#employeerelations

Has anyone else had the experience of just not being able to cope with the persistent concerns of both not being able to keep up, plus the feeling that their own impending notice is a forgone conclusion, just waiting to happen?

Several months ago, I had so much anxiety, over my VP having an ongoing conniption fit over the set of metrics my team produced, not "aligning" to the "strategic message" being tried to "crafted", for an "incredibly important executive meeting"; that I worked myself up into such a panic, that I got in an automobile accident. I'm not saying the accident was 100% due to my state of paranoid stupidity at the time, but it was a major contributing factor.

My spouse ordered me to go to the doctor, and I broke down on how much of a mess I was psychologically. My spouse explained to the doctor, on how I was a completely different person than I was years ago. We went over life's issues, and framed out how I got here; and surprise, one of the biggest root cause issues was deemed to be my ongoing fear of being restructured.

The doctor placed me on several medications, several for anxiety, and several because since working my behind off for the past few years, my behind has grown to twice its original pre-Cisco size, due to a healthy diet of carbs and sugary Starbucks drinks.

I've been on these meds for several months, and am loosing weight. I feel much better, but to be completely honest; I know longer give a crud about this place. I don't like the people I work with, I really do not like my leadership. I don't know why I believed for a long time, that this was a fantastic place to work. It su-ks.

We have talked it over, and am going to try to stay as long as I can. It is refreshing to not care. Yes, I will do the work, be expect the bare minimum.

Sad because this company is being ruined by the greed of a small population of enabled executives, who just don't care to slice of whatever population of employees are needed to make their pockets fill up even faster, for the sake of the AI evolution.

If you don't like the message above, well aren't you just living with your head in the sand. Hopefully our paths won't cross, because I don't want to work with you, or worst, for you.

This might only apply to software engineering, or even certain departments, it's hard to be sure.

But if you're using any of the AI tools, especially Cursor, they come with dashboards to tell management how tokens you're using, how much of your code is AI written, etc.

They are monitoring this at the Sr Director level and above.

I'm already hearing stories of managers and directors being forced to justify to their bosses why they should keep otherwise good employees who's token usage isn't high.

Of course, Cigna has to pay for the tokens. The AI companies have us (and most of the industry) convinced we need to give them as much money as possible by using as many tokens as possible. It's as ridiculous as a for-profit electric company convincing you to waste electricity.

I think most of the managers know how d-mb this is. But it's not like managers and directors aren't also being let go. Even if they think this is d-mb, your manager is going to go along with it.. They already gave rid of the ones who wouldn't.

That's not to say there aren't still some good managers taking care of their employees as well as they can given the circumstances.

For example, if someone gives you training, or has to learn something new, and then you get laid off, you might think that was d-mb and a waste of company resources. Sometimes that is a case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing. But sometimes that's your manager doing what they can give you the skills they think you'll need in your next job after they're forced to lay you off.

58 and Laid off for the first time in. my life. I spent most of my adult life in the military so this is a new experience for me

Why is it that I always get some job that I didn’t ask for and that I don’t want? Nooone ever explains to me why the job is a good next role. Has been happening for 20 years now.

CrowdStrike CEO is gutting measurers and layers because AI/bots do their “work” better. At our 8k employees: only 2k real workers + 2k indentured foreign servants from the third world. The rest are measurers su-king value.
Measurers’ only success: transferring wealth to the rich 1% by exploiting workers, hiding behind woke DEI religion. They’ll be replaced by agents, bots, and actual producers.
This bloat will be cut by top measures. Workers and bots generate revenue — measurers and visa servants just inflate costs and slow shiit down.

Measures are seeing the pre-layoff “career development” talks to quietly cut competition in working class and bring indentured servants from foreign countries

An employment lawyer identified several indicators preceding layoffs. Return-to-office mandates often prompt employee resignations, reducing staff. Leadership comments about financial struggles can encourage employees to seek new jobs. Implementing multiple cost-cutting measures also signals potential workforce reductions. These actions help companies reduce staff without formal layoff announcements or severance.

https://www.yourtango.com/career/subtle-signs-show-up-right-before-job-starts-laying-people-off

Marshfield Schools notified 108 employees of layoffs or displacement. This action addresses a $4.52 million district deficit. Staff reductions will alter elementary operations, arts, and student services. The district faces a 62% share of the town's structural deficit. Residents must approve a tax override to prevent these cuts.

Marshfield, Massachusetts

https://www.southshore.news/p/108-layoff-and-displacement-notices

The New School introduced a new buyout offer on May 15. This offer targets faculty members facing impending layoffs. It allows laid-off faculty to resign immediately for benefits. Benefits include salary, healthcare, and tuition waivers. The AAUP-TNS criticized the offer as an intimidation tactic.

https://www.newschoolfreepress.com/2026/05/22/the-new-school-restructuring-layoffs-involuntary-seperation-buyout/

The Sacramento City Unified School District board approved over 90 additional employee layoffs. This decision defied an administrative law judge's recommendation to reinstate these employees. The judge found the district failed to prove timely layoff notices were issued. The district is working to address an over $100 million budget deficit. The board voted four to two to finalize the layoffs.

Sacramento, CA

https://www.capradio.org/articles/2026/05/22/scusd-board-rejects-judges-decision-to-reverse-dozens-of-layoffs/

Senior Director: Its not about performance that we lay you off.
Me: ok.....
Senior Director: Is there anything we can help you?
Me: Yes, don't lay me off...... (I just be nice and didn't say that)

After 20 years..... this is the conversation i got. Its so fake and insincere.....

So what do people think are the chances of serious layoffs (i.e. 2,000+ people) in August?

a.) 0% - No change
b.) 25% - So you're sayin' there's a chance.
c.) 50% - Coin flip
d.) 75% - More than likely
e.) 100% - Death and taxes

Ever since the directive has shifted to no use of force my store has been getting robbed blind.

I’m an ap manager and I as well as my team has to sit and watch the thieves ransack our store and there is literally nothing we can do about it other than “can you come with me”.

The colleagues hate us now and think we’re lazy because they see it happening but it isn’t our fault.

What we are allowed to do has changed for the negative but the expectations are still high. My director continues to push for productivity despite our hands literally being tied behind our backs.

Lord I hope this changes soon. We are one of the only retailers in our mall with this policy and as a result all of the thieves come here. 35 years in loss prevention and I’ve never seen it this bad.

Why does Enbridge insist on not using the best procedures when merging departments.
Some GDS policies are far more advanced than our counterparts. Instead of selecting the best way to do things, they just choose the Enbridge way. It's beyond frustrating for us.
Also the software is atrocious. Everything is completely FUBAR'd. Is hammering a square peg into a round hole just the way they do it? And it seems like the people making the decisions are only at their job for 5 minutes before they go somewhere else.

The Linked in posts all seem to follow this format. "After X years at Fidelity my role has been eliminated, but I am so grateful, humbled....blah blah for a couple of paragraphs... I've had the privilege...I never felt so valued...as a move on to my next chapter, I do so with immense gratitude and respect for everything that Fidelity stands for"

Then on the opposite spectrum I see recent graduates posting about how excited they are to share that they accepted an offer at Fidelity in some customer service role.

Is there some template that Fidelity is suggesting that people use?

It also feels like Fidelity does not want older people in the organization.

Couldn't care less about Meta or this job.

I heard Optum tech had some cuts.

https://donbivenspllc.com/sap-america/?li_fat_id=dac19b94-4200-4f3c-89ca-54abc78529ba&utm_term=SAP%2BEmployees%2BPast%2B%2B%2BCurrent&utm_campaign=00OTX00000B0eIT2AZ%24LD-2849%40SAP%2BAmerica%2C%2BInc.%2BDominated%2BHealth%2BPlan%23CA*CA&utm_source=linkedin#case

Mint Video: Inside Meta's Mega Cut https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eozugxg3DtY

Unfortunately, your role has been eliminated as part of today's reorganization.

As a regular employee, you are eligible for the following severance offer:

Severance payment of 16 weeks, plus 2 weeks for every completed year of service, minus your notice period.

We know this is especially difficult for employees whose visa and work authorization are sponsored by Meta. The alumni portal has general immigration guidance to help address immediate questions.

Your badge has been deactivated, and your access to internal Meta systems will be removed this morning. If you are already in the office, please gather any personal items at your desk and head home.

We are grateful for your contributions. Your impact at Meta has been an important part of our story.

Sincerely,
Meta leadership

• These are the key excerpts from an email that thousands of Meta employees received. The email, obtained by Business Insider, landed in inboxes at 4:00 a.m. on Wednesday as Meta began cutting nearly 8,000 jobs, roughly 10% of its workforce.

Meta described the layoffs as part of its continued effort to run the company more efficiently and said the cuts would help offset major investments, especially its AI push.

The cuts come as Meta sharply increases spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure. The company has forecast capital expenditure between $125 billion and $145 billion this year, more than double its 2025 spending.

For employees on visas, such as H-1B workers, the uncertainty is especially severe. They may have only 60 days to find a new sponsor or leave the country, even as the tech job market remains difficult.

I got out of SAP 12 Months ago and it's been the best decision I've made.

I was a decade within the company. But if you are sick of the BS just move on. Life is too short and wasting bandwidth in this forum.

Anyone else think corporate surveillance has gotten completely out of control?

Badge swipes trackd... VPNs tracked. Teams status tracked. Meetings in Calendar tracked. All emails scanned. Fu--ing Productivity Metrics... AI note takers in meetings nobody ever asked for.

Then leadership wonders why morale is unlived and nobody trusts mgmt anymore.

At this point I just assume every company laptop is basically a monitoring device with some work tools installed on it.

People are posting the same question all over the public channels: How is having Teams in addition to these other products saving us any money?

The answer is that it's not. First of all, Teams will replace pretty much everything eventually, but the reason Dan wants it in right this second is so they can effectively install spyware on every employee's computer.

Teams has insanely detailed tracking on keyboard/mouse usage, activity, time spent on computer, etc., and more importantly it rolls all that information up to people managers in nice, easy to consume dashboards.

Yes all of these things already exist in some form or fashion. But the information is fragmented, and managers don't currently have access to all of it. With Teams you get one centralized spyware platform that managers can easily access and consume.

I believe that the ultimate plan is to start culling remote employees by terminating for cause based on activity metrics to reduce headcount. Many other companies in the industry use teams to micro-manage and track remote employees, and many people are posting on forums like reddit about being terminated or written up for "7% decrease in activity levels".

USAA is trying to align itself with how the industry is controlling and targeting remote employees, and if I were one of them I would make sure I had a backup plan.

Paying $7 a gallon for gas, to spend $40 a day for parking, to sit in a cube and speak to no one in person. Meanwhile, other people in comparable roles, living slightly farther away are forced to work remotely with impact to their raises. This is nothing like pre-COVID because no one I work with is in my walled-off neighborhood, and everyone in my neighborhood is incredibly bitter to be there. Not too hard to see why, when this week there was an armed guard overseeing the parking entrance, asking people where they worked prior to being able to take an entrance ticket. How is this effective or responsible - fiscally, environmentally, productively, strategically, or in regard to safety? Why even have salaried employees if you intend to treat them like hourly employees? It disincentivizes them from being in the field or going above and beyond in any capacity that isn’t tracked by IP. What happened to, “We put people first,” in a culture of “do the right thing”? If the MC thinks this is the “right thing” it does not speak very highly on their behalf. Obviously, we all know they don’t really care about their team’s actual lived-experiences, but they could do a much better job of making their mandates make sense. The Talk to Us Surveys, employee banking, and PAC solicitations, in an iron-fist culture, are ironic (if not insulting) at this point. By the numbers annually: approximately 440 more hours of commuting and nearly $6,000 spent on parking alone, for a job that can be done more effectively remotely, with zero reasonable reasons given other than, “because we said so.” Bonuses are very nice, but after taxes and annual RTO hard cost expenses, the math is not mathing on the take home pay. At the bare minimum the bank could negotiate fair parking contracts in all HUB markets - public transit is not safe for many.

It won't change anything, and there will still be the associates who still want to do everything by the book in hopes that ELT will spare them. But, what if June 1st the home office was damn near empty and everyone either called out sick or WAH for some emergency reason. Imagine the signal it would send to those d-mb bags of sh!+ that sit in the corner offices. I'm sure we would all be collectively punished or lectured, but we outnumber them. They can't fire all of us, and they need us more than we need them. The 80/20 rule. 80% of the GPs and directors could take a month off and nobody would notice. 20% of home office associates who actually do the work could walk out that door and the whole thing grinds to a hault and would make a media headline. So glad to be driving 4 days a week during and energy crisis, I thought this company was all about the environment and saving the planet?

Attending meetings this week and the energy and expectations is awful, it’s clear there’s no vision and I’m already so burnt out. Does anyone know if it’s possible to opt into the layoff?

When are packages being sent out?? What is taking so long?

Wow! Hope you’re blocking

How does it feel ?
I am a bit restless. Not used to doing nothing but can get used to it. Mostly relieved. Too bored to scan through the 20 page package.
Planning to chill and focus on exercise, kitchen, family and sign the paperwork in a few days.
Still figuring out. Anything else to do and add, chime in please.

...but CVS can't afford to give a cost-of-living increase to their employees.

https://www.moomoo.com/news/post/70410806/cvs-health-cvsus-director-sells-us-317-47-million-in?level=1&data_ticket=1779459073784388

https://www.marketbeat.com/stocks/NYSE/CVS/insider-trades/

In the office alone again — just me, my badge, and the hum of lights that definitely don’t need to be on.
If I miss a day, I get put on “a list,” so I’m hanging on like a badge clip that’s one tug from snapping.

Meanwhile, the remote “leader” who is well within the RTO distance — but somehow got reclassified as remote — will probably need to set up a Teams meeting to talk to me about the importance of in‑office collaboration.
Peak corporate irony.

And the highlight of the month: after six months of coming in four days a week, I finally had my first in‑person meeting.
Pretty sure someone got forced to schedule it.

At this point, I’m basically the last survivor wandering an empty office park, trying not to end up on a list. But don’t worry leadership is listening, if we are lucky maybe some are thinking as well. 🙏

Have a great weekend and remember the holiday doesn’t count as a swipe next week.

I need to get back to work since I was asked to hire more remote workers for my team, who will never come in this office.

Your manager doesn't matter at all. They don't do anything regarding whether you remain employed or not, they learn of you getting fired about an hour before they let you know...they are useless so don't worry about pleasing your management.

Naropa University will eliminate 11 core faculty and about 40 instructor positions. This addresses a structural operating deficit of roughly $2 million. Six core faculty volunteered for leave; five others were offered it. Approximately 40 instructors will not have their contracts renewed but can teach as adjuncts. The university seeks to adjust its business model and ensure future stability.

Boulder, Colorado

https://www.dailycamera.com/2026/05/21/naropa-boulder-layoff-faculty-budget/

Staff at Southern Berkshire schools received layoff notices on May 19. Superintendent Brian Ricca confirmed 21.3 full-time-equivalent positions are being cut. The district faces a budget deficit exceeding $1 million for the upcoming fiscal year. The teachers union president reported widespread anger and a sense of betrayal among staff. Ricca plans to propose rehiring some laid-off staff using available excess funds.

Sheffield, Massachusetts

https://theberkshireedge.com/layoffs-deepen-crisis-in-southern-berkshire-regional-school-district-as-mood-turns-really-really-miserable/

Its first chance is when 90 days expire. So you are looking at just before the Labor Day.

Comment on how you feel being isolated, while others wait their turn for next round. This happens every round, laid off employees dropped off the bus, while ELT preaches Cisco impressive leadership, AI prowess and caring for employees.

Nice touch. Great empathy.
Announcing 4.000 people being fired, while wearing a 250.000$ Richard Mille watch

Just found out that they drill up to location and grade level on survey results and HR sees even further. Do not take the survey as you just put the target on your back. Anonymous my a-s.

I found Robin Vince’s LinkedIn post last week… fascinating. He calls it a “full circle moment” with his Goldman buddy Lloyd Blankfein, yet it plays like another round of leadership cosplay. It might even be touching if BNY employees weren’t here describing a workplace stitched together with fear, offshoring, and corporate theater. Nothing says “excellence” like inviting a billionaire mentor to discuss humility lessons learned at Goldman while thousands of his BNY employees beg for clarity, stability, or even basic honesty.

Vince praises Blankfein’s lessons on uncertainty and values — meanwhile BNY’s workforce is drowning in ambiguity, morale is on life support, and “risk taking” mostly means gambling with people’s futures.

He talks about embedding values “every day,” yet avoids the very public concerns about layoffs, offshoring, collapsing trust, and a workforce treated like expendable inventory in a never-ending transformation cycle.

The real full circle moment won’t be a photo op with a retired Goldman titan. It’ll be when Vince realizes that inspirational quotes and curated leadership moments don’t fix morale, don’t slow attrition, and don’t rebuild credibility.

Best news of the year .. people officer is leaving not sure what her purpose was at bd other than fly and travel all over the world posing for pics and cutting ribbons and handing out lame awards must be nice. This woman was a nobody in Sumter plant somehow made her way up the ranks .. appease Tom and ur gold .. her replacement is another useless waste of space .. talent at BD is non existent and where it exists it’s not valued it’s eliminated to be outsourced or to bring in their buddies .. yup I said it and it’s the reality ..