#leadership

Another big beautiful LR is in the works?!!?? HR is singing their happy songs and internal leadership is buzzing with excitement as they get to destroy more lives just in time for the holidays! Oh happy happy joy joy, but when will Chuck Robbins and his gang of merry Indian H1-B Visa dwarfs get the axe? Instead they get big bonuses and promotions. While American citizens get stomped on again by Cisco.

It’s very sad that you have workers that actually work and then you get team leaders that benefit from their work. Families that work there and cover up their mistakes and blame others because wrong or right family is first in this work place. Investigate who works or not and who should get promoted.

Penny brought Hoda Kotb in to speak at a conference for six figures while she is laying people off, demoting people, and sending American jobs to India. Where are Penny's priorities? Penny is managing partner to make sure the work gets done. Penny is supposed to be a steward of Edward Jones' assets. How is spending six figures to bring in Hoda Kotb being a good steward of Edward Jones' assets? I am a partner at Edward Jones. She is using our capital to bring these people in. Penny is wasting money while cutting good people who were doing the job needed. Now she is laying people off knowing full well the people left over cannot properly absorb the work of everyone who has been laid off. All Hoda Kotb said was word salad like she said on the Today Show for years. Hoda is fine, she just does not give any insightful points that is relatable to business at Edward Jones. Hoda's "jewel" was "Do not hog your journey....share it with others." Six figures for that pearl of wisdom? How does that inspire a smaller work force to do more work due to Penny's poor leadership decisions of slashing jobs and punishing the survivors to do more work for less money?

Do you know how stupid it sounds to call your demoted manager a Lead in front of the customer?

We don’t have managers anymore when it comes to escalations and I wouldn’t be looping in a director because it would look even more stupid to the customer.

What are we supposed to do when the customer wants to speak to the manager? Did the leadership think about this at all???

Want to save money? Get rid of the waste of time operation’s manager. He’s been working there for 35 plus years and a large salary. Xerox you are paying a director for doing absolutely nothing!
( except to make sure the North facility is being taken care of “)

Over the past 2 weeks I have been flooded with messages and calls from past co workers sharing how miserable they are - they are called on the carpet for the smallest of infractions, reports are apparently run endlessly and if your metric is "off" no matter the reason, no matter the amount by 3 or 5 - you are contacted by the manager or with the tag along director who could never do the job and never has - to remind you what a loser you are, you need to get in line, formal warnings are next or have been submitted - and you are being put on notice. You are being watched. It's not what you do for a member its' all about the bean counts, the back seat driving, the frank disrespect. They ask me what to do - is that why I left? I tell them the truth - yes! it's the leadership, it's the selective punishing, get out if you can.
Every day I am reminded I did the right thing - I would rather pour beer for a living or cut grass then ever come back or encourage anyone to apply there

What is interesting is the escalation of this behavior towards employees right around the time budget projections for merit and AIP are on the horizon - and clearly more RIF are coming - writing is PAINTED ON THE WALL - AIP will be gone or might as well be and if you get more than 2% you are the outlier.

could be because of layoffs this Thursday, could be because the new CEO doesn’t know enough to speak on results yet, who knows

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/rogerentner_a-67-year-old-ceo-with-a-two-year-mandate-activity-7385843828764614657-BJmG/

I hope that Shulman does shake things up... but what is the point if Sampath is CEO in 2 years... if this guy's right we are sc--wed regardless.

He is fairly new (no more than 4 months at his position) and instead of coaching his employees, he often criticizes their intelligence. It can be humiliating at times for my coworkers. Should I report it to HR or speak to my supervisor directly? I don't want stir up trouble and I don't want there to be backlash on my end.

The company appears to be cutting costs by encouraging resignations or creating performance-based grounds for termination, such as enforcing a four-day office attendance policy. Profitability challenges, particularly in the Optum business due to CMS V28 changes, are straining finances. Heavy investments in AI are unlikely to yield short-term returns, if any. Meanwhile, executive perks—luxury travel, corporate jets, security, double-digit raises, and millions in stock options—remain untouched. Instead, the company is pressuring its most vulnerable employees. This is a textbook case of mismanagement driving a company into the ground. Leadership is dominated by yes-men and yes-women, with dissenting voices pushed out. If you have alternatives, consider leaving this toxic environment. If not, make the best of your situation and be grateful to still have a job.

Well said, @2rc+1k6jmpfts.

Everybody is laughing at us and at this leadership team that clearly has no idea what it’s doing. I can’t wait to leave so I can laugh too, because right now all I can do is cry at what this place has become.

What do you think will be addressed at today's townhall? What do you think will happen?

Why do so many of them lack common sense? What’s the criteria for promotion? Inability to form a full sentence or what?

After announcing major layoffs and the transfer of operations from Calgary to Edmonton, John Whelan has been completely absent. No follow-up email, no public address, and not even a presence in supervisor forums to discuss the impacts of the decision. Employees are left in uncertainty, while leadership has gone silent. It’s disappointing to see the person responsible for these major organizational changes disappear from view. Maybe he is busy setting up that "advocacy office" in Calgary....

Please someone share what kind of severance is being offered. This time, a$$hole leadership is not even showing any humanity, just to make sure their a$$ is not targeted. What a bunch of shameless folks! If you love your friend and family, never refer them here.

You do your best, put in the hours, deliver results, and still get ignored while someone who spends lunch gossiping with management gets promoted. It’s disgusting. I’m done wasting energy trying to prove myself to people who reward bootlicking over competence.

Full disclosure, I am one of those people who was cornered by the cool-aid drinking Supervisors of Imperial Oil, and had to leave the company to keep my sanity and self esteem.

I am curious to know, with all the worker bee jobs moving to Houston and BTC, what will the Supervisors do in Canada? Shouldn’t their jobs also move out of the country??

It wasn't always like this, but recently, thanks to having mostly new people as managers, every one of them in my department seems to live in their own little bubble. You ask for direction and get five different answers, then somehow you’re the one at fault when things collide. It’s becoming laughable.

I left that job shaking my head. Worked my tail off with a master’s, got crumbs for pay. The person who replaced me had no degree and got a huge bump just for being friendly with the boss. Makes you wonder why you even bother doing things the right way. Education means nothing when favoritism decides everything. I'm glad to be gone. It took me a while to find something else, bit now I actually like my job once again. That place nearly destroyed me.

I was so proud to say I worked at Cisco. Now I just change the subject when people ask where I work. The place has turned into such a train wreck I can’t even defend it anymore.

Every time I think we've hit rock bottom, they find a new way to stress us out. The constant changes, PIPS, the fake pep talks, the micromanaging, layoffs, AI... It’s draining everyone. Do they want to have a completely demotivated workforce that only does the bare minimum? Is that the goal here?

The so-called leaders play politics and mumble through meetings and promote people who don’t even understand the work. Things are getting worse every day and nobody seems to care. Sometimes I feel like I'm watching a slow collapse of a once great company in real time.

This is real talk!!!!

Ilumina keeps beating its head over with useless PLM and MRP tool upgrades that neither add value to the company or increase the speed to get products to market. The only group to benefit from these activities is the workforce in India that has substantially grown ever since Jacob has taken over. Consequence will be our competitors taking over our market share and making us irrelevant, an afterthought. These useless initiatives are being spearheaded by our clueless leadership and middle management that neither have the best interest of the shareholders or employees, only their determination to maximize their own paychecks. Management teams like those that fester at Illumian are the ticks that ruin a company's value and culture. If there was a way to replace Middle management with AI, sign Illumina as #1 customer.

Same stories as the Trane posting. Leaders want you to keep quiet.

We don’t need extra stress on top of looming layoffs. Some might find it amusing that people are reading too much into that org chart, but they should also realize many are genuinely terrified about their jobs. For some, losing it would have serious, life-changing consequences. I understand people panicking. What I don’t understand is how those paid to run this place can’t handle something as critical as layoffs more competently.

FIS LOST A WHOLE DEPARTMENT BECAUSE OF HOW BADLY CS WAS LED. The client wants to do it themselves again. THIS IS CRAZY! The investors can feel the cost cutting as well when interacting with this company, the cs line must be awesome xD

What’s the big deal and why is everyone on my team obsessed with being one?

Verizon is a train wreck stuck in mud. They have not improved or learned anything in years. Different year same leadership mistakes. They need a Maga like shake up and stop being cheap on infrastructure. From network to systems they cheap out and customer and employees live with the failure. Taking the cheap road has allowed T-Mobile to pass us and customers lining up to leave. Our credo is fake news. We run from success. We hide from challenges. We strive to be cheaper today than we were yesterday. We blame our employees. We removed job satisfaction and replaced it with fluff and selfishness. News flash: This isnt changing so su-k it up buttercups.

If you've tried automating or using AI for this company you will know just how painful it is to try and push innovation. Multiple tiers of leadership, so many boundaries to break down, etc. Etc.

I find it funny that the company is choosing to use AI and technology advances as the message for headcount reduction. In my experience those outsourcing moves just adds to the body count while doing nothing to automate. There is no future in technology for this company because it continues to distance itself from the people who can offer those options. I have been pushing a solution that would reduce two entire departments, instead or pursing they just keep adding bodies to the BSC's.

XOM will be left in the dust by its competitors as they choose to advance technology while XOM looks to outsource and reduce its expertise.

Watch and see.

The day before I left Target, leaders were discussing if they should “update” the slides for her (the company needs a real supply chain officer that understands basic supply chain concepts)
Nice should not be the primary qualification. Just like her, Rob has also only worked at Walmart, but he is the real deal.

Engagement Pulse Survey (employee satisfaction survey) is going to be sent out early in November. The result of this thing seems to be nr. 1 priority of our management around here...

Our overlords care the most about two questions in particular in the survey:

1. Do you trust the management?
2. Would you reccomend Kyndryl as a company to work for?

The rest of the questions is fluff and they even admitted it openly the other day...

The last time most people did not bother filling it in and some of those few who did submitted answers that were less than praise (since it is an anonymous survey).

Consequently, there was a mandatory follow-up investigation session where one of the FLM's loyal minions was tasked to find out who the troubkemakers are... They went about it by saying on a Teams call: "raise your hand if you trust the manager"...

This time around we are all asked to go into a prep-session where we will be instructed on "how to properly understand the questions" prior to filling in the survey and we are encouraged to then fill it in together...

So - I expect we will go from the lowest employee happiness ever which (was the last survey's result to the highest employee happiness ever) and then there will be rounds of applause and patting on shoulders circling around in newsletters and the local talking heads will have stuff to talk about till the christmass and will be thanking each other and nominating each other for employees of the quarter based on this while we will be witnessing more stealthy firings, clients leaving, teams & roles blending and so on.

And this stuff is orchestrated by individuals who also send out non-anonymous feedback requests about their performance to their subordinates and then they read out loud the praise they get in front of all who had to participate.

CEE in a nutshell for all y'all.

Recent org changes have made long standing structural and leadership issues worse. The problem isn’t the teams it’s a pattern of short-sighted leadership decisions that keep adding inefficiency and ki-ling morale, SP and MM ARE NOT the right path. Both too self-important and ego driven for any clarity possible. The number of people on this page alone is an indication of how bad it’s gotten as MM has been a topic on this page for years, those who openly questioned aren’t here anymore, not a coincidence.

Structural & Leadership Gaps

• D&D expanded under leadership with weak technical grounding and poor operational judgment.
• Decisions are based on optics and “culture first” over scalable, efficient delivery.
• The result: redundant tools, unclear ownership, and wasted spend doing the same thing.

Talent & Morale Erosion

• Many skilled hires walked into instability they didn’t cause and can’t fix.
• People are burned out, disengaged, and blamed for inherited problems.
• Leaders who manage up well but not down are driving the decline blaming everyone but themselves.

Culture & Reputation Risk

• Morale is at a breaking point.
• Expanding the remit of a leader with no relevant knowledge or skills tied to these issues sends the wrong signal.
• Continued inaction risks more and operational instability at a critical time.

What EMT Needs to Do

• Launch an independent review of leadership effectiveness and technical capability, ask the staff in a truly anonymous way because trust is gone.
• Simplify tools and processes stop paying for redundancy.
• Rebuild trust with transparency, consistent engagement, and measurable goals tied to outcomes, not self-serving politics.

The situation is still fixable only with top-down action. EMT needs to step in now to stabilize the org and restore credibility. If not, the erosion will only accelerate.

No more DEI type managers. Got them nowhere. Unfortunately it looks like they are positioning a token.

Half the company could disappear tomorrow if we just removed everyone who only goes to meetings and relays updates. Let the ones who actually do the work run things for a change.

They keep pushing to replace us with cheaper, outside teams who clearly don't know our systems. Now it takes three of them to do one job, and everything is still falling behind. I am so frustrated that management thinks this is a real solution. All it does is create more mess for us to fix later.

When Mike dumps all over the employees does he at least wipe? We all know he doesn't flush unless the company or employees are in the toliet!

Our team has been short by at least three people for months, and our manager keeps acting like it’s normal. The few of us left are juggling way too much, and it's only a matter of time before things start falling through the cracks. If they're hoping this is going to work long term, they're in for a rude awakening.

If you are full of ideas and energy, this might not be the place for you. The system here slows everything down with endless layers of approval. Unless you have friends in high spots, your voice will never reach the right people. You are better off taking that drive somewhere that lets you actually build something. Exxon is not it.

Spent an evening with some five9 team members tonight and someone that joined from the product team told me really alarming details about the senior layers of management still left. I knew this company was badly managed, but that team is in another zone. If you work with a PDM team, please try to give them your support.

Just seeing how fast MN and his admins jump to downvote this!