#forcedranking

sounding like new system going to be used sc--w people over

Like the song by Calvin Harris ft. Ne-Yo - "Let's Go"

Please see these 4 posts and quotes from other threads.

From the Washington Post (April 2, 2023): “Feel free to spill the beans, ex-employees. Your former boss can’t stop you.”
https://www.thelayoff.com/t/1kgea4gzm

From the NLRB (Feb 21, 23): "Board Rules that Employers May Not Offer Severance Agreements Requiring Employees to Broadly Waive Labor Law Rights
https://www.thelayoff.com/t/1kgeacnt5

From the NLRB about "Concerted Activity"
https://www.thelayoff.com/t/1kgeakdsm

From the NLRB about "Social media"
https://www.thelayoff.com/t/1kgeb10b8

Quotes:

March 6, 2025
https://www.thelayoff.com/t/1jnq61rxs
"Unethical conduct needs to be exposed
BNY is force ranking long tenured employees with PM or BE and depriving them from the Severance, it so disgraceful towards people who have given so much to the company none of the past reviews matter. We should report this in social media if we do in number that will speak for itself…. When we don’t have NDA what are we loosing?"

June 9, 2025
https://www.thelayoff.com/t/1jwysz9hk
"time for managers to take a stand. Bullsh-t that good employees now being called underperformers to not pay severance. UNETECHAL.

COMPANY NEEDS TO PAY OR GET CALLED OUT"

June 11, 2025
https://www.thelayoff.com/t/1jwysz9hk
"Until we band together as a large group nothing is going to change. And I don't see enough people with a backbone willing to to this. Too many sheeple afraid of losing their jobs. Well most of us are probably going to lose them anyway so might as well fight for it instead of lay down."

June 27, 205
https://www.thelayoff.com/t/1jygkgb3m
"We need to get together and start a forum to keep in step with their plan of “reduce staff with minimal expense” (don’t pay severance)
Power in numbers .
Could someone set it up ?Or should I ? Is there interest???"

September 3, 2025
https://www.thelayoff.com/t/1k47t0dan
"This place is toxic

They’re trying to break us so we leave and they dont have to pay severance. We have all experienced it or witnessed the behaviors. , U.S staff treated like 2nd class citizens, wrongful terminations, intentional forced ratings etc. The list goes on and on. Its not going to stop until we all come together and try to do something. We need to report them to your states EEOC . Get An investigation going."

September 25, 2025
https://www.thelayoff.com/t/1k60fr4h8
"Contact your local senate office for the district you live in. Bring as much light to this as you can because if he has his way all americans will be out of a job soon. All he cares about is India and now Manchester his homeland."

October 17, 2025
https://www.thelayoff.com/t/1k7rjbb40
"mgmt does push back and literally gets told its not optional by upper mgmt. if lower level dont make changes which we havent, upper does it regardless. Everyone needs to report the company or it wont stop. We all have local leaders and each state has EEOC plus put it on record with ethics. Mgmt knows there are forced rankings can testify too the bullsh-t as well. Stay silent this sh-t continues while we get let go and india makes out taking our jobs"

December 4, 2025
https://www.thelayoff.com/t/1kbjgv9en
"We need to band together as mgrs on this sh-t. Screenshot any emails or teams messages that show these are forced as proof"

December 6, 2025
https://www.thelayoff.com/t/1kbk9pt5n
"absolutely and every single person here should contact the media to raise enough eyebrows about the topic. They have an email for topic suggestions
cwc-news@interactive.wsj.com. Make sure the subject mentions BNY financial institutions firing US employees and falsifying performance ratings to help do so. We have to get media attention"

December 17, 2025
https://www.thelayoff.com/t/1kcq1468q
"You can turn it in to your states EEOC. As a mgr i can 💯 confirm they forced ratings and changed them after we entered them to hit their reduction %. People have challenged this and the attempt to not give severance and noted on this site they have won. Others noted journalists or lawyers looking into this and wanting details. Check out the “fight them” post"

Hey XOM people. We’ll be adopting your forced ranking system this year, PIPs for 0.7s etc. So many rumors here and nothing from management when we ask so I thought I’d go to the source. Is the distribution by team regardless of size or does the distribution go up to a GM or VP level? We have PIPs already but they’re used for disciplinary purposes. I’ve only met one person on a PIP. They were let go but it was pretty egregious. Now we’re going to use them as an “improvement tool” or something.

15 percent of high performers across all band levels are be rated as low performers to reduce bonus pay outs. This is the next move on attrition. Next steps may be pips and subsequent layoffs. You would think a company as large as IBM would be able to handle this differently. Hopefully people who know they are high performers that get a low performance review know this has nothing to do with them and everything to do with the dysfunctional management team at IBM.

I have it on good authority that those with the new forced lowest ranking will be fired at the end of the year.

The genius move, is that this isn’t considered a layoff. So no severance is needed.

May the odds be ever in your favor

My manager told me directly today that the entire company is forcing managers to give employees low ratings.
Time to leave, guys. They’re trying to get rid of everyone in the U.S. Leave this sh*thole, and for anyone considering coming here—please don’t.

...but they sc--wed up!! They laid me off on 9/30. Not too bright...now they'll have to mark down one of their buddies due to the "curve" ranking. LOLOLOLOL! Oh the irony.....

• band 4+ individual contributors: add a personalized leadership goal aligned to at least one leadership competency (great, we have to provide leadership without the pay or title)

• starting with the 2026 year-end review, all employees will receive a 4-point performance rating, building on the band 6+ approach used in 2025 (no way could this be used as a "rank and yank" method to target workers for termination)

Great things ahead for those not lucky enough to get the VRP!

“Pay will be tied more closely to differentiated performance…”

Once again, raising the bar to heights they themselves did not have to achieve.

So are we now incentivized to hope our colleagues can’t perform or sc--w up? With a forced rank rating system, that’s what will happen. Not ‘one team’ anymore

Supervisors in CTC have been told that under no account should they ever give 2x EE. If they want to they need approval from JK

How's that for motivation?

Since when does ‘meets expectations’ require significant achievement? To me this sounds like giving management the green card to start PIP-ing those still left. Anyone on the bottom 10% of who is left after 40% have been cut. Anyone with a real performance issue would not have survived all the recent mass layoffs.

Once there was a bank that made record profits because their employees worked to lift the asset cap. Then one day Scrooge decided force rank employees so at least one from each team got cut no matter how good they were. That year the families that lost jobs had a miserable Christmas and worried about affording their mortgages and healthcare. Some families couldn’t let their kid go back to college in January because they lost their job. Then one day the ghost of Christmas future paid a visit to the leaders in charge and….(continue the story below)

Any leaders who can confirm a rumor? I heard that there is a requirement that at a certain level (team, department, or other) where a % of associates must be given a 1 rating. No other info and hoping it’s just a rumor. Looking for someone with more info.

There is a new top down order for the VP level stack ranking to be done by end of JAN and the bottom 20% to be part of the upcoming AWS layoff in FEB.

Layoffs with two NS and some forced rankings of one NS in our department VAS. Anyone else’s departments affected?

Go to your directory find your SD go to each AD that reports to them copy them all onto a spreadsheet including the managers since their on the chopping block too. Riff at least 20% from that list after rack and stack everyone if you fall into the bottom 20% then you know the answer.

I did that last Friday and I'm good too go for now.

My 20% was about 16 people across 5-6 managers

Do with that what you will

Overheard in the hallway that managers are being forced to rank their teams across all the ratings, even the lower ratings.

Has anyone heard this ??

Its an open secret now that there is a quota for performance ratings this year, similar to last. no 5s are allowed at all and there is a minimum number of 2s per team that must be allocated or senior leadership will draw names from a hat.

My question - Do any people leaders know if offshore team member's 2s count towards this quota? Our team is 18 offshore and 4 onshore. Would we be forced to lose another onshore person?

We used to have 9 onshore team members before this madness. any more onshore layoffs would mean we are on call and doing releases at night once every 3 weeks, which is insane. :( All the offshore folks are also at a university student level skill-wise, despite senior level titles, so they dont help with anything.

Can’t say all of Optum Tech, just my area. I have about 20 people under me and I gave out two 5’s, six 4’s, the rest were 3’s.
I was informed this morning I am “allotted” zero 5’s, one 4, and I need to give out at least three 2’s.
Upper management is really pushing for the 2’s to the sent their way by end of week.
Last year 3’s and lower got NO raise and bonus was about half of the allotted amount.
Read into it what you will.

Received my get out of jail card this week and I'm over the top delighted. Over the last 10 years, this place has become so toxic, it's sickening. Pay for performance is a joke. Senior managers, who don't know the staff or what they do, are forcing lower ratings to get their 25% (used to be 10). If you don't have enough, they force more. Bonus amounts, given by direct managers, are changed by higher ups. It's unethical but don't bother reporting it. HR works for them, not us.
Save as much money as you can. Print all your employment records. Use their training portal to take resume building classes (after your AI training to replace yourselfof course). Go into the office, stay all day, and keep your head down. I wish you all the best of luck.

They're being super quiet about it, but the fact of the matter is that there are more layoffs happening inside this company and it seems mainly due to the merger with Juniper. The surprising thing is that it isn't just traditional overlap functions like marketing or accounting, but actually in functions such as engineering. There is clearly a technology strategy but it is not being shared. Instead, they're just laying off staff to cut costs predominantly in the United States. For those of you that hoped the $1 billion dollars in savings would happen over time and might come out of other things like real estate consolidation, surprise, it's happening very fast and at payroll levels. The hypocrisy inside the company about the well-being and the pride that we have as well as being the best place to work and is ridiculously misplaced.
To make matters worse, HR is pushing forced distribution for end-of-year ratings. They may think they're telling you otherwise, but it's literally what they're doing. When questioned about this, they hide behind senior executives and their wish to do this.

Layoffs in Q3, forced 4-ratings in Q4, more layoffs in Q1. I suppose they need to find that $25 million from somewhere.
I can't wait to read Tim's next tone-deaf family saga. Maybe it will go like this. I was eating caviar in my mansion when my daughter came to me and complained that she broke her nail. I told her to cut it off. Sometimes we need to take difficult decisions, like how I trample upon people's livelihood and careers to put food on the table... for the next 20 generations of the Ryan family. SMH! their greed and selfishness knows no bounds.

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.