#leadership

I once heard PP say in private that one of the the firm's biggest problem is over retention of underperforning associates. Did ER solve this? A lot of talent has walked out the door and im still surrounded by id--ts.

Scientists have published a groundbreaking report where they studied the smoothest brain on the planet, belonging to AT&T CTO Jeremy Legg.

“It’s insane, we’ve never seen zero synaptic activity in a human ever”, one scientist said, “we’re honestly not even sure how he’s alive.”

“We’ve long thought humans evolved from apes, but we thought it was a one way street you know, we never thought humans could DEVOLVE from apes, until we met Jeremy.”

According to the report, Mr. Legg has less neural activity than Kanzi, the world’s smartest ape. The discovery of Mr. Legg has led to the funding of more ground breaking studies, “this opens up the opportunity to study how the Neanderthals actually communicated and thought”.

In response to the report, Jeremy Legg gave a statement to our newsroom intern, “AI is se-y, Azure is se-y, data centers are not se-y. This reporter is REALLY se-y.”

EDay is new to MB and I’m 8 years in the MB division, this fruitbasket is a joke.

Scott Sheffield of Pioneer wants to get a job as an ExxonMobil board member

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/04/17/2025-06562/petition-of-scott-sheffield-to-reopen-and-set-aside-order

It’s hard not to notice the growing stagnation within 3M’s PSD division. For a company long known for innovation, the lack of meaningful new products coming out of this group is concerning. The pipeline feels dry, and the urgency that once defined 3M’s culture of invention seems to be missing. Just chasing lost business now.
Equally troubling is the apparent gap in leadership. Strong leadership should inspire direction, accountability and momentum and there’s a sense of drift. Without clear vision or decisive action, teams are left without the guidance needed to push boundaries or bring new ideas to life.
Employees feel it. When innovation slows and leadership doesn’t step up, morale takes a hit. Talented people want to build, create, and solve problems and not sit in a holding pattern.
3M has the legacy, talent, and resources to do better. But without renewed focus on innovation and stronger leadership within PSD, it risks falling behind where it once led.In addition commercial effectiveness is a total joke.
#3M #Layoffs #Innovation #Leadership #WorkplaceReality

Surprised nobody has said anything

Rolling layoffs, zero communication, blatant indifference. I have no idea who could deliver a "work hard" and "we're all in this together" load of cr-p with a straight face. But then again, they pick them specifically for such purposes.

Excessive discipline, control, micromanagement. They point to a business that's run out of real substance and strategic direction. From where I'm sitting, the whole thing is coming apart.

Thoughts on this? More general BS or or post large layoff related BS?

What happened to the highly anticipated external hire from a consulting company who was appointed to head DMC strategy? She disappeared after just a few months. Was she that bad?

How would I go about doing that? Is there someone I should send my resume to?

Detroit Employment Solutions Corp. (DESC) is addressing a significant budget deficit. The agency laid off 46 full-time employees, about one-third of its staff. The deficit resulted from accounting mistakes and expiring federal COVID-19 funds. Its CEO resigned, and the Chief Financial Officer position remains vacant. Interim leadership is working to stabilize operations and address remaining challenges.

Detroit, Michigan

https://outliermedia.org/detroit-at-work-job-training-unemployment/

Morale at USB is the lowest it’s ever been. Don’t believe the way they will try and spin the engagement survey. The only reason there is not a massive flight of talent is the economy. There is no support for the CEO or her managing committee. They are the worst in the industry and have shown that they despise the employees. They take millions for themselves and give no raises to thousands of employees.

Corporate real estate and the awful head of HR have ruined RTO. They forced people who were never hired as in office into the cheapest office spaces that are loud and dirty with people who sit on Teams meetings all day. The locations they chose to keep do not work for most but they said people having a 90 minute commute each way is acceptable for RTO. Read other posts for how awful it is here for people. They do not care about employees or their well being.

The best we can all do is demand new leadership in any forum we can, do not bank with USB, do not take the survey. Refuse to do more than the bare minimum. The only positive you will hear about leadership will come from GK’s damage control minions and the boomer boot lickers.

To my dear, hardworking US Associates,

I am reaching out today with a heart full of "purpose" and a strategy full of "synergy." As your Managing Partner, I’ve been reflecting on our commitment to being a "human-centered" firm. And what is more human than wanting to keep more money for ourselves?

That is why David Chubak and I are absolutely thrilled to announce the opening of our newest Home Office location in India!

The "Proficiency-ish" Pivot
Now, I know what you’re thinking: "Penny, how can someone across the ocean do my job?" Well, the data is in! We’ve determined that our new international colleagues can perform your daily tasks with a solid 70% proficiency.

Sure, that leaves a 30% gap of "technical errors" and "client confusion," but when you look at the much reduced cost of labor, that 30% is just a rounding error in our quest for efficiency. We aren't just cutting corners; we’re "reimagining the circle."

Out With the Old, In With the Bold
To facilitate this exciting transition, we will be implementing a slow, methodical replacement of US headcount with Indian headcount. Think of it as a baton pass—except instead of passing a baton, we’re passing your desks and responsibilities to a time zone that’s thirteen hours ahead.

Why We’re Doing This (The Honest Part)
At Edward Jones, we often talk about the "Rule of 70." Usually, it’s about retirement, but today, it’s about the 70% increase David and I are eyeing for our own Executive Compensation.

By offloading your roles to a lower-cost market, we are finally able to unlock levels of personal wealth previously unseen in the history of the firm. It takes real leadership to look thousands of dedicated employees in the eye and say, "Your sacrifice is the fuel for my next vacation home."

Looking Ahead
As you badge in for your next Return to Office shift, please do so with a smile, knowing that every spreadsheet you finish helps David and me get one step closer to our "Golden Parachutes."

We are so grateful for everything you’ve done to build this firm. Now, if you could just spend the next few months documenting your processes in extreme detail for your replacements, that would be just "super."

With deep (financial) gratitude,

Penny Pennington
Managing Partner & Chief Compensation Optimizer

I didn’t fully connect the dots a couple weeks ago but our leader made sure we saw the update to the in office goal on Workday, and that it meant full days which was at least 6 hours. I didn’t think much of it until yesterday when we saw all of the discrepancies. The tracked number is over 6 hours which they will never tell you because they want 8.

You're gonna need it with your new CIO.

Curious if anyone’s leader actually did damage control today by talking to their people or teams as this in office message went out? It seems obvious to me we were all left to panic and figure it out on our own. Rewind the clock 2 months ago and our workday tracker said 11 days, and a percentage. Now today nearly half the company is below the mark. Did your leader help you clarify that today?!

Put yourself in LE's shoes and enlighten us as to how yoh would go about doing things for the business to survive

Look at what's happened here over the last decade. Decline after decline. Bad decisions, missed opportunities, leadership that couldn't lead. AT&T is on life support now. Just waiting to see who finally turns off the machines.

I posted my thoughts in a comment awhile back, here's my peon take on the state of things:

MGMT isn't held accountable; escape is just a re-org away.

There's zero vision at the top. JP/BH/GD are not the right guys by any metric. Our sales incentives are aligned such that sales will pressure RnD to continue hunting the same 20 banks with the same multi-year projects. That pressure will force RnD to acquiesce.

CIS continues to be a useless rube goldberg SaaS for ticket generation under their current leader.

All while leadership continues to say that we're looking to get leaner, and deliver at a higher volume etc. etc.

Within RnD we have principal developers who don't know how computers work. When I say this I mean the basics of networking, filesystems, algorithms.

I had Sr Principal dev ask me what DFS was.... this by itself is not the issue, but it certainly points to the issue: people are not held accountable for performance, nor are they expected to improve their technical acumen, and inversely, they are rewarded simply for staying.

IMO:

SAS should strive to be (in part) the AWS of data tools. There should have a simple portal such that customers can input their payment info, click on a given tool, and crank it up according to some set of configurable parameters. It should be seamless.

This will require:

CIS and RnD to merge

a real SRE program inside of the company (it's insane and an indictment of the company that no one I've spoken to in CIS has heard of the term SRE).

us to retain top talent, and purge dead weight.

sas would need to spend cycles reducing service footprint/consolidating services/improving big O performance. several gigs of RAM is insane for a login service. Not to mention the fragmentation of said service.

The same model should be followed for solutions, which means prodman will need to actually learn how to do their job. we have some of the most arrogant, yet ignorant, product managers in the business.

know your domain, know the market, and sell to that market. every solution can't do everything. boutique projects are fine, but that's not gonna move the needle.

there should be pre-configured, highly opinionated, solutions that can be delivered and adding value in under a month.

Curious to see the perspective from people around the company

I'm lost. BD is lost. Can someone tell me what's really going on here?!

This is the worst I've seen it since I started 16 years ago. There is no one steering the ship anymore. If there's still a captain, no one's listening to them. The norm is hurry up and wait. The culture is lies, fear, anxiety, confusion, frustration, and baffling. One good thing I recently heard is that a bunch of higher ups were let go, so someone up top is keen on trimming some of the upper fat. Maybe we will be lucky enough to get more DEI hires to replace them!

Employee morale is so bad and stressed out that the leadership need to bring a therapy dog to make employees feel better.

Also, because of the above point, we are stopping measurement of the employee pulse score until morale improves.

Finally, we are going to delete your-voice slack channel because the leadership team is tired of you whiners.

He barely reads at a 5th grade level.

As our company is going through a tough time, I would like to propose the following ideas for saving costs:

• Pay Stephanie to do nothing. She has already proven that she creates negative value, so ensuring she does nothing will immediately increase the company's value.

• Move Bob to Cognizant, ideally to a low-cost location. This will allow him the opportunity to live the idea.

• Fire all the CTOs. Why do we need useless executives who have been unable to modernize our products for years? Replace them with AI bot. Productivity jump.

• Move Kelly to report to Koushik, so that both eventually leave. Huge savings.

Any idea you would propose?

I just got my total rewards statement plastered with the swollen face of our “HR Chief” bragging about our “total rewards program”. PLEASE!! Pathetic base pay (not tested against market norms since 2019?), finance using merit increases to fund their expense gaps, PATHETIC medical coverage and a “wellness” program that contacted of a few off the shelf apps that do nothing.

Oh - and surprise, we haven’t had a head of total rewards for 2 years, probably because nobody in their right mind would go to work with SM.

Even amidst all the dysfunction among the ELT, I truly can’t believe that SM is still in her role given the complete lack of delivery on basics like this.

Even with her complete disconnection from the reality of her employees, one has to think Penny MUST be cringing whenever SM opens her mouth. I know everyone else is…

While ballistic missiles rained down on our homes, the Intel Israel team woke up and went to the fabs. We coded from bo-b shelters with our kids crying near our homework station. We kept the PTL roadmap alive because we know it is the lifeline of this company right now. We delivered.

And LBT? Total radio silence.

When Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is asked about Israel, he speaks with humanity. He acknowledges his people on the ground. He acts like a leader.

https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel/technology-science/artc-100-with-israel-nvidia-s-ceo-expands-tech-investment-amid-war

It is easy to demand flawless execution and celebrate roadmap milestones on earnings calls. It is another thing entirely to stand by the engineers and fab workers who are actually securing your future under the threat of war.

Not one word during the entire month. Zero. Now that the Iran war is over, i can honestly say this is an absolute disgrace.

During Chambers' time, there was a very clear strategy and vision: to be number one or two in every product line that Cisco sells, combined with a vision to change the way we live, learn, and play. Today, there is no vision or strategy at Cisco. What is important is to maintain profit margins only. Over the past decade, Cisco has lost significant market share in every product line it sells, and in some of them it has long since ceased to be number one or two.

Dan Hanson, head of Global Client Services in CTD, "retiring from ThermoFisher" effective 4/17

Layoffs and all the nonsense narratives that are spewed on this site have NOTHING to do with stock price. It's all about Medicare reimbursements, gov regulations and to a very small degree public sentiment. A huge amount of our stock is owned by massive mutual fund managers who KNOW it's significantly undervalued. The stock had a perfect storm last year of leadership instability and the gov coming after big insurance. Face it, the mu---r of Brian started a horrific downturn for the company which was roaring at the time. Then public sentiment and government tanked it.
Letting Gl 26's to GL 32's go and hiring offshore doesn't move the scale one bit. Sorry but that narrative is immature and un-insightful.
And ANYONE here who who says they want the company to fail isn't someone who has a career goal or isn't an employee at all.
Now throw all your shade and down arrows at me and call me a boomer but the truth is the truth.

Not waiting for July 1 like the exec chairman stated in today's email. Bounced today. House of Cards starting to fall. Wait until the FY27 plans are shared more broadly. Going to be a lot of unhappy campers.

So after I was laid off last year, I grew a deep seated hatred for my director and manager for my departure. My resentment knew no bounds. I cursed them everyday for sticking me in this godforsaken job market. I imagined them laughing at me and my misery.

After finding nothing for almost 6 months and wishing I was dead and gone, my hatred for my prior leadership still driving me strong, I've come to learn that they were recently dismissed at the beginning of the year and recently today.

I now feel an emptiness I can't describe. All this time hating and letting it drive my passion to surpass them and land a better opportunity, and I now feel like I don't know like I wasted my time wishing them despair. I hate them for putting me in this situation, but now they're in the same boat as me. It feels weird learning that they're gone too from T-Mobile and I don't know anymore.

Pushed or walked?

They just asked us to fund their political agenda. With our own money. 🚨

Leadership held a call with Senior Directors and above asking employees to personally donate to one of the Political Action Committee that Altice USA recommends — that fund lobbying politicians and shape policy to benefit the company.

No reimbursement. Not a single cent back.
What do we get? A virtual badge. And “bragging rights” for the department that donates the most.

They claimed whether we donate or not has no influence on our employment, but I highly doubt that.

So let’s be clear: the company wants US to dig into OUR paychecks to fund THEIR political influence — and the reward is a digital sticker.

It’s really shocking how poorly these work changes are being handled. The lack of coordination, communication and planning is unbelievable. The entire leadership staff should be embarrassed.

There are ongoing concerns about a Southeast team member acting beyond their assigned responsibilities. Multiple customers have reported unprofessional communication, which is negatively affecting client relationships.

Additionally, decisions being made appear to prioritize short-term margin improvements at the expense of customer satisfaction. This is creating unnecessary friction and could impact long-term retention.

It would be helpful to clarify roles, responsibilities, and communication expectations to ensure a consistent and professional experience for clients.

1.) Hire exec. team of highly compensated "friends" to virtue signal
2.) Create us vs 'them' environment
3.) Have numerous employee indoctrination meetings (receive medals)
4.) Spin-off non core businesses
5.) Quarterly lay-offs of 'them'
6.) Complain that Bryan isn't Chairmen of the Board

Rinse and repeat.

At least 80% of tech folks are not working as leadership said months ago that layoffs and reorg are coming. Yet things are still smooth and nothing is on fire.
Zero communication from tech leaders since their phony vague meetings.
Cut them and 80% of tech so we can lower ops cost and wait for some product to pull us out of this.
Embarrassed at how little work there is in tech yet 7k employees and layers upon layers of leadership.
Never forget - AC must go….

First FB and now AR… seems like all the competent leaders that are actually desirable to other companies are jumping ship left and right.

Are they scared the good ole boys will close ranks and bamboozle Meg to squeeze them out anyways? What will become of BP when the only leaders left are the unemployable that incompetently marched down this road like GB, AF, WL, EM, etc….

How do we have an upstream resurgence operating on scraps? Will we finally hire from outside?