn maze set up to ensure your non-compliance with HR and BNY Training policy requirements. Can you say: "NO SEVERANCE FOR YOU!"

Let’s break it down:

• People drive our culture.
  -- Especially the ones who remain after the reorg, the re-reorg, and the “strategic realignment.” Survivors of the Hunger Games: Finance Edition.

• Culture is the engine behind our transformation.
  -- And like any good engine, it runs lean, burns out occasionally, and is replaced every fiscal year with a cheaper offshore model.

• Transformation is our purpose.
  -- Which explains why every team meeting feels like a live-action episode of “Who Moved My Org Chart?”

So yes, I come to work excited—excited to see which department has been renamed, which colleague has vanished mid-email thread, and which new acronym we’ll pretend to understand until it’s sunset in Q2.

Because at BNY, we don’t just value people...

We VALUE them, DEPRECIATE them, and then WRITE THEM OFF — all in the name of transformation — VVV style.

So for all you kiddos out there young and old ... Trick or Treat and Happy Halloween!!!

This is a term used when convenient, but not one that represents reality.

"One thing that you begin to notice when you spend a lot of time around people who perform at a world-class level is that they are more prone to anxiety. So when you shake things up, you’re most likely to rattle the very people you can least afford to lose and who can most easily leave."
https://www.fastcompany.com/91384291/how-to-truly-change-your-organization

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3_PPdjD6mg

What’s going on in Procurement these days? The team seems overloaded but it’s unclear what real value is being delivered. The group under Sekar has become almost impossible to work with — rude, defensive, and constantly shifting blame when scope or deadlines are missed.

Everyone knows about the behavior, yet nothing changes. Sekar openly says “Dave has my back,” and it shows. Where is Priscilla in all this? Why is this being tolerated? The lack of accountability and respect is getting out of hand.

Is anyone else experiencing the same issue or hearing similar feedback?

Out of all the things people gripe about on here, it appears the only thing that gets taken down is when you talk about the CEO of Xerox, or make reference to the post being taken down (so this post may disappear).

So I'm assuming these are the only posts Xerox is complaining about to the moderator of this site?

How sad?

So basically, legal, or a a SLT admin, just trolls this site all day looking for SB related content to take down, and all the other horrible (BUT TRUE) things people have to say about Xerox are fine? This is why XRX is headed towards bankruptcy, the only thing they really care about is insulating SLT.

We can’t control who leads Chevron. What we can control is our attitude about our sphere of influence. Nothing you do to improve your skills or deliver results is without merit. At the end of the day you work to provide and honor the one that has given you the intelligence, skills, and work ethic. We may be humble servants, but we’re not servants to Mike, the ELT, etc. If we’re meant to be elsewhere, then so be it.

In the current "Wortwechsel" he is towing the line. 1-2% seems okay for him.

On the other hand he focuses on the importance of culture. "Growth culture" is, according to him, soooo important.

Am I the only one who sees a certain amount of contradiction here?

At least he apologizes for the "brutal" remark, the tooth brushing (both DA) and the statement "at least my job is secure" (SS). Something at least.

I propose that there is a mid management level cull throughout NOV. Managers at the top are clueless and ineffectual, always have been/always will be. The mid level have neither direction nor personality - we require these to get back a culture of support and team focus.
“This is the way”
Children of the watch

I am new and joined 3 months ago. I am a fresh grad engineer and came to exxon for experience and to learn. Every other employee treats me like an outcast and does not interact with me. I have tried to talk to these people and they just ignore me or say they are too busy to be bothered. I am learning nothing from my time here at exxon. I was put on the United way committee and tasked with bugging employees to complete their contributions. I was told that there were groups or clicks at the site In am at. I reminds me of the caste system in india. I am like a untouchable dalit caste indian at this place. I was warned by an older employee that is ready to retire about the toxic culture and dysfunction. Everything he told me has happened to me. He also told me about this layoff site and I have learned a lot. If I had read these post before I joined I would not have come. I am hoping to last at least a year but want to leave right now. I feel that I will be nsied or piped because I am not doing any real engineering work. I have been nice to everyone I have met but no one has reciprocated the niceness. So now I just avoid all these je-ks and sit in my office and hide out. I find it easier to avoid them then interact a feel stupid by talking to them. There is definitely a huge toxicity problem and behavioral problem at exxon.

Ge-z reading all these posts it's clear there are a lot of s-xist pigs at the company. Many probably put on a nice exterior in the office as well but put a keyboard in front of them on this forum and you see what's really there.

Liz is retiring from Chevron, and the Earth itself may need a moment to recalibrate. After 36 years of finding oil in places most people wouldn’t even vacation, she’s finally trading seismic data for actual peace and quiet. Somewhere, a basin is weeping.

Chevron’s official statement praised her “collaborative leadership” and “global impact,” which is corporate-speak for “she made miracles happen while we reorganized every six months.” Liz didn’t just lead exploration—she led the delicate art of pretending budget cuts were strategic pivots.

Her successor now inherits the impossible task of filling her boots, which are rumored to be made of titanium and sarcasm. Good luck, Kevin. May your PowerPoints be short and your dry holes even shorter.

So here’s to Liz: the geophysicist who could read rocks better than most people read emails, who survived more reorganizations than a filing cabinet, and who now gets to enjoy a life free of acronyms, alignment meetings, and the phrase “value creation.” May her retirement be rich in irony and poor in bandwidth.

You have to sneak in and avoid the management just to get things done, if not, they are on you like hot glue because they don't know what to do.

I’ve only been here 5 years. I work directly with/answer to people who have — wait for it — never worked ANYWHERE else and they’re 25+ years deep and when I tell you it’s nearly impossible to get them to evolve into a space that ACTUALLY eliminates silos and makes work more efficient AND effective….they’re gatekeepers, and quite frankly they’re in my way. Not having experience outside of one single company is no longer the flex yall think it is. The tunnel vision and kool-aid drinking (lawd). Why are we doing reorgs if nothing is going to change other than “doing more with less”. This place pays well, sure, but they pay well enough to make you forget you've moved around laterally for years, screaming into the abyss about process improvements that would genuinely streamline things.

Who’s excited to get lectured for the next hour

Is favoritism by your manager common in your teams? Its happening in mine, and is very frustrating because the manager decides to defend this one team member by taking their side all the time. How do you navigate such situations?

Its funny that the definition of SETH in mythology is this:

In mythology, Seth (also spelled Set) is a prominent deity from ancient Egyptian mythology. He is a complex figure associated with chaos, storms, deserts, and violence

Its exactly what MW has done to the company. Will he acknowledge his failures? Will he be accountable and take a pay cut or better yet leave? Will it just be more lies?

In long years of working, most toxic environment. Not at all healthy or productive for anyone to join this organisation. PLEASE DON’T FALL FOR JOB OPENINGS UN THIS ORGANISATION. You will regret. Plus no promotion just politics.

No one communicates, no one coordinates, and you end up doing the same work multiple times without even realizing it. It’s chaos, and nobody seems to notice. This would be bad enough if we had enough people to be able to waste time, but we don't. It's making a bad situation worse, but nobody seems to give a damn.

Is anyone else beyond f u c k e d off at this stage with this absolute clown show?

So many of you are complaining but you’re the reason why the higher ups have to babysit us. I can’t tell you how many people I witnessed who would come in at 8 or 9 and leave by 11-12. I’m sure there were many others who even stayed less than that. You took advantage and now we all have to pay the price. If you don’t want to work then quit. If you find another gig, chances are you’ll have to RTO there as well. It’s industry wide. This company has always been slow trimming the fat and boy do we have more than what around Derek Flowers waist

For full disclosure, I am a white male that got let go earlier this year after 20 years with the company and yes, chatgpt helped rewrite my rant in the following professional manner.

Chevron’s Health, Safety, and Environment (HSE) organization was once the benchmark of operational excellence, a “Platinum” model respected across the energy sector. Backed by deep technical expertise and field-driven leadership, it played a critical role in upholding Chevron’s reputation for safety and discipline.

Today, that reputation is that Chevron is plain and simple, get the job done with the cheapest way possible. HSE is an afterthought.

Insiders and industry observers say the HSE function has lost its edge, evolving into a bureaucratic arm focused more on compliance optics than real safety outcomes much of what was seen in 2019 and repeated over and over again including this year. Chevron HSE Moto was White Males not wanted. Look at today's HSE demographics. Experienced white male professionals have been replaced or sidelined in favor of internal favorites and corporate climbers, with leadership roles increasingly filled by those lacking field or technical experience.

Chevron’s recent cultural pivot, including a strong emphasis on DEI initiatives, has sparked a rash of incidents. When qualifications and expertise take a back seat, especially in high-stakes functions like HSE, the results can be damaging.

The shift is already visible: incident reviews are increasingly sanitized, technical audits feel performative, and institutional knowledge is quietly being kicked out the DEI no white males allowed door. These are all my opinions rewritten by ChatGPT.

it's been chaotic like this at intel for a while now.

the last value-add ceo was grove, but everyhting after him is just junk & leaches.

nobody cares, they are just milking thecash cow, a long succession of ambitious but incopetent clowns.

One of our core values is 'Embrace Change '. And you will be penalized if you don't. Any concerns voiced about the negative impact of some changes get you referred to HR for a talking to about teamwork.

It does not seem like they are as concerned about being a great place to work for all as they are about putting on a show about it. A real shame as they used to be great.

Want to Keep Your Best Employees? Workplace Culture Matters

Yes, compensation is important, according to research. But ignore employee engagement at your peril.
By Rick Wartzman and Kelly Ta-g
Oct. 7, 2025 1:00 pm ET

https://www.fisglobal.com/about-us/media-room/press-release/2025/time-once-again-recognizes-fis-as-one-of-the-2025-world-best-companies

I am not who did this survey but I feel this is one of the biggest joke of 2025

I know Founder's Day was supposedly put on a hiatus during the pandemic, but leadership said they were going to bring it back or something to replace it once the world opened back up. Once the pandemic was over Penny was the new managing partner. Here we are in 2025. The world has been open for years now and still nothing (crickets chirping). Is this just another way of Penny going back on her predecessor's words? Penny has an absolute pattern of doing this now. This is out of control how she has commandeered the company with her own vision instead of what the previous five managing partners intended. Penny is an absolute joke. No one likes her. Even people in her inner circle do not like her and are plotting for her fall (I'm looking at you KJ, SM, DC, and HM). Tread carefully, Penny. These four people will bring you close and then cut you just like you have cut thousands of associates who were once "One Edward Jones, y'all". I guess Founder's Days has been replaced. Penny replaced it with Enterprise Reimagined. Well played, Penny, well played (sarcasm).

Who says a CEO’s past track record means anything in a completely different environment? We’ll see soon enough where the new CEO stands on outsourcing or workforce cohesion.

Another long and tedious United Way season at Phillips 66 has begun.

We are being asked yet again to give to an organization where nearly 20% of your money goes to pay for administration and fundraising efforts.

We are being asked to give so that our executives can be viewed as charitable in Houston and so that they will be invited to award dinners where they are recognized.

It is your money. Give it to where you want it to go.