#leadership

Could have sworn that Bain would have kept him. Brutal. Wonder what his exit package is? Who is next?

Shweta Bhatia 7 month tenure as CTO.... what did she do?

Does anyone have any insight? Management has sent numerous emails encouraging the team to attend. Management has never cared in the past about Town Halls!

…and stay for more leader insights at EG Conference 2025.

Like, who in the F is clicking on that?

Seriously.

what culture changes have you noticed over the last 5 years?

A LinkedIn post that opens “this week was a good one”. Like, how about you GFY, Kelly?

Stop the personal gain and gutting the rest of the people that keep you where you are SC*M! Take your bucket list agenda somewhere else!

I find it shocking that after months of uncertainty and fear, leadership can't be bothered to (1) guarantee a phone call to discuss your fate or (2) loop in lower level managers to have that conversation.

https://starkmanapproved.com/atts-john-stankey-enters-ceo-hall-of-shame/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

T-Mobile has always been known as the company that shook the industry, the brand that turned customers into fans and broke the mold of what wireless could be. But when a company begins to fall, it doesn’t happen all at once—it’s in the small cracks that grow when vision loses its edge, when culture begins to drift, and when leadership forgets the heart of what made people believe in the first place.

T-Mobile’s strength was never just about towers, phones, or plans—it was about people. It was about empowering employees to think differently, to fight for customers, and to believe they were part of something bold. If that spirit fades, so does the brand’s ability to rise above the rest.

Falling is not failure, but it is a warning. It’s a reminder that momentum is not permanent, and that every great movement can lose its way if it forgets its core. The fall is not about lost sales or missed targets—it’s about losing the trust and passion that once made T-Mobile unstoppable.

The question isn’t whether T-Mobile can fall. The real question is whether it will remember why it rose in the first place. ITS BECAUSE OF ITS EMPLOYEES

I retired almost 5 years ago after 25 yrs of service in several IT departments. I retired because of how incredibly toxic the work environment had become. I come here and look at several posts, and yes, it's still a toxic toilet of despair. I bugged out at the end of 2020, right when we kicked RS out in July '20, and then here came the Stank. He is why I left. Boy am I glad I cut and ran when I did, I love being retired. I really feel for you guys out there trying to keep your heads above all of Stankeys sewage sloshing about.

You can spot an L3/L4 leader from 100 yards away. They stick out like a Weird Al ringtone at a funeral. No stress on their face, they’re weightless despite the gravity of their decisions. Be better. It doesn’t take much.

Is anyone else feeling like a certain new leadership hire in our marketing org is steering without a clear destination? There’s been a noticeable lack of transparency, empathy, and strategic vision. Morale all time low and the only remaining talent left is disconnected from the top-level decisions that affect our futures. No one will submit a complaint with the fear of retaliation and organization RIF being held over our heads. Anyone with me?

Team culture is not good whatsoever and leadership is not involved at all, they say they are but they are not, and at the same time opportunities are hard to come by which is hurting everybody. This has been going on for a long time and nothing is changing which people keep pointing out but it just keeps getting worse. Leadership says they care but they don’t and the whole place is going nowhere because of it.

Looks like S Giuliano is no longer gainfully employed by the emperor. Mr G was always fair and after working alongside him side for years - I can say truly, he was one of the best managers and leaders. Sad day.

Leadership here is a mess. They talk like they know the work but they really don’t. Cliques run everything and block anyone who’s not in the circle. Some leaders lie straight to your face and HR backs them while they push people out. Employees are treated like tools, not people, and anyone who doesn’t fit in gets picked at until they give up. No wonder so many are quitting.

How? How many folks do you know who actually think she's doing a good job?

I can’t believe the whole ops leadership is from Roger’s communications and they are the worst leaders possible trying to be top dog creating duplication and headaches as if they know what the heck we all do. Better yet some have been here 5 months and already getting promotions to SR roles, yet the people that have been here for years working their butts off can’t get a raise. Idk how HR doesn’t see that

Cisco needs someone who can better manage layoff crisis other than Francine always trying to be a barbie doll all the time

One after another, all members of Pershing’s technology leadership team were either let go or resigned. Leadership positions have since been taken over by individuals from BNY Wealth and Albridge, many of whom lack a solid understanding of the business. Their actions are causing significant issues, and I hope they recognize the problems before the situation becomes too big to recover from.

Where is the CPO? Haven’t seen him on any of our customer calls and we’ve been getting those customers.

For those who survived Wave 1, is this seriously the boss we all reported to now? Wow just wow. Looks gonna be toxic.

"CEO MW is overhauling the oil giant’s ‘nice’ corporate culture, getting tougher not just on his employees but also on rivals and the politicians standing in his way".

WSJ article:
https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/chevron-leadership-mean-strategy-598f5c84

This entire process is fu---d up. How can any of the leaders sleep at night? This is people’s lives here. They are all ba----ds.

In about 2 hours from now.....

the employees in India that survived this RIF will likely be starting their workday. Those that did not will be wondering what just happened.......

Going across the various time zones as the sun rises, there will be other centers of F5 employees that will be encountering the same.

In the US, I know of Seattle, Spokane and San Jose that got hit. I believe there were a number of remote employees too among those that are now without employment. I'm guessing the RIF size to be > 250.

Having been through 3 RIFs and two closings of my own, the hardest hit are those going through medical procedures/issues and the children of those RIFd and those RIFd that are taking care of their parents. Will savings last long enough so that food can be provided on the table and shelter to provide warmth? Will I be able to afford COBRA to get me through the medical issues? Will I find new employment? How do I comfort my kids? How do I take care of my aging parents?

I don't have any answers. For me, it's unbelievable that I survived those times and situations.

I would hope the various Chief x-x Officers (of which now there are many), SVPs, VPs, and senior management seriously consider what they have just done. It's much more than keeping the stock price up, double digit profit, and maintaining your bonuses. You have just destroyed the lives of hundreds of loyal hard working honest people and it didn't need to be done. There were other ways.

At F5 there was a core group of about 7 of us working on bigip next/centralized manager that continuously raised concerns about the architecture/feature set along with the quality and performance of the products. We also raised concerns that F5's implementation of Agile/Scrum was a poor development choice. Our concerns were dismissed. Gradually, each one of us was eliminated over the course of a number of RIFs. We were silenced.

And now those products are no longer.

F5 is no longer a community member. F5 is no longer human first. F5 has lost it's soul.

If anyone missed they are reducing the 401k / cash balance plan by 2 percent. SLT values young employees over tenured ones saying over 10 year employees receive too much vacation. KC you are the mini me of DR.

As I recall the survey results from two years ago were kept from us. Now they want to discuss why the results are worse than the 2023 results we never got to see??

How do we know they are worse than?
We are just supposed to blindly believe a company that has no loyalty to us and lies to us everyday?

Tell us again how Director and above are supposed to be in Dallas or Atlanta?

Tell us how many “hubs” we have?

Stankey can’t even motivate his “yes men” to follow policy, what makes him think he has any real power?
Sounds like AT&T is ask us to show our loyalty to the company, by asking us to improve the culture they destroyed.

The way it’s going now the status quo will be the demise of the company before the next survey.

Any one have any clue when they are going to start announcing the new structure and who is reporting into whom?

includes Mark because these are the last numbers I could find in the fy24 proxy

• Mark J. Barrenechea — Vice Chair, CEO & CTO: total compensation approximately US$14.7 million.
• Todd Cione — President, Worldwide Sales: total compensation approximately US$6.34 million.
• Muhi S. Majzoub — EVP, Chief Product Officer / Security Products leadership: total compensation approximately US$3.9 million range
• Paul Duggan Chief Customer Officer (President & CCO; listed as NEO in proxy): total compensation approximately US$4.5 million range.

AT&T We Can't Sleep
An open letter to Mr. John Stankey and the leadership of AT&T

Contact: attwecantsleep@gmail.com

March, 2021
To Mr. John Stankey, CEO AT&T
AT&T Willow Tech Center in Redmond[1], Washington is in violation of the City of Redmond noise ordinance chapter 6.36 Noise Standards as verified by a noise impact study by an INCE board certified principal acoustical engineer with Tenor Acoustical Engineering and also by the City of Redmond [2]. AT&T has thus far refused to mitigate the issue after numerous complaints through the city of Redmond, complaints spanning back years. The noise produced by AT&T’s chillers and HVAC units are having a detrimental impact on multiple families' lives and health of both adults and children who are unable to sleep.

The night time limit of 50 decibels is breached every hour of the night, every day of the week. Inside home decibel readings can breach 50 decibels making it impossible to have a proper night of sleep or any kind of normalcy -- this is a form of torture and we are pleading with you to resolve this immediately.

Mr. Stankey, please listen to this live video and audio stream from a residence near the AT&T Willow Tech Center.

Apart from reading off her AI generated slide shows with cartoon characters?

Everyone else has informative slides and are not reading off their slides, they're providing more depth to the information provided and showcasing how they're leading (or attempting to do literally anything). And then we have Sandy reading off her badly formatted slideshow that she pretends took a week to make when in reality it took ChatGPT all of 10 seconds to make.

Is she like an executive cheerleader? Like honestly.

Now that Mark got kicked out the door there's nobody to protect her role, she's probably in line to get fired and replaced with a person who actually does something.

Not that I trust leadership to be capable of choosing someone truly competent, who’d be good for both us and the company. But I guess it can’t get much worse than Mark. Maybe, at least, the next round of layoffs won’t be outright sla-ghter.

Haven’t heard much about layoffs.

Everything revolving around the 4 days RTO.

Usually, there are confirmed rumors but right now there is a lot of silence. Not sure if company expecting people to quit and then see where to make cuts.

Like everything else, I’m expecting the leadership team to fail even when it comes to layoffs.

Smartsheet CEO Mark Mader retiring; Apptio co-founder Sunny Gupta will take over enterprise giant as “acting CEO.”

https://www.geekwire.com/2025/tech-moves-icertis-names-new-ceo-as-samir-bodas-steps-down-smartsheet-adds-security-leader/

I feel bad for the people who were laid off in March and April. It didn’t have to happen that way—they should have decided to replace the CEO earlier instead of cutting employees who rely on their paychecks. Was the CEO fired because of AI?

happy, relieved, panicked, or conflicted?

Public story: John B, President & COO, “leaves for a CEO role elsewhere”.

Alternative story: he was walked to the door with an excuse.

"Think about it": you don’t pour 2-3 years into Reinvention, secure the Lexmark deal, build the org around your plan… and then bail two weeks before the real integration battle begins... unless someone either makes it impossible for you to stay or strongly suggests you go.

The narrative is classic:

• Announcement wrapped in cloying praise (corporate damage control).

• Immediate successor already lined up (succession was planned waaay before the news went public).

• Keeps a Board seat and a ceremonial “Integration Committee” role (an elegant exile to save face, not actual operational control).

If this was his choice, it’s because he saw the cost overruns, turf wars, and ugly compromises coming once Lexmark and Xerox cultures start grinding against each other.

If it wasn’t his choice, it’s because someone higher (guess who?) decided the Reinvention architect wasn’t the right one to live in the house he designed.

Either way, JB’s timing is perfect: he leaves with his reputation (almost) intact, before anything collapses, while keeping a Board seat so he can still claim credit if it somehow works. He’s also safely out of the firing line when the knives come out.

Bruno gets his big career upgrade. The rest of the leadership team gets to “own” the unfinished Reinvention house.

We, the employees-peasants, get to keep holding up the walls while the "architect" waves from a safer place.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/11/intel-ceo-trump-lip-bu-tan.html?__source=iosappshare%7Ccom.google.chrome.ios.OpenExtension

Evidently the smarter people needs to study it

Leaders are overwhelmed and not sharing updates about a “big announcement” coming this month. There is no structure or strategic plans in place. People keep getting moved around. No hiring outside the dept. Development plans are being forced on employees. WTF