#culture

What is going on with GP&T Enablement lately? The team leads and managers basically won’t answer emails, they bail on meetings and when any responsibility comes their way, they immediately say their team aren’t the right ones to handle.

They’ve been using the “we’re at capacity” line for like two years straight… while their headcount has gone up. It’s like the more people they hire, the less anyone is willing to actually do.

Every inconsiderate or illogical move, including pushing people close to retirement over to Cognizant, or making seemingly d-mb decisions about who to cut - it's all intentional. It's all about savings without one iota of respect or gratitude toward us. If they can save a minor buck by sc--wing you over majorly, they'll do it.

It would take a miracle worker to turn this ship around.

No matter what happens, remember that you are the best. If you go, if I go, doesn't matter, we made great things happen. Wherever you land, take these friendships and experiences with you and make great things happen once again. Until we meet again.

Paradigm was the best job I've ever had. In about a years time it was turned into the worst. It's depressing.

Paradigm didn't rely on layoffs for quick number pumping. Even during the great recession, Covid, after the incident, my understanding is we never did actual layoffs. Our old leaders would hustle, try to drum up work, dig into the war chest, to make sure we kept operating and innovating and that its people were taken care of.

But we were told, times are tough. Housing is down. We have to tighten our belts to make this work.

A few weeks ago another round, only three people, but all well respected leaders, unceremoniously gone on a Friday. Then, only a few weeks later we have an all company meeting where we meet like 10 new executives and hear about their favorite condiments. Not a good look.

Now we’re told 2% raises company wide.

Meanwhile, all the actual people doing the work are seeing a dozen newer executives running around, making confusing decisions, contradicting each other, stressing people out. They pitch projects but don’t tell anyone the goal. We don’t know who the persona is, how these projects are supposed to make money. I struggle to understand what benefit they actually add.

It just seems like a huge nepotism tree. G-yatri hires all of her old friends, get the band back together. They are all yes men/women. Just do the thing, don’t ask questions.

I’m not an accountant, but they have to cost more than all the people laid off this past year.

And that expense is on top of the probably expensive AI licenses we’re paying for. Tools, that as far as I can tell, aren’t helping us. Hushed conversations in the hallway or at happy hours about how much extra work all these new “tools” are causing. But everyone is too afraid to speak up because they don’t want to be in the crosshairs for the next round of layoffs, so the concerns only bubble up so much.

And then we have to see our company’s LinkedIn page being a shameless commercial for Blitzy. Did we get a deal on our license with them? Where is the 4X development that was bragged about? Their site looks like a marketing guys idea of what AI might be able to do, but I haven't heard any of the product folks saying, "wow, Blitzy really made things better."

Maybe it is. Maybe this is making us so much faster. But we have no idea because communication has been terrible since G-yatri took over.

We’re now extremely top heavy. I don’t know what value these new executives bring. It feels like they are slumming it with us, looking at s-xier tech startups, wishing they were there instead.

And when the market crashes, and it will soon, the do-ers are going to be the ones sacrificed on the altar of “Shareholder” value. Most these AI companies won't exist and the ones that remain are going to start charging the real prices for their licenses instead of the venture capital prices they currently are at.

I don’t know if BFS and Peter Jackson know the level of talent that they have/had at a discount because the Paradigm culture was worth getting paid a lot less for. Well the culture is dying. Everyone has updated their resumes. And if the job market were any better, there would be a mass exodus happening.

We all sit here, on the eve of the financial quarter end, anxiously staring at the all company meeting on our calendars for Thursday. Never knowing what reorg, layoffs, or new executives will be announced. These used to be fun meetings where people got together, saw each other in person scheduled happy hours for after work. Now, the meetings are met with a mixture of dread and disgust.

Serious question: is this an actual leadership change… or just another episode of “nothing to see here, carry on”?

Because if you’ve been here longer than five minutes, you’ve seen this headline before. Big announcement. Big promises. Same results. Now we’re being told the MM exit is happening in July.
July??

So we’re just supposed to sit tight for a few more months and pretend everything is fine while the same dysfunction keeps running? That the damage they did to people didn’t happen? At this point, it’s not even skepticism, it’s pattern recognition.

Let’s recap what employees have actually experienced:
• Constant churn
• Strong people walking out the door
• “Transformation” that somehow makes things worse, not better
• Leadership narratives that don’t match reality on the ground

And now we’re supposed to believe this time it’s different?

I think the real internal reaction is:
“I’ll believe it when I see the calendar hit July… and even then, I’ll give it a week.”

Also—genuine question—how much did this last year of “strategy” actually cost the company in lost talent, momentum, and dollars?

Because that’s the part no one ever addresses. If this is real, great. Long overdue. But respectfully… employees aren’t celebrating yet.

We’ve learned, we have the scars, the damage has been done and we will pray for the future org they fake their way into.

We have a 64% completion rate and the survey closes on Wednesday.

If they don't reach 70%, Cisco gets excluded entirely.

It's best you don't do this survey at all, rather than voting negatively and getting us over 70%

I moved across the country for State Farm based on what they told me during interviews. Now that I'm here, the role and team setup are completely different from what I agreed to. My responsibilities aren't even close to what we discussed. You can't just undo a relocation like that but they act like it's no big deal. Nobody seems to give a damn.

Is it more effective to answer the TTUS survey or to skip it altogether?

Also, they say the survey is confidential, but they never say it is anonymous, which makes me less likely to want to tell them what I truly think.

Nobody I know feels comfortable actually using it because you never see anyone else take time. This might be specific to my area, but I highly doubt it. In the end, it ends up being worse than having a set number of days. I'm tired of pretending this is some great benefit.

My first week was just me sitting around trying to piece things together on my own. No training, no point of contact, just outdated documents that don't match anything we actually do. People keep assuming I know systems I've never even seen. It set such a bad tone right from the start.

The server business was always more sticky and now is hugely more strategic than storage.
Years of comp plans for lEMC sales focused on pushing unity, powerstore, powermax etc distracted from the real prize of owning the entire data centre. They never understood apps, infrastructure. Just boxes.
If they had focused on overall sales, share of wallet, Dell would have been even more of a powerhouse than today.
Servers were never as high margin as storage, but highly profitable and close enough to matter.

The era of prosperity is drawing to a close. Our world is entering its final, irreversible decline

We all knew that something like this will surface sooner or later. Now all engineers are expected to go full agentic starting right this second ( according to the communication). They even drafted a roadmap of how they envision this would take place. What are your thoughts about this move? I guess, this is mainly will affect technology but looks like some businesses will be included in this madness as well.

Looks like Truist Financial Corporation is gonna get scooped up by Citigroup later this year. Bill and the execs will ride off into the sunset laughing their tails off at us with a massive windfall. The rest of us? We’ll be lucky just to hang onto our jobs. Massive layoffs feel inevitable. And yeah, from what I’ve heard, the employee culture at Citi su-ks ba--s.

The U.S. version of the 2026 Employee Engagement Survey will have two questions:

1. Why the heck are you still working here? Please leave.

2. What else can we do to you and your peers, in order to get you dummies to quit? We'll try anything!

Why is she still here? She failed in her most precious task and i see her on LinkedIn accepting paid for bogus awards "best HR person" at some HR boondoggle in Orlando or Phoenix with a bunch of HR Eco chamber id--ts. Sheri did you pay for those trips or did the company?
Brian, she has no credibly or trust with the workforce.

Why are we spending so much time talking about the chevron way history? Trying to rationalize current decisions?

I want to share my experience of the layoff process at Oracle. I was RIF'd in September 2025. I worked for Oracle for 17 years: 7 years in the UK and then transferred to the US for personal reasons (my wife is American and we wanted to be closer to family). Oracle made that move so much simpler and for all the bad things I will forever be grateful to Oracle. During my time in the US I was relatively high achieving within my team and had carved out a unique and critical DevOps role within my team. It wasn't rocket science, but it was unique and critical and I thought it gave me some protection against a RIF. On the Tuesday before I was RIF'd (Wednesday) I attended a meeting with my VP, Senior Director, Director (I was IC4) and we were planning for some business critical work that coming weekend. This is relevant as no one in those positions had any idea it was coming or we would not have been wasting our time on that planning meeting! The following morning we had another meeting (Oracle and their meetings...) and the VP didn't show up... the senior director didn't show up... the director and the ICs all showed up. I then got wind of something being up around 30 mins after the meeting as people were starting to disappear on Slack. I messaged my Director and he was talking to me on the phone and then he excused himself and had to drop for an urgent meeting that had just shown up in his calendar. He messaged me 10 minutes later to say that he had been RIF'd and his access was going to go away and gave me his personal email and said he was there to help however things worked out (great guy). Then around 30 mins later I received an email from my EVP. It was a boilerplate job and basically said "Today is your last day with Oracle, so long and thanks for all the fish". My Slack etc carried on working and in fact all my access continued working, that struck me as super d-mb.... I didn't do anything with that access but others might not have been so responsible! Around 2 hours later I was locked out of everything and was left numb walking off into the sunset. I received my severance on schedule and that was that. It all just felt very sloppy and isn't the way I would have handled it. An email after 17 years just felt a lot like a "F U". My entire org was laid off (bar a couple a of guys to keep the lights on - who wants to be that guy!!) so it was obviously not personal but it just felt so sloppy.

Duke stunned by UConn in final 0.4 seconds. The Blue Devils are now the first No. 1 seed to lose in the tournament after leading by at least 15 points at halftime. Couldn’t of happened to a more arrogant fan base!

This is the most miserable and unpleasant workforce I have witnessed in my career; Mckinsey's magnum opus of misery is the hallmark and extent of attention RV has given BNY culture.

If you stay long enough at BNY you will become ghouls like our execs. Some of these fallen humans are sitting around you now, you can see the vacant look in their eyes.

If you are outside this company and read this board, don't even entertain the idea of working here... heed this warning from someone that bought into their bullsh*t

F’ing coward!

Can't blame him, everyone is jumping ship, why wouldn't he.

1.) Hire exec. team of highly compensated "friends" to virtue signal
2.) Create us vs 'them' environment
3.) Have numerous employee indoctrination meetings
4.) Spin-off non core businesses
5.) Quarterly lay-offs of 'them'
6.) Complain that Bryan isn't Chairmen of the Board

Rinse and repeat.

A rare but rapidly spreading condition triggered when Michael Dell logs on, drops a “Go American” post, and starts sounding like he just got off a call with Donald Trump.

Symptoms include:

Immediate emotional spiral on internal boards

Writing a 9-paragraph manifesto no one asked for on the layoff site

Saying “this isn’t political” while being extremely political

Refreshing comments like it’s the stock ticker during earnings

Advanced stages:

Convincing yourself every product launch is now a campaign rally

Interpreting supply chain updates as coded political messaging

Believing your PowerEdge server has a voting preference

Diagnosis:
A corporate variant of Trump Derangement Syndrome but with more acronyms, fewer facts, and way worse comment sections.

Treatment:
Log off
Touch grass
Stay off layoff sites until mild sedation sets in

Only a company that doesnt care a bit hospitality would bring Bridget back into the fold. There were parties when she left! O well glad im gone. Good luck to those still at macys. Watch your back.

I still do my job. I just don't do their politics anymore.

You can push yourself as hard as you want, but the expectations just keep changing and you’re still left feeling like you missed the mark. And it’s not isolated, it’s the same story across multiple departments. It's astounding how much this place has changed in the last several years.

Awful leadership
Open favoritism
You can forget about coaching or career development
You’re treated as a number and replaceable
Pay and benefits are subpar
Little to no accountability
And so on...

I don't see a long-term future here anymore. I don't think anybody should.

Or let me phrase that better, why do we let that be the case?

There is no doubt that some leaders are driven by ego, and we all know such people. They may seem to be propelled by “legitimate” goals such as building or expanding an organization, but what is foremost in their minds and emotions is making a success for themselves, gaining fame, fortune, influence, and personal power. They are also driven to a great extent by fear and self-protection, which is reflected in the pessimism that many of them exhibit, as well as inflexibility because they feel they have to hold on to positions, ideas, and ways of doing things that have worked in the past. In short: they are afraid of change. They are motivated to try to control change rather than embrace it.

The egotistic leader is self-centered, self-righteous and self-congratulatory. This leads to criticism of others’ ideas, actions, and abilities in order to prove one’s superiority.

Genuine, justified confidence inspires and builds followership; egotism drives followers away. For egotistic leaders, the game is about themselves, protecting their image, winning every argument, feeling entitled and defending and justifying their decisions. Egotists don’t learn from their mistakes, they defend them. They are afraid to be wrong, to show vulnerability, to listen to other’ views, and they resent having to do work they consider beneath them. They focus on personal ambition, power, status, and inflating and promoting an image. As T.S. Eliot put it, “Half the harm that is done in the world is due to people who want to feel important. “

Their Narcissism

They believe they’re the smartest people in the room. They assume they are always right, don’t listen to others’ opinions and ideas, don’t trust others, and end up trying to do everything themselves.

Narcissism is an extreme form of over-confidence that is actually quite common in leaders. Narcissistic leaders use their self-confidence and charisma to draw others and initially inspire them to follow. Dr. Berit Brogaard is both a physician and professor of philosophy at the University of Miami. She has spelled out some of the main characteristics of people who have a narcissistic, exaggerated sense of their own worthiness.

They have a grandiose sense of self-importance, tend to exaggerate their achievements and talents, and expect to be recognized by others as superior — even if their achievements don’t warrant it.

They are preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance.

They believe they are “special” and unique, and can only be understood by other special, high-status individuals. Thus they require excessive admiration and have a sense of entitlement.

They are interpersonally exploitative, and tend to take advantage of others to achieve their own ends.

They lack empathy, and are unable to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others.

They are often envious of others or believe that others are envious of them.

They are arrogant and haughty, these are all signs of an ego that has run amok.

They talk but don’t listen. Or if they appear to listen, they don’t actually act on the advice or information given.

They don’t acknowledge the contributions of others. Many great leaders find a way to praise team members and give them all the credit for success. Ego-driven people seek out the praise and gladly take all the credit.

They don’t train others, and won’t give up control and their teams never live up to their full potential.

They have excessive confidence in their own judgment and contempt for the advice or criticisms of others, as well as exaggerated belief, bordering on a sense of omnipotence, in what they personally can achieve. Sunflower bias, confirmation bias, over-confidence bias can lead to not considering what might go wrong, or that one’s own judgment might be flawed. A big ego and arrogance lead to bad decisions.

They are prone to recklessness and impulsiveness. Daniel Kahneman, who won the Nobel Prize winner for his research on decision-making, has cautioned that, “The brain is a machine for jumping to conclusions.” If you think you are the smartest person in the room and possess unique abilities and intuitive judgment, you probably won’t consider what might go wrong, what you may have overlooked, what information is missing, what assumptions need to be questioned or what might be the consequences of taking a risk.

They feel entitled and have a distorted sense of their own omnipotence. Thus they don’t plan and don’t handle the things that need to be done. They just assume things will work out for them and don’t think about the details or the difficulties of implementation.

It feels like the people making decisions no longer have a clue what our work actually involves. We tell them what's broken and they just ignore it. They acknowledge our concerns and then do absolutely nothing about them. Why should I trust anything they say at this point?

Any insight or comments on the culture of Exxon's trade floor in Houston? I'm considering a job there, but don't have a lot of insight into it and understand it is 'transitioning' with their 3rd attempt to create a trading organization. What is comp like for system traders and crude/product traders? How is culture?

I can't keep track of who I report to anymore or what I'm supposed to be working on. Projects constantly get started and then abandoned mid stream. Can somebody explain to me how this complete chaos benefits anybody, including Nike?

The workload here is insane, but what really gets me is how everyone acts like it's totally normal. Totally acceptable. Working late isn't an exception around here, it's just expected. This kind of pace isn't sustainable and I'm watching people quietly burn out all around me.

The painful and sad truth is that Cisco has become a company run by financial managers and lawyers. Such a company has no chance of growing and being competitive at the crazy growth rate of the AI ​​market. The facts are that there has been no innovation at Cisco for a very long time, the company has been operating conservatively and cautiously, resting on its laurels, there is no risk-taking, no innovation, but rather maintaining the status quo. This is the truth that all need to understand and know about Cisco. All the other talks of the ELT are worthless.

Communication has gotten so limited and people are constantly watching their backs. Nobody wants to stick their neck out or help anyone else anymore, mostly because everybody is worried they're giving somebody else advantage before more cuts. This isn't the same workplace it used to be at all.