#culture

Two weeks ago I laid off more than 20% of my workforce. I didn’t do it because Cloudflare is struggling. We posted record revenue growth, have strong free cash flow and are adding an unprecedented number of customers around the world. I did it because business is changing, and to win the future, Cloudflare needs to change with it.

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince

or does it feel like policies and procedures change on a daily basis?

I used to honest to God believe that if I worked hard, stayed late, and gave everything to my job, I'd be valued and protected. I've learned the hard way that this isn't true. Ford will happily extract every ounce of energy you've got, praise you for your dedication, and then fire you with no notice the moment it helps their bottom line. And they won't feel bad about it. They won't even think about you again. Hustle culture's a sickness.

"Because when explaining massive layoffs to your employees, there's nothing like a performance by legendary hip-hop artist Darryl McDaniels of Run-DMC to make it all go down easier."

https://mashable.com/article/wework-adam-neumann-run-dmc-layoffs

At least somebody’s saying it like it is.

There was a time when I genuinely believed this company valued its people. That feeling is long gone. Now we are just waiting for the next layoff announcement and bracing ourselves to train the people who will eventually replace us. I won't even mind all that much when my time comes.

Before I quit two years ago, I remember it taking 15 minutes just to log in every morning. To say the place was a mess would be an understatement. Not to mention, the whole Genpact deal destroyed already low morale. I was so happy to leave it all behind. Have things improved at all since then?

I remember walking through the halls here when I first started and feeling genuine excitement about the place. The energy was real and people seemed to actually enjoy being here. Over the years, I watched that energy fade as the bank stopped treating employees like partners and started treating them like just another expense. Now it's completely unrecognizable.

I have been at Open Text for a while, and I still can't tell if leadership has any kind of long term strategy or if we are all just responding to whatever crisis popped up most recently. My previous employer had plenty of problems, but at least they had a roadmap. Here, it feels like we are always reacting to something and never actually moving forward.

My gut feeling is they don't know what they are doing and are just trying another model that will also fail. There are so many groups to all running around "getting alignment" with each other that they fail to just get the work done. They could be driving right off a cliff and all they would worry about is if they are doing it consistently across teams with shared components.

@ac+1kr3jt5gv makes a great point.

What the he-l kind of leadership is that?? How is that acceptable? This place used to have good managers. Now all of them have been laid off or left and we're stuck with new id--ts with zero people skills and even less knowledge. No wonder this place is sinking as fast as it is.

I started quiet quitting, and I remembered why I was doing my job in the first place. I went back to doing just my job, the work I was actually hired to do, because I was getting close to quitting over how overloaded I’d become. My plan was to quiet quit while I looked for something else.

Six months later, my energy is back, I’m actually interested in my work again, and I genuinely like what I’m doing. At the beginning there was some pushback, but I held the line with “I’m too busy” and “I’m doing my job,” and eventually people stopped bothering me about taking on more.

The funny part is that I don’t even want to leave anymore. Turns out a huge part of what was making me miserable was how much extra work I kept piling onto myself. Go figure.

I swear, I hear this one more time from anybody, I won't be responsible for my actions.

Everyone’s stressed, everyone’s worried about where they stand, and collaboration disappears the second pressure goes up. What happened to this place?

You gotta be freaking kidding me.

After 6+ months of torture, we gotta endure 3 more months of this bullsh-t????

Fidelity seriously needs to prioritize how it's affecting mental health of associates.

other than castkles in the sky and building a house of cards that wouldn't pass scrutiny with regulators in a proper administration that isn't as incompetent as the present one (past R or D admins, for example)? He's built an empire costing several million dollars including his own cost to the firm, gotten himself and Citi into a lawsuit...what else?

Jane has rewarded one buffoon after another

At Bolt, Breslow said, the HR team “was creating problems that didn’t exist,” as part of “a culture of not getting things done and complaining a lot.” “The problems disappeared when I let them go.”

https://nypost.com/2026/05/26/opinion/bye-bye-hr-lets-hope-bolt-financial-ceo-ryan-breslow-starts-a-trend/

That should tell you all you need to know about how far Nike has fallen…

I was not LR’ed but after this last one I’m officially checked out. I will do what I’m asked to do and nothing more. Thank you Cisco and my wonderful team but this battery is officially permanently drained.

it is tough to work here, full stop. BUT i like my manager and peers, i'm happy to be here with them. i hope we win and i hope we can make it work. i see and feel the pain......but let me tell y'all about the company i came from. i hope the opentext experiment works out

Nothing ever changes for the better around here. Especially for us lowly employees.

I’ve never worked in a more toxic department in this bank in my entire career here than Corporate Payments Systems. The management in the group are a bunch of vile survivalists who will gladly throw their employees and colleagues under the bus if it means their own survival. I have seen a myriad of talent abused and released from this specific group if they are a threat to their manager because they are talented or are not part of the favorites list. Absolutely sickening culture of cronies in this line of business. Shameful, and the spineless management who reads this board in CPS, you know who you are and deserve everything bad that comes back to you.

That's it that's my post. Somehow we lost this. I think all of us have a hunch why.

when you optimize for one thing, you usually suboptimize something else.

so now we spend energy on trivial stuff like badging, attendance, and proving people are physically present, while less time goes into the actual work. the work is still there. it just gets buried under another layer of compliance theater.

wells fargo has always had a problem with truth and trust. in good times, people work around it. in tough times, it gets harder to hide.

that’s when the cracks show.

Just curious what the board thinks. Playing politics and maneuvering the convoluted organizational structures come to mind. A bit ruthlessness and narcissism helps too. What I noticed is that most of them like to hear sound of their own voice, I guess this can be rolled up as a subgroup under narcissism.

Penny’s profile image on Amplify news stories feels like she’s laughing at us.

time to replace our good old CTO. He is old and not performing optimal. He should be fired!!!!

Any Omni/operations leads finding themselves being the mod more than STL's?

Ineffective. Politics. Curious what your experience is with a 300+ team of HR ‘professionals’?
What is it they do, let employees know to complete a survey and attend pro day?

The problem isn’t just one bad decision. It’s weak direction, poor follow through, and leadership that doesn’t inspire much confidence. Does anybody actually still see a future here?

I have heard from several people in the industry that Medtronic has become a known quantity. Candidates are turning down offers and recruiters are struggling to fill roles because everyone knows what it is like to work here.

I used to think that liking your job was a normal expectation, something that most people could reasonably hope for. After spending so much time in this place, I am genuinely not sure anymore. Is there an assumption that we are all just supposed to tolerate our work and find our fulfillment elsewhere, or am I actually supposed to enjoy what I do for eight hours a day?

I used to be the person who volunteered for extra assignments, who looked for ways to cut waste, who stayed late to get things across the finish line. Then I noticed that the people who did those things either burned out and left, or they got managed out by leaders who felt threatened by anyone who seemed too competent. Meanwhile, the people who just showed up, did exactly what they were told, and never rocked the boat were the ones who stuck around. This place doesn't want people who think or try. It wants people who nod and comply.

The only consistent message quarter to quarter is revenue declining faster than forecast. The stock price falling into the single digits says everything. If you’ve listened to this company’s analyst calls long enough you know management just pivots to whatever narrative works in the moment and they’re running out of narratives faster than revenue streams. Easily the worst management team this company has ever had.

Exactly what @aq+1kr2bpeh6 said.

He’s exactly the kind of person others have described. He posts our personal information on on Gemini, exaggerates his knowledge of tech and telecom, and then dismisses or talks down to people who actually know what they’re doing. He’s a sc-mmy person, and unfortunately more managers like him keep getting hired. If layoffs happen, people in positions like his should be first on the list. The CSSC needs a drastic change.

I had to laugh.

"AI produces gains where tasks are structured, feedback is quick, and performance is measurable. It does not magically fix bad management, muddled processes, or poor judgment. "

Sooo...who is going to tell Derek Flowers?

https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/5892858-ai-workplace-divide-careers/

I'm watching this happen right now with a person on my team who got bumped up two levels in less than a year. On paper, he looked great, lots of years in the industry, confident in interviews, talked a big game about process improvement. In practice, he doesn't understand the basics of what we do, he's broken two different workflows because he changed things without asking, and the rest of us spend about five hours a week quietly undoing his mistakes. The person who promoted him clearly didn't do any real checking. Now the rest of us are paying for it, and the guy himself is clearly stressed and embarrassed. It's a failure at every level and it happens here constantly.

I’ve never worked at a company that changes course as much as this one, constantly chasing whichever way the wind happens to be blowing, whether politically or technologically. One minute it’s one strategy, the next it’s the complete opposite, like nobody even remembers what they were pushing six months ago.

That’s what makes all of this so hard. I actually like what I do. Watching what’s been happening here, and seeing a place that used to be great get systematically torn down piece by piece, really breaks my heart.