#employeerelations

We made it through another year, but I hate what this company has become. Biweekly check-ins with inexperienced managers who now get to define your worth. Verint installed on our laptops, where five minutes of inactivity is enough to trigger a flag. Quality metrics attached to every single employee.

There was a time when working hard and being productive actually meant something. Now, every action is scrutinized. The good employees have become the problem, while inexperienced new hires are pushed through boot camps that teach them the wrong way to do the job. Then they’re sent to us with questions, and we’re expected to train them on top of everything else.

The place is a mess. At this point, I’m just counting the days until retirement—or a layoff.

The truth of it all is this….
Other banks made the bold claim that by the EOY there will be tremendous cost savings. Citi, like so many times in the past, did not want to be left out, so they made the same boast. Needless to say, its not unfolded as they thought. There’s been no huge cost savings to the level they thought, so they are scrambling to recoup some bucks. Cutting to the bone to feed into the shell game to the shareholders and the board “see, we saved money like we said”.

Needless to say and\or its quite evident, this does NOT affect Jane Fraser’s recent massive boost in pay. For that, just chop more heads.

This is important, never forget that Jane’s increase in salary while they are chopping heads or needlessly placing people on PIPs, has been deemed acceptable. THIS is what they think of the value you bring to the table and how expendable you truly are.

https://www.dimsumdaily.hk/microsoft-set-for-major-job-cuts-in-january-2026-impacting-up-to-22000-employees/

When investors realize this company was not reborn, but callously dismembered like Hannibal Lector victim leaving nothing but employee ill-will, it will be too late.

Eliza is a solution seeking a problem, all gains falsely propped up through a culture of degradation and constructive termination. Market makers cant see this yet, but they will.

You know what you have done.

I have worked for three companies before this one. Each had its flaws, but each, in its own way, understood something basic about decency. When I came to CVX, my fourth, I was told, again and again, that the culture was different. Healthier. Kinder. A place where people stayed because they were valued.

I believed it. For a long time, I wanted to.

Six years in, I can say without hesitation that this is the most hostile environment I have ever survived and I started on a rig in Midland, TX.

What makes it dangerous isn’t incompetence or chaos, it’s intention. Everything here is calculated. Smiles are worn like disguises. Praise is given only when it can be reclaimed later as leverage. If your work is good, someone else will quietly attach their name to it. If your ideas land too well, they stop being yours almost immediately.
And if you are noticed, truly noticed, by the wrong person, especially your boss, the consequences are swift and surgical. Threats are not confronted; they are dismantled. Slowly. Invisibly. By the time you realize what’s happening, your reputation has already been rewritten without you in the room.

Gossip is the real currency here. Cruelty, its favorite language. Personal lives are treated as public property, mined for weaknesses. An affair. A secret. A truth shared with the wrong person. Even something small, once discovered, is inflated until it becomes unmanageable. Stories grow teeth. Context disappears. Suddenly, survival feels like something you have to apologize for.

This is not a place where mistakes are forgiven. It is a place where they are archived.
I used to think cultures were defined by mission statements and values posted on walls. Now I know better. Culture is what happens in whispers, in meetings you aren’t invited to, in credit you never receive, in silence when you need protection.

If this place has taught me anything, it’s that the most dangerous environments are the ones that insist they are safe.

It’s very quiet in our area. I am wondering what’s going on. Awhile back people were talking their heads off now it’s quiet as a mouse around here. Work is is slimming down and all is being said is leadership is busy. Something seems off

No change and same old BS recycled..

I have zero hope from this company or any change. Time to find new job..

These executives are tone deaf

Has anyone got confirmation from their managers of the letters coming on 1/9?

Eliza™—the AI mascot of workforce reduction—just completed her annual performance review, and the results are shocking to absolutely no one.

Despite eliminating 400 jobs before lunch and auto‑generating three “We value our people” emails, she was rated BELOW EXPECTATIONS.

Why? Leadership cited her “need for constant supervision,” “poor teamwork with humans who still exist,” and “unacceptable integration costs,” which is rich coming from managers who can’t integrate a calendar invite with a coherent thought. Her accuracy and reliability were also flagged, mostly because she occasionally deletes the wrong department or callously schedules layoffs during Christmas holidays.

But the best part? Eliza™ isn’t even PIP‑eligible. HR confirmed she cannot receive a severance package, a farewell lunch, or even a sad little badge‑deactivation ceremony. She’ll simply continue roaming the digital halls, glitching ominously like a haunted Roomba vacuum, waiting to “optimize” the next unsuspecting team.

A true icon of corporate underperformance—yet somehow still praised for her “limitless potential.”

Offer letter states if you decline you might be put in a redeployment pool, does anyone know what that means?

I never seen it so bad after 15 years with the company. The pressure on our team to perform without tools and resources with no backfills in critical areas. Now voluntary retirement will have tenured people walking out the door and then we will see the problems really get compounded in our IT department where people are already barely holding it together. I really like my job and the people I work with. I hope I survive the next round of lays offs if voluntary retirement doesn’t do its job of reducing the workers to the benchmark the directors believe they need to get to to satisfy the gods.

Pretty hard to work in an environment like you do...wondering what is happening or going to happen. Sad

Have been at Nike for 1 year only I beg you all please don't write anything negative on thisnpost.... Send me positive thoughts. OK, so it has been quite sometime that my higher manager has been casually discussing converting my role to an IC role paid by hour!!!! That means saying goodbye to my health insurance, and monthly stability as my income would be based on whatever number of hours I will be needed.....
I am freaking out! I am a single mom with3 kids.... Now all of a sudden I got an email that my manager wants to speak to me about this transition to IC tomorrow... It is decided... what if it is just for one or 2 months until I finish my current workload and then suddenly there will be no more hours????¿ please keep me in your prayers tonight and yes I am so lonely I did not have anyone else to turn to to vent...

Boss repeatedly thanking team for their efforts and that this will be tough year. Almost like good bye thank yous. I think boss knows their name is on the rif list.

Oh also when I went to put pto in system my title was changed to a lower title then what I have (or thought I had lol )

Good times. Don’t stress out nothing you can control. So just keep your head down and punch the clock until they tell you to stop (while also applying externally).

How are we supposed to "delight" the customer while cutting so deep AND using AI more. These are the opposite of things that customers want. Customers want value -good product at competetive pricing. Maybe even as much as that they want ease of use. Is it easy to view/change an account? Is the person who answers the phone knowlegeable and empowered to help? Do they communicate clearly? Is the web interface and/or app easy to navigate?
There is no way to accomplish these simple things without competent people.

Imagine it’s 2030.

The wealth management industry has gone fully digital, fully personalized, and somehow still feels… human. Clients rebalance portfolios with a voice command. RIAs fully own the client experience, and their book of business. Account opening takes 90 seconds and a selfie.

At Edward Jones, a meeting is being scheduled to discuss forming a segment to accelerate the path to industry parity.

Allowing FAs to own their book is briefly considered as a way to slow attrition, until the ELT realizes that might require sharing economics. The idea is politely declined.

Edward Jones advisors are still praised for playing it safe, putting client goals at risk, but protecting GP deep pockets.

Associate pay has barely improved. Compensation decks are refreshed, grades are “recalibrated to the market,” and leadership celebrates low-single-digit increases as “competitive”. Associates who once believed their entire careers could be built at Edward Jones discover those careers aren’t being filled with opportunity, but with quiet, compounding regret.

The systems barely work, largely because leadership changed strategic direction five times in the last decade, then decided to pursue everything at once.

By 2030, competitors have built fully remote, national teams, pulling top talent from anywhere. Productivity is measured by outcomes, innovation, and client impact. Associates aren’t babysat. They thrive as a result.

At Edward Jones, all associates are required to be at their desk five days a week. Badge swipes are tracked. Keystrokes are counted. Reports are run. Leaders celebrate home-office presence as culture. A top candidate declines an offer because relocating to St. Louis or Tempe makes no sense for their family.

The industry talks about scale, speed, and optionality.
Edward Jones talks about how great things will be once…

The competition is building for where clients are going.
Edward Jones is optimizing for where employees are sitting.

Imagine it’s 2030. Edward Jones introduces “Imagine it’s 2040”, a new campaign to reach market parity.

DC is at the helm and promises to outsource everything, generating record short term profits for GPs. “A penny saved is a penny earned”. Penny agrees.

Pretty much completed ALL training in my area that AT&T offered, great reviews every year exceeded expectations, many special purpose assignments completed successfully, Just all got me laid off..... F U Stankey and AT&T

Ever wonder what it feels like to work inside a corporation that’s shrinking, expanding, consolidating, offshoring, rebranding, cost‑optimizing, culture‑eroding, “thriving together,” recharging, refreshing, and “strategically transforming” all at once—while leadership insists everything is BAU and perfectly normal?

It’s like watching a building burn while someone in a branded polar fleece calmly assures you it’s “just a controlled enhancement to long‑term stability,” right before the ceiling collapses behind them.

And because it’s a new year, leadership has prepared a cheerful continuing resolution —delivered with the warmth of a broken space heater and the sincerity of a captured strongman awaiting arraignment for crimes against humanity:

“Expect increased toxicity, more layoffs, more offshoring, and steady gaslighting to brighten and warm your spirits.”

Truly inspiring. Afterall, nothing says fresh start like a forecast of cultural decay wrapped in corporate confetti and lightly dusted with the faint aroma of smoldering ethics.

But wait—leadership wants you to celebrate.
Yes, CELEBRATE!

So plaster on your best “I’m totally fine” smile and go take a few selfies and post on social media.

And don’t forget to hashtag your favorite EC member—you know, the one hiding behind “strategic pillars” like a kid playing corporate hide‑and‑seek. Extra credit if you catch them mid‑pose for their next phony empathy post, those perfectly curated LinkedIn masterpieces where they pretend to care about employee well‑being while quietly checking their bank statements and discreetly approving the next round of “optimization.”

Because nothing captures the modern corporate experience quite like being told to “embrace the journey” while knowing your organization is in a sharp nosedive.

Tray tables up, folks!

so the 2026 benefits book is now available and as expected, nothing has changed in terms of severance benefits, still 8 weeks up to 4 years of service then 2 weeks per year of service until it maxed out at 52 weeks for 26+ years.

SAP has money for share buybacks but no money for giving employees salary increments and benefits. SAP has money to increase executive board bonuses but no money for giving employees salary increments and benefits. SAP has money to invest in AI products that have no future but no money for giving employees salary increments and benefits.

In addition, Joule and other AI slop added to flagship products do not have a good adoption rate. Customers are not willing to pay a premium price for AI features that are unnecessary or downright bad and only increase costs. So they will look at alternatives for one or more products within the SAP ecosystem.

And every single discussion regarding these exact points is derailed by unsavory comments. I sincerely believe that SAP does not need any layoffs but they are doing so simply to instill fear and use this as a bargaining chip to pay less money to employees while the executive board maximize their bonuses. Every good comment here is followed by some bad ones that force the topic to be derailed.

And the only way to fix this is to highlight the real reasons why Dominic Asam, Christian Klein and others want layoffs.

We need to stop the infighting. Because the only people benefiting from this are the executive board and highly paid area heads and VPs and managers who don't add value but have very high salaries. And the losers are ALL SAP EMPLOYEES if we keep fighting between ourselves.

On that note, can someone please share more details about the reorganizations in 2026 Q1? And if there are any more details about any potential 2026 layoffs.

2 weeks notice or quiet quitting?

Hybrid Creep ! We had WFH. We had RTO. Now, meet "hybrid creep," - The idea is that a combination of carrots and sticks will encourage people to gradually increase their in-office time without explicitly telling them to do so. That means tactics like basing promotions on office attendance, or increasing surveillance of employees or Increasing layoffs.
There’s a meaningful difference between saying “we believe we’re better together” and secretly counting phones in a building.

• One is a point of view, whether it’s right or wrong.
• The other is surveillance dressed up as management.
  Don’t be surprised if corporate culture collapses when leaders stop trusting adults to behave like adults.
  The combination of factors seems to be working: Office attendance rates are rising steadily, even as many firms take a step back from mandates.
  https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/workplace/hybrid-work-return-to-office-creep-af5a62b5

I am seeking clarification on several concerning rumors circulating internally.
It has been stated that Infinite employees are not required to work overtime. Is this accurate? If Professional Services Teams have been transitioned to Infinite, what teams are now expected to cover these additional hours?
There are also rumors that these employees who travel onsite to banks will have their corporate cards revoked, requiring them to pay thousands of dollars out of pocket and wait for reimbursement. This would create a significant financial burden regardless of how fast the reimbursement. How are these employees expected to operate under these conditions, given the realities of today’s economy?

i was part of the old EMC Corp before it merged with DELL. It had nasty culture of its own so I do not think DELL is some unusual company in that regard. At EMC there was a distinct bro and ol' boys club culture + substantial bias emanating mainly from one very specific ethnic group which is well known for its intolerance of those who are not one of their own kind and lacked powerful connections. As soon as I moved from EMC Corp I saw a different world out there especially after i moved to a different industry. Feel very happy now, these nothing but distant memories - relics from a past I do not miss in the slightest.

Never not met my 40 hrs, wondering if this is really that serious?

The HR excused me of forging the note. I responded saying HR Karen, I don't like being excused or forging a doctor's note, therefore have your HR manager call my doctor and verify the note. The HR Karen got in a huff about my referring to her as a Karen and told me she was going to have me written up by my manager for it. I talked to my manager before the start of break, and he told me not to worry about it because he's not going to take any orders from a Boeing HR Karen demanding I be written up.

As engineers supporting highly complex programs worry about potential 2026 layoffs at L3Harris, it’s worth remembering that has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on AlixPartners over four years on a failed attempt to roll out a simple reporting tool.
The money exists. It could have been invested directly into programs—staffing them properly and supporting frontline teams with real expertise. Instead, it was wasted.
Executive leadership should never allow this level of misallocation while employees are asked to do more with less. Defense work is hard enough; it becomes impossible without company support.
It’s time to invest in the people actually delivering the mission.

I've been in the accommodation process for some time (going on 2 months now) to get some workplace flexibility and I feel like HR is just dragging this on to try and make me give up on the whole process. Not only have I had my primary care professional provide a letter with their medical recommendation but they have also completed Truist's assessment form (redundant questions at that) - all saying the exact same thing justifying a medical accomodation. Now I'm hit with a "we need some more information in order to process this request."

Is this normal for those who have gone through this? This seems like such an unnecessary, painfully drawn out process for something fairly straightforward.

The company seems willing to bring back older employees, but only at a pay cut. A former coworker applied and was basically offered his old role from about a year ago (he was laid off), just with much lower pay. Unfortunately, he’s thinking about taking it since his current job is even worse and pays less. It’s hard not to feel humiliated by how this all plays out, and it makes me hate this place even more.

It’s crazy to see that someone who knows the company inside and out and has years of experience can be let go just like a newbie. How did we get to a place where tenure and expertise don’t matter at all?

Chris: “we’ve had another stellar year. Recording breaking. Our strategy is firing on all cylinders.

Merit increases thus year will be 2.5%. Inflation is 6%. Yes, I know that your standard of living decreases every year you stay at TransUnion. But I’m not the chump. You are. Because you stay.

Sorry about that. All these first class airfares to fly around the world for dubious business benefit sure do add up. “

It’s become rather clear what’s happening. The company is deliberately creating a hostile and miserable environment to pressure people into quitting on their own. Between impossible workloads and a culture of constant fear, people are breaking. If you’re feeling this pressure, know that it’s a tactic, and you’re not alone.

Joined BNY as a senior associate full stack developer in the collateral area in February. My recruiter told me bonuses at that level are around 10%. My VP coworker said she gets 10%.

I've seen some posts saying because I got 10 RSUs in November/December that I won't get a cash bonus. Is that true?

Welcome to BNY Mellon, the corporate funhouse where the future is offshored, the present is gaslit, and the past has been quietly escorted out under a PIP engineered by someone who couldn’t explain your job if their bonus depended on it. If you’ve ever wanted to experience a workplace that feels like a psychological thriller written by a committee of auditors with no moral compass, congratulations—you’re already included.

Let’s begin with the crown jewel: the 1.4‑million‑square‑foot Pune facility, a gleaming monument to cost‑cutting and the executive fantasy that geography equals talent. Walk inside and you’ll hear it—the cha‑ching of budget wins echoing like a slot machine that only pays out when a U.S. employee vanishes from the payroll.
Real estate consolidation? Cha‑ching. Offshoring? Cha‑ching. RTO badge‑tracking designed to catch you missing a swipe? Cha‑ching. Eliminating work from home so you can sit in a ghost‑town office lit by flickering fluorescent lights? Cha‑ching.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., seasoned employees are being funneled into the Performance Improvement Program Funhouse—a place where your accomplishments are reinterpreted as “concerning behaviors,” your loyalty becomes “inflexibility,” and your manager suddenly develops selective amnesia about every positive review you’ve ever received. We are told it's business, not personal; it’s “People Optimization.” Or, as everyone else calls it: age discrimination with a corporate mission statement.

Your replacement? Already hired. They’re either a contractor, an H1B, or a freshly minted state college grad whose primary qualification is generating tax incentives. Nothing screams “strategic workforce planning” like swapping a 25‑year veteran for someone new who still puts “proficient in Outlook” on their résumé.

And then there’s leadership—RV and Dermie—delivering explanations so vague they might as well be fortune‑cookie messages. “Secular headwinds.” “Strategic acceleration.” “Industry realignment.” These phrases translate directly to: We cut people because it was cheaper, and we hope you’re too demoralized to question it.
They’re corporate illusionists, pulling rabbits out of hats while quietly sawing the workforce in half, all while congratulating themselves for their “courageous leadership.”
But the real horror isn’t the layoffs—it’s the cultural decay and phony empathy. Not a dramatic collapse, but a daily drip of rot. Policies drafted by people who have never met an employee. Decisions that feel like they were generated by a malfunctioning ethics simulator. And the atmosphere? Imagine a place where hope goes to file a ticket with HR and never returns. You are told to recharge, yet you quickly realize your battery no longer holds a charge.

Employees describe it as a slow‑motion freefall: one day you’re standing on a cliff, the next you’re knee‑deep in gravel wondering when the ground gave out. Every new policy feels like it was written by someone who only vaguely understands what the company does. Every leadership message arrives wrapped in jargon, dipped in legal review, and delivered with the emotional warmth of The Grinch who has no integrity and has lost their soul.

And if you’re wondering where ethical concerns go—well, they don’t go to RV. They simply vanish into corporate legal and a maze of executives who nod solemnly while approving fake performance reviews to support a visa‑driven displacement model. There’s evidence everywhere for those willing to look, but the official stance remains a polished shrug.

The downstream effects are already here: institutional knowledge evaporating, teams hollowing out, and the remaining employees expected to train their replacements while pretending everything is “energizing.” Engagement surveys now function mostly as a cry‑for‑help collection system.

But don’t worry—leadership wants you to feel valued. So check under your seat. If you’re lucky, you might find a BNY keychain in a swag bag. A small token of appreciation for your loyalty, your decades of service, and your willingness to participate in the grand experiment of replacing experience with cost efficiency.

In the end, BNY’s transformation story is simple:
Cut enough people, hide enough truth, and eventually even the spreadsheets start believing the fairy tale.

Happy New Year! Enjoy the feeling while it lasts.

I realize this post only applies to employees who were hired before 2008, because they've changed the way our pension is being calculated going forward. I just got around to looking at my new pension estimate for retirement and it decreased 57%. My pension was the one last thing I've been holding on to; really the only thing that was truly keeping me here. Now seeing my new pension number, knowing that giving 20+ more years would only add a measley amount - I have no reason now. Cheers to a new year and hopefully a new job!

The Working better, together Amplify article has been out for three weeks and has 6 total likes. I wonder if anyone making these decisions takes note of how wildly unpopular the new policies are. Does anyone know who really pushed for this policy? Anybody part of those meetings?

“Sprinkles, the iconic California cupcake company, has announced a ‘winding down’ of operations at its remaining 15 retail locations, blindsiding employees last minute with the not-so-sweet news,” the New York Post reported. “Salty employees got the notice on Dec. 30, saying Sprinkles would start an “orderly wind-down” of the company beginning Dec. 31.”

https://www.thestreet.com/restaurants/crumbl-competitor-shutters-all-stores-with-little-notice

Crazy thing is it didn't used to be this way. In the days of yore when we were all happily remote little worker bees, we were content if not happy. Dell felt like a people-focused organization, at the very least. We were given latitude to do our own thing, expectations were normal and not overly ambitious, and the individual contributors had a certain degree of confidence in leadership.

Sure, Dell had the very-normal corporate issue of constant change, but the change was navigable. Then suddenly, everything began to change and the water began to boil. It started slowly-people being "encouraged" to use the office. The remote activities quietly disappeared. Does anybody remember the May the 4th Zoom AHOD in 2021 where a bunch of leadership dressed up as Star Wars characters? Stuff like that was objectively fun, and made work feel a bit less like work. That sort of fun just up and disappeared to be replaced with increased unreasonable expectations like suddenly everybody had to commute 10 hours a week to sit on zoom calls that they were perfectly content with and capable of sitting on at home.

Then, the layoffs began, as did a constant state of employment anxiety that has persisted to this day. Then we all received a total of 24 business-hours notice that hybrid was going away and we were all full-time onsite, or face the consequences. Except, there were none really. The layoffs continued to be completely random across the board, if anything affecting the in-office folks more than those that persisted with staying remote.

The result? Everybody who is left (and smart) has quiet quite HARD. I'm personally remote, and work maybe 2 hours a day and still get everything done. The rest of my workday is spent at the gym or with my laptop open while I play video games. And my numbers have never been better.

The thing that objectively takes the most of the time out of my day is trying to come up with 5 stupid questions to ask this stupid chat bot we're training to take over our jobs eventually, because if I don't that's the only thing that actually gets me in trouble with leadership. It's not my Teams' status being yellow for 5 hours a day, or my quote output, or my lack of desire to pursue cUlTuRe and CoLlAbOrAtIoN by driving 15 hours per week, it's my lack of desire to justify Dell's stupid investment into incompetent AI tools that add no objective value to anybody.

I know it sounds like hyperbole when you hear about folks talking about "Dell has changed." Though in reality, Dell actually has changed in a lot of ways, and every, single, one of those changes have been for the worse. And they get away with it because we flipped from an employee's market to an employer's market with the post-Covid tech crash in 2022ish that we still haven't recovered from.

It just really su-ks.

This needed a thread of its own. The OP is @ez+1kdne2h4c.

If you are thinking of quitting Xerox wait a couple of weeks, they are announcing new layoffs with enhanced payoffs.