#leadership

We must reduce the corporate surplus population!!

What are the odds JW and DL were visited by the ghosts of Imperial Past, Present and Future this weekend?

October 2023 : “ By 2026, Xerox projects a rise in operating income by at least $300 million (€285 million), reverting to double-digit adjusted operating income margins”.

October 2025 and the stock price if a quarter of what it was at the announcement time above, already having dropped by half over the prior 5 year average.

SteveB will say it is on track, he will say the Lexmark acquisition is key to the future growth, but this was not in his plan two years ago.

Does the. Lard really believe the continuing change of rhetoric from the CEO. The SLT all nod with appeasement, no one dare disagree, but all happy to take their pound of flesh and stock options ( although each time a worth less and less ).

No merit increase, frozen 401k.

What belies the future - will we get anything from the upcoming Q3 release ?

I heard Board is talking to someone from T-Mobile to come in.

https://www.beckerspayer.com/executive-moves/unitedhealth-group-taps-ai-chief/

Has anyone been able to find one intelligent person in Asset Servicing? They are really scraping the bottom of the barrel with that whole bunch.

1. Chief Product Officer AJ gotta be the first to go
2. Matt’s unqualified CRO butt gotta be 2nd

Then it’s a little murky…

1. Andy? New CEO probably wants to bring his own
2. Panos/Jonathan?

At the 11th hour to keep HON onboard . They will now lead geographies and marketplace again with CW shifting to a new role tbc

Don’t even think about putting in for a promotion for your staff members because of the “economic climate”. WHY are Canon’s executive leaders not investing in our people??? We seem to have $$$$ to spend (see: SPHERE). Talented, hardworking people are resigning daily (or just “quiet quitting”…). Our TOP talent is leaving- fast & furious! Yes, there are some people leaving who have been dead weights anyway, and for them, good riddance - but not everyone. Either way, when your employees are the walking brand of your company, you NEED to make sure you treat them well, so they can spread positive word about the company. For example…Look at this layoff site. It’s supposed to be a site to talk about layoffs. And this page never existed for Canon until the major layoffs last year. BUT the conversations continue here to this day, even when the company is not actively laying people off - because of the way our people are being treated … so they come here to vent because no one else listens or does anything to address their concerns. Pretty simple really. The negative PR is not helping with sales.

Halfway through the quarter, and surprise! Nothing has changed. The team of unqualified leaders continues to expertly guide the regions straight into confusion.

The Head of Asia is still “getting up to speed” - an impressive 1.5yr onboarding process. Truly redefining patience and low expectations.

The head of Europe remains a model of underperformance proudly carrying the WFH banner as if it’s an Olympic sport. Congrats for being last place every year.

And the Head of Americas… where do I start? Well it’s like the old head of Americas is back - Deja Vu we might as well have rehired JB. “One Month In” and things are somehow worse than before. Land grabbing, confusion, and healthy dose of chaos on what to do - stellar leadership all around!

Rest of the SLT? A truly inspiring bunch of old school dudes pounding the pavement, achieving absolutely nothing. Another glorious year of mediocrity ahead.

And Sanoke, maybe take a look at this org and HR while you are at it. Apparently their biggest contribution is planning team get togethers in London! Great use of resources.

“#PathToo200”

Just some food for thought regarding Glenview capital. Remember in the deal they made with CVS, they got 4 seats on the board. (In addition to obviously getting the CEO replaced as well) That said, with four seats on the board of directors, they want more than just a seat at the table, they want a say in how the company is operated. Glenview is private equity, remember that. Look at Walgreens getting bought out by private equity and already Sycamore has wasted no time making cutbacks. It might explain everything that’s happening right now at CVS. Private equity is behind the scenes calling the shots. And private equity is all about money and profits and maximizing value for investors, at all costs, and nothing else.

Steve B et al have run an iconic company to the ground. Buying a dollar store company like Lexmark was a terrible, terrible move (just like the many, many before). What a complete joke this company has become. No merit increases, no 401K match, pretty much everything for the employees blow up or 'suspended', meanwhile Steve B, Bruno, Mirlanda, etc all gave themselves raises and padded their payout when they leave. The board is asleep at the wheel, or wants to see this head down the tubes. Fu-k Steve B and his stupid plans. Run for the hills, the layoffs and the continued bad news for the people who actually do something here are her for good.

Every town hall we hear the same message from the execs in that they go to all out global offices and meet ‘amazing’, ‘innovative’, ‘inspirational’, ‘hard working’ staff etc etc.
I can’t say that any of the execs I’ve seen on the town halls has given me the same impression or confidence, they might be hard working but who actually knows, so what oversight does the board have on their appointees and how good they are as it doesn’t seem to be much?

Recently posted, in part, on LinkedIn:

“…AT&T leadership continues to set the gold standard in recognizing and rewarding its people. Their unwavering commitment to appreciation and employee happiness is what fuels our culture of excellence. When you feel seen, valued, and celebrated, you bring your best—and that’s exactly what we do.

I’m beyond proud to be part of a company that invests in its people and celebrates every chapter of their story. “

WOW.

Speechless. Though I did throw up in my mouth a little.

Once Chainsaw Charkie took possession of the board he told his directs one down west Palm beach next year or you are gone. CRO Derek will do anything as he's close to firing he's yes. hR is a no CFO has other offers he's a no. COO mostly uses the jet to do personal self fulfillment he's a yes. CLO is a no Compliance is a no. IA is a No. And they want to move technology out of anywhere but Iselin NJ bc Bridgette wants it and she won't be forced to go. The CxOs were shocked and really none but Charlie want to go they will shut HY which they just moved into the entirety is poorly thought. So even if you are saf now next year is worse. My hope is to find any Job where I'm not treated like a baby given more work and leave. It's the first bank in 20 years where I've asked for more work and they won't give it. So I attend the meetings I have ideas for work one took and I'm dragging it out in case they lay me off in October they don't get the work product.

John Stankaheeheee Let me help you!
John....let me help you demoralize the workforce even more. Do this John. Take away the service anniversary awards. Please do it John. Then remove any and all employee discounts. Also good work on pension plan increases. They are virtually non existent.
Cobb county teacher pensions in the state of Georgia get 3% every year. You are a cheap worthless pathetic divider in chief. It is no longer a desirable place to work. You and your cronies have gutted every aspect of what it used to be. You have as--ulted the low hanging fruit ( 1st level managers ) to the max because they have no voice as the union members do. The company culture will never rebound until you and your henchmen go somewhere. Anywhere would be good. Just go.John Stankaheeheee Let me help you!
John....let me help you demoralize the workforce even more. Do this John. Take away the
service anniversary awards. Please do it John. Then remove any and all employee discounts. Also good work on pension plan increases. They are virtually non existent.
Cobb county teacher pensions in the state of Georgia get 3% every year. You are a cheap worthless pathetic divider in chief. It is no longer a desirable place to work. You and your cronies have gutted every aspect of what it used to be. You have ATTACKED the low hanging fruit ( 1st level managers ) to the max because they have no voice as the union members do. The company culture will never rebound until you and your henchmen go somewhere. Anywhere would be good. Just go.

I’ve been ringing the bell on this for over a year—both here and in person. The writing’s been on the wall, layoffs were always coming this year. The PTO change was the clear warning sign.

I got out earlier this year and stopped even checking this site. Honestly, I’m amazed so many are acting surprised. Pull your head out of the sand.

And don’t think it’s over. Next comes a “mini reorg” here, another one over there, then suddenly—“oops, redundancies!” More cuts.

Bottom line: leadership has a headcount number they need to hit. Their bonuses are tied to it. Things will break, just like the culture that’s been shifting downhill for the last decade. Same as the country—leadership has their plan, and the rest of us just get dragged through the tank while they hit their targets.

Best advice: build a path that’s about you, not about serving an employer.

Layoffs incoming, 2 faced leaders

I have a ML who never physically works, shows up in the store for 1-2 hrs twice a month and is always complaining about how much work they have. But they are asking everyone else in the store to do the work for them on top of the tasks they are physically doing in store. Does that make sense? Wasting labor dollars for someone to do emails and come in just to show face?! When will corp realize we don’t need so many useless people

What is PS legacy. Here are a few

PLC
ELT
SBU
DEI
Deep Sector
Cloud
CUSIP
Hiring Success
Stock/Shareholder performance

When will middle management get changed over. If Uniti replaces upper management then they need to replace lower management.

My manager reportedly gave me up. Stupid as a box of rocks. Or else I’m being fed lies. Prob both.

Be Kind to yourselves, layoffs are not a business decision, but a failure of executive leadership. You all are awesome, stay that way!

It’s been over six months since Bridget came on board, so a major reshuffle in her leadership team seems inevitable at some point. I’m honestly surprised there haven’t been any changes yet. Who do you think is likely to raise or move on when it happens?

Buried at the bottom of leadership moves happening with Wealth is the news that Mona Vernon is coming over to Wealth to "focus on customer and product offerings." This is happening in mid-December.

Will the replacement be internal or external? Will they be able to boost moral?

but we don’t// apparently we work at the Oracle show. Every executive is just porting their team over here

Hope all are ok out in El Segundo and that if there was a human error that leadership is actually held accountable.

Oh, and don’t hold this against all of us for CIP…

7 years late with engine
No exploration success
Broken organization and failure to meaningfully centralize
Demotivated workforce
Unbalanced portfolio
CNE failed
Succession problem
Now series of OE incidents

All they have been able to achieve is to return cash from already producing assets back to shareholders. We dont need to pay them 33mm to do that

With RJ taking the COO role, will there be layoffs coming?

I was “fortunate “to land a position. Whole team has been impacted and I have no clarity on my role nor does my boss. No one can tell me when the move to Houston will be. It says if my planning and life doesn’t matter at all. I can find out that I will have to move in a month with no previous notice. I am supposed to give my all to this company which I do because I have a work ethic, but where is their work ethic?

Heard there are very limited promotions this year and that HR is making the decisions based on data. No input from supervisors.

It is any wonder why TD is struggling to sell when it likens to famous personalities. It lacks the creativity of TV designer Linda even when trying to dress up the truth. Lacks the elegance and humbleness of Sue on a tennis court. It's more likened to the selling skills of Albert Arkwright (Ronnie) in Open All Hours and determined to bag it's own drums like drummers Jay and Nicholas. Just barking up the wrong tree!

The whole problem with this company is the lack of visibility beyond line managers. I have no idea who my manager’s manager is, I’ve never met them, and I’ve never received a single message from them. Above that, there are another four layers of management who nobody ever hears from ever! And then we have the top brass who take all the profits and issue orders. No wonder the company is such a mess. By the time any direction filters down the message has changed completely, or just totally lost and forgotten.

Between ALL the many incidents this year, especially the two in just this week alone, was MW's enormous salary hike worth it for you Board Members? Did you feel good in deciding the rest of us are just peasants to point and laugh at as you buy your fourth vacation home in Aspen and prepare our company to be sold for parts in the next decade? Hope your family is treated with the same respect when the working class finally decides to no longer lick the boots that are stepping on us.

Why is the board so complacent. This leadership team seems to keep fumbling the ball…over and over and over. Purple this and purple that will not impress investors.

Dont worry he will take care of us

Curious if anyone has ever heard a higher ups candid opinion on this. Surely they're not in meeting rooms pretending it's actually necessary and don't notice how upset it makes people. Or are they really all some kind of NPCs just going with the larp to cover their own assets

An all-cash deal to buy an OMS nobody’s even heard of. Most of their marquee clients have already walked. The president of LB was quietly shown the door, and there’s still no real leadership in place. How on earth did none of these red flags come up during what was supposed to be “extensive” due diligence before the acquisition? At what point do RR, SK, and FF get held accountable for these missteps? How is this not shaping up to be Cymba 2.0? And when does Sanoke finally break up the boy band and bring in leaders who actually know what they’re doing?

I didn’t get laid off. That’s my crime.

I’m still here in Bangalore — bleary-eyed at 2 a.m., staring into the blue glow of another Zoom call. The Americans on mute, the managers on script, the executives smiling from Spring, Texas, while delivering the latest sermon: “This is not a layoff. This is transformation.”

And I nod along. Because nodding is safer than questioning. Survival in this machine doesn’t mean performing well, or collaborating, or innovating. It means parroting the story exactly as it’s handed down. No edits. No hesitation. Clap when they clap. Smile when they smile. Pretend the slogans mean something when we all know they don’t.

On the anonymous forums, I read the curses: “Damn Indians.” “They took our jobs.” “Outsourcing ki-led us.”
And in that moment, I become the villain. Not an engineer, not a human, not a man with a family. Just a placeholder: cheap labor, offshore body, the thief in someone else’s story.

But here’s the punchline: I didn’t ki-l anyone’s job. Neither did the guy three floors above me or the coder across town pulling a night shift with chai and instant noodles. The true executioners sit higher up. Senior management writes the script. Middle management enforces it.

Middle managers — ah, the great priests of ExxonMobil. They don’t believe in the gospel, but they chant it anyway. They gather us in Zoom town halls and deliver the holy lines:
• “This is about efficiency.”
• “This is how we stay competitive.”
• “We must all align with leadership messaging.”

Then they turn off their cameras, go back to their spreadsheets, and quietly decide which “asset” is expendable.

And the rest of us clap. Because clapping is mandatory.

The truth is uglier than the curses: Americans blame Indians. Indians blame themselves. But the real game is higher. We are not colleagues anymore, just chess pieces moved to satisfy a curve, a cost target, a shareholder’s smile.

So yes, blame me if you must. Curse me for still having a job. But know this: tomorrow it might be some place else. Or an algorithm. The villain will always be whoever management points to, as long as the real architects stay untouched.

ExxonMobil says: Energy Lives Here.
But after this round of
sermons, we all know the translation:
Truth does not. Empathy does not. Only messaging does.

what does everyone think of this guy?
will he be able to get bP off its deathbed?

By Mattias Bergstrom, Former Forbes Councils Member.

As software technology leaders, we face the same challenges as leaders in other engineering industries, but there are differences.

One of our biggest challenges is employee churn. This is where software companies suffer more than others, especially when losing engineers—because it is not just a resource being lost but training, insight and morale that will take time to replace and can disrupt production. The cost of employee churn is higher than we think. Studies have shown that the average cost to replace a highly skilled employee is 213% of their annual salary.

PayScale found that in 2018, companies like Google and Amazon with above-normal salaries and desirable employee perks still suffered from a median employee tenure of just about 1 year.

We need to start looking to cause and effect analysis and stop looking at statistics. As Mark Twain is often credited with saying, “Lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

After trying to use statistics to work out what is going wrong, we have to accept that the statistics used are not helping. So, what is really going wrong? Well, when we look at software engineering versus other types of engineering, we quickly notice differences in management. In other engineering fields, most managers are engineers themselves. So, the processes and deliverables systems have been developed by engineers, for engineers, for a long time, even since the pyramids were built.

The need for software engineering became huge in the 1980s and '90s. The value of an engineer was too high to have them in management, so leads, project managers and department heads were recruited from the business sector to keep projects “on track.” As business-educated leaders typically have no education in engineering processes, they needed ways to “measure” and manage the engineers without a full understanding of what they do or how they do them.

So, all kinds of ridiculous KPI measurements were invented. The most famous in software engineering is probably the “lines of code,” in which the performance of an engineer is measured by the amount of code they write. Ways to game this include simply extending the comments in your code, having the team agree on a fixed amount of code or, as I have personally seen, checking in garbage lines of code at the end of the day and deleting them the next.

There are a bunch of examples of KPI systems still used today that all engineers know how to game—to mention a few: story point projections, change coupling, commit count and Google DORA. They can all be gamed and are so obviously developed by business-focused non-engineers who have no clue how engineering works. What is most funny is how these KPI systems all see the engineers as measurable menial workers, not as the highly educated, valuable assets that companies need to function and generate profits.

Around these business-developed and managed KPI measurement systems, development methodologies have been created, mostly to keep up with fictional business goals and for the engineers to keep up with the KPIs. Kanban, Scrum and Agile do nothing to optimize the engineering work happening; they only provide an arbitrary way for managers to feel in control.