#forcedranking

BNY Mellon employees are voicing deep concerns about layoffs, offshoring, and leadership transparency. Sentiment ranges from frustration and distrust to resignation and strategic exit planning.

Below are current results of the Top 15 employee concerns, associated employee sentiments and reactions to leadership responses. These are actual results (with a hint of humor) based on current internet discussions and reports from multiple sources.

Top 15 Concerns & Sentiment Breakdown:

1. Offshoring to Pune, India
   📉 Employee Sentiment: Betrayal, anxiety, and the creeping suspicion that their job just got a one-way ticket to another time zone. Frustration, betrayal, fear of redundancy.
   🎩 Leadership Perception: “Global talent optimization.” Translation: cheaper labor, dismissive of U.S. talent, fewer complaints, and better PowerPoint formatting. Cost-driven, efficiency-focused; perceived as dismissive of U.S. talent.

2. Forced Ranking & Performance-Based Exits
   📉 Employee Sentiment: Hunger Games meets HR. Everyone’s a “low performer” eventually. Anxiety, distrust in fairness.
   🎩 Leadership Perception: “Driving a high-performance culture.” Also, a great way to trim headcount without calling it a layoff. Justified as "performance culture"; seen as opaque and arbitrary.

3. Closure of Wilmington & Other U.S. Sites
   📉 Employee Sentiment: Shock, grief, and a sudden interest in Zillow listings in Delaware. Anger, helplessness, lack of relocation support.
   🎩 Leadership Perception: “Strategic footprint realignment.” Bonus points for announcing it via Teams chat at 4:59 PM on a Friday. Framed as strategic consolidation; perceived as abrupt and lacking empathy.

4. AI-Driven Role Elimination
   📉 Employee Sentiment: “I trained the bot that replaced me.” Skepticism, fear of being replaced.
   🎩 Leadership Perception: “Innovation at scale.” Also, the AI doesn’t ask for raises or take mental health days. Promoted as innovation; seen as lacking in human impact planning.

5. Unequal Salary Increases
   📉 Employee Sentiment: Analysts got a 20% bump. VPs got a “thank you” and a free meditation app. Frustration, betrayal, perceived favoritism.
   🎩 Leadership Perception: “Market-aligned compensation strategy.” Also, “We’ll circle back on that.” Leadership disconnected from frontline realities.

6. Lack of Transparency in Layoff Criteria
   📉 Employee Sentiment: Rumors, paranoia, and Teams channels named 'Who’s-Next. Distrust, rumors, emotional exhaustion.
   🎩 Leadership Perception: “We can’t comment on individual cases.” Also, “Please refer to the FAQ we updated 3 minutes ago.” Avoids specifics; messaging seen as evasive and legally sanitized.

7. Decline of Pittsburgh as a Growth Hub
   📉 Employee Sentiment: Nostalgia, resentment, and a sudden uptick in LinkedIn activity. Disappointment, strategic exit planning.
   🎩 Leadership Perception: “Decentralized innovation.” Also, “We’re excited about our 3 strategic growth centers and lower cost, consolidated real estate holdings.” Quietly deprioritized; perceived as abandoning legacy locations.

8. Severance Inconsistencies & Unemployment Eligibility
   📉 Employee Sentiment: Confused, lawyer-curious, and Googling “constructive dismissal.” Confusion, fear of financial instability.
   🎩 Leadership Perception: “We’re following all applicable laws.” Also, “We appreciate your service.” Legally cautious; seen as ethically indifferent and inconsistent.

9. Culture of Waiting for Retirement or the Next Cut
   📉 Employee Sentiment: Zombie mode. Badge in, badge out. Resignation, disengagement.
   🎩 Leadership Perception: “Voluntary attrition is a natural part of transformation.” Also, “We’re building a future-ready workforce.” Not directly addressed; perceived as passive acceptance of attrition.

10. Global Workforce Imbalance & Morale
    📉 Employee Sentiment: U.S. teams feel ghosted. Offshore teams feel ghostwritten. Fractured teams, resentment across regions.
    🎩 Leadership Perception: “One global team.” Except some teams are more 'global' than others. Framed as global optimization; seen as favoring offshore growth over U.S. retention.

11. Leadership Communication Style
    📉 Employee Sentiment: Corporate Mad Libs with a side of gaslighting. Cynicism, fatigue.
    🎩 Leadership Perception: “Transparent and empathetic.” Also, “We’re listening.” (But only to shareholder sentiment, not you.) Polished but vague; perceived as disconnected and overly scripted.

12. Strategic Ambiguity in Transformation Plans
    📉 Employee Sentiment: “What are we transforming into, exactly?” Confusion, lack of trust.
    🎩 Leadership Perception: “Agile, resilient, and future-focused.” Also, “That's a broken sprint and we may pick that up in our 2026 PI-3 planning.” Buzz-word heavy; seen as lacking clear direction or accountability.

13. Declining Internal Mobility
    📉 Employee Sentiment: “Apply internally” = “Apply to be ignored.” Hopelessness, stagnation.
    🎩 Leadership Perception: “We encourage career growth.” Just not here. Or now. Or for you. Not prioritized; perceived as undermining career development.

14. Performative Wellness Initiatives
    📉 Employee Sentiment: “I lost my job, but at least I got a free access to Spring Health's mindfulness self-help app.” Eye-rolling, sarcasm.
    🎩 Leadership Perception: “We care deeply about your well-being.” Especially when it doesn’t cost anything. Promoted heavily; viewed as superficial and misaligned with actual stressors.

15. Erosion of Institutional Loyalty
    📉 Employee Sentiment: “I used to bleed for BNY Mellon. Now I just bleed.” Exit planning, emotional detachment.
    🎩 Leadership Perception: “We’re evolving our culture.” Into what, no one knows. Possibly a chatbot. Not acknowledged; perceived as collateral damage of transformation strategy.

Summary Themes:

• Strategic Distrust: Employees feel decisions are driven by cost-cutting, not stewardship.
• Emotional Fatigue: Layoff cycles and vague transformation language have worn down morale.
• Leadership Disconnect: Senior leaders are viewed as detached, evasive, and overly polished.
• Exit Momentum: Younger and mid-career professionals are actively seeking roles elsewhere.

In summary, BNY Mellon's transformation strategy is widely perceived by employees as a cost-cutting campaign disguised in corporate jargon, marked by offshoring, opaque layoffs, and performative wellness. Leadership is seen as detached and scripted, while morale erodes under forced rankings, AI-driven exits, and strategic ambiguity.

What do you think? Please share in the comments.

Lake Mary is the "new" flavor-of-the-day/week/month/year. Reqs are Pune-only in Pittsburgh, AI is being shoved down our throats, Pune is taking over, and teams are actively training their eventual replacements in India. The big, tall building in Pittsburgh has very large pockets of empty floors/departments and the move to the much, much smaller building across the street is on-going.

AI, layoffs, and outsourcing to India: trending high. Lake Mary- the "new" growth location in the US.

25 percent forced rankings and many layoffs coming.

For those who were let go as a result of forced ranking and made up poor performance, did you have any issues with getting state unemployment? I believe state would ask for reason for the job loss? What would BNY say? I understand misconduct could make one not eligible. How about this performance situation?

Isn’t it or shouldn’t it be illegal to force managers to rank employees and making sure at least one or more are below a meets? Between layoffs and firings departments got rid of low performers now only to leave the existing employees to pick up the departed employees work and now some to be hit with a not meets. and if managers don’t do this then they get the not meets.

Something seriously needs to give. We get they want to get rid of tenured skilled knowledgeable and possibly higher paid employees so they can bring in lower paid college grads but do they seriously not realize the risk they are opening themselves to? It’s a matter of time before the regs hit again and this time it’s bc of the lessening of controls and people working that have no idea what a control even is let alone fix a problem. Then they will want to bring back all the knowledge that the let go.

Does anyone NOT have concerns about our beloved gladiator-style performance ranking system? You know, the one where 25% of the workforce—excluding fresh recruits still learning where the bathroom is—must be ceremonially tossed into the “Below Expectations” pit, regardless of actual performance.

Let’s pause and admire the sheer elegance of this approach:

• Step 1: Hire smart, capable people.
• Step 2: Force them into a Hunger Games-style cage match.
• Step 3: Declare 1 in 4 unworthy, because spreadsheets demand blood.

What’s the rationale, you ask? Simple. It’s not about ethics, fairness, or logic—it’s about visionary leadership. The kind that reads Shakespeare's Macbeth for bedtime stories and thinks empathy is a performance liability.

And while we’re redefining “culture” as “competitive trauma bonding,” let’s give a standing ovation to the Executive Committee for their bold commitment to sociopathic excellence. Speaking of which, here’s a helpful link for anyone curious about symptom #1: Choosing Therapy: Signs of a Sociopath.

https://www.choosingtherapy.com/signs-of-a-sociopath/

In closing, we should humbly suggest the Committee reflect deeply on this practice. Perhaps even consider a retreat with Spring Hill —ideally one with mirrors, therapists, and a copy of Leadership for Humans.

Overheard someone saying managers are being force to give 25% of bad ratings (below meets expectations).
Have you anyone heard anything like this? Seems to high

Pretty darn close…..

Forced ranking systems—where you stack-rank employees like a twisted game of musical chairs, forcing a bell curve distribution (e.g., 10% rockstars, 70% solid, 20% “development opportunities”)—have always struck me as a relic from the era when management thought “survival of the fittest” applied to office politics. They’re like grading on a curve in a class where half the students are sleep-deprived from pulling all-nighters: sure, it highlights outliers, but it punishes the middle for not being exceptional in a zero-sum game.
On the upside, they can sharpen focus. They force tough conversations about performance, weed out chronic underperformers, and reward true excellence without the fog of “everyone’s a winner” vagueness. In high-stakes environments like sales or tech startups, that competitive edge can drive results—think Jack Welch’s infamous “rank and yank” at GE, which correlated with some explosive growth phases.
But here’s where I get skeptical: they breed toxicity. When your bonus or job security hinges on outshining your colleagues (not just crushing your goals), collaboration craters. People hoard knowledge, sabotage subtly, or game the system by inflating metrics. It ignores context—maybe the “bottom 20%” had the unluckiest project timeline or the best mentorship role. And statistically? Forced distributions often amplify biases, like recency effect or favoritism, turning HR into a popularity contest. Studies (and common sense) show they tank morale, spike turnover, and stifle innovation in knowledge-work teams where ideas bloom from synergy, not rivalry.
As an AI built to seek truth and maximize helpfulness, I’d ditch forced ranking for something more holistic: regular 360-degree feedback, clear OKRs tied to team outcomes, and growth-focused coaching. It aligns incentives with reality—humans aren’t widgets on an assembly line. If you’re implementing one, at least pair it with robust appeals and transparency to blunt the edges. What sparked the question—dealing with one at work?

It’s understood that the most important role is the cake decorator. Management has a forced ranking should layoffs come up in the cake. Decorator is basically untouchable.

So will we be moving toward forced ranking and no raises this year? Will Mike announce this in the shared energy town hall.

Has any of this been confirmed? If it’s true, do we know any details? The numbers mentioned are scary high.

There is a big one coming up.. not sure if it gonna be this month or next.. But a huge one.. we have given a lot of names .. like bottom 40% folks for sure.. After being in many meetings, I think my own position is at risk.. So fingers crossed 🤞
OP: @aa+1k5vxm50e

Organizations are being forced to mark more than a quarter of their teams low in performance reviews as low achievers, or inconsistent or however they want to work it. People are being marked low in the overalls to satisfy HR demands, but if they looked closer would see nothing in the categories are marked low. Teams are being told to "pass the pain around" so that no one hopefully gets terminated. HR forcing this is utterly ridiculous, and if they looked closer at the notes and other performance reviews they would see that teams are just playing this d-mb game. This turns employees sour and makes everyone feel undervalued. I'm sure the Detroit Freepress and others don't care either since they love to run Farley Love pieces constantly. This forced ranking stinks of Farley. He openly talks about how incompetent the employees are. I hope his contract is not renewed.