#leadership

Don’t normally attend these monthly calls but decided to tune in today. Well that was an hour wasted. Mainly insufferable people droning on in corporate speak about absolute BS. Main takeaway was hearing that 400 UK staff are on a PIP? Is this bell curve requirements, something for middle managers to do, a tick box exercise or all 3? Oh and not a word about pay review.

Since my last post got deleted, I won't go into specifics but the Londonderry office is a disaster. Lots of managers and senior people leaving. Morale extremely low.

I have worked at 4 other places in my career and the negativity flowing through this one is the worst. Please avoid IVS.

1. Meta's CTO, Andrew Bosworth, admitted the company's AI reorganization was poorly communicated and that leadership did "an atrocious job explaining the vision."

https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/the-worst-its-ever-been-why-metas-massive-ai-reorg-backfired-spectacularly/91363370

1. Bosworth acknowledged employee morale has likely reached "the worst it's ever been."

2. The new Applied AI division left many engineers feeling directionless, unsupported, and disconnected from leadership.

3. One major problem was excessively large management spans, with some managers overseeing well over 20 direct reports.

4. Employees reported feeling like anonymous members of oversized, hastily assembled teams rather than valued contributors.

5. Meta now plans to cap managers at roughly 20 direct reports, reduce unnecessary manager changes during reorganizations, and introduce AI coaching tools.

6. Organizational psychologist Bob Sutton noted that research has long shown large teams suffer from coordination, collaboration, and communication problems.

7. Studies indicate that smaller teams are particularly important for creative, innovative, and highly interdependent work like AI development.

8. Research covering more than 50 million papers, patents, and software projects found teams with fewer than five members were most likely to produce disruptive innovations.

9. The article compares Meta's situation to Jeff Bezos' "Two Pizza Rule," which advocates keeping teams small enough to be fed with two pizzas.

10. As Amazon evolved, it shifted toward assigning a single accountable leader to large initiatives while preserving clear ownership and coordination.

11. Meta's reorganization appears to have done neither: teams remained very large without strong centralized ownership, contributing to confusion and declining morale.

12. The article warns that current trends toward eliminating middle management can backfire, particularly in knowledge work requiring creativity and close collaboration.

13. Leadership coach Beth Steinberg argues that managers with too many reports cannot effectively coach, develop, or support employees, leaving them only able to push work forward.

14. The overall lesson is that organizations seeking flatter structures should carefully balance efficiency with effective management, communication, and team size, especially in innovation-driven environments like AI.

EH failed. This decade is widely different than the time period he worked at Nike before. He is a boomer, and doesn't belong anymore in the age of social media, AI. Time for him to retire (again...duh!) and Nike need to bring young radical minds to work in the framework of urgency, and eliminate junk VPs roaches by deliberately failing it to show their prominence and not being an athlete in Nike terms. He is not thinking to capture market share by being brutal in seizing it from competitors, but being defensive to save Nike - which will not work...He is going to take everyone down with it.

I'm genuinely excited about the IBM watsonx Challenge. As a team leader, I've spent the last several weekends planning our project, brainstorming ideas, and working with the team on how we can build something meaningful. It's been a lot of work, but it's also been a great opportunity to learn, collaborate, and push ourselves.

One of the things I've always enjoyed about IBM is that it gives people the chance to tackle real-world problems with emerging technologies. Whether our project wins or not, I'm proud of the effort our team is putting in and the skills we're developing along the way.

Looking forward to seeing what everyone creates. Good luck to all the teams participating!

Anyone else participating?

Biry will hire Asplund Leadership Consulting. Lightning crashes.

The biggest difference between the two companies isn’t technology. It isn’t strategy. It’s leadership and culture.

At SpaceX, employees are working toward a clear mission. People know the goal, understand the direction, and believe they’re building something important. Here, the only mission we’re working on is RTO and presence reports.

At AT&T, many employees increasingly feel like they’re being blamed for problems they didn’t create.

One of the most common traits of failing leadership is scapegoating. When results disappoint, instead of asking whether the strategy is wrong, leaders look for someone else to blame. Employees become the problem. Feedback becomes the problem. Dissent becomes the problem.

That’s why the 8/1/25 email struck such a nerve and why everyone here is checked out. His message to the employee base was “You don’t matter”.

When employees raised concerns about morale, flexibility, retention, and RTO, the response wasn’t introspection. Employees were told “loyalty is dead” there “might be a disconnect between you and your current professional choice.” Concerns were dismissed as “more outliers than we’d like.”

Many employees read that and saw a leader more interested in defending their bad decision than understanding why so many people opposed it.

Another hallmark of poor leadership is rigidity. Strong leaders adapt when the facts change. Weak leaders treat every challenge to their strategy as a challenge to their authority and it damages their ego. They double down, no matter how much evidence piles up around them that they made a mistake.

Then comes the most dangerous stage, isolation.

Because of the fear of retaliation for pushing back or telling the truth, leaders stop hearing bad news. Dissent gets dismissed. Feedback gets filtered. Executives surround themselves with people who tell them what they want to hear instead of what they need to hear. “Yes men”

A bubble forms, and Inside the bubble, everything is working.

Outside the bubble, morale is collapsing, talent is leaving, recruiting is harder, and competitors are pulling further ahead.

Employees aren’t asking for miracles. They’re asking for basic respect and leadership that listens, adapts, and accepts responsibility when something isn’t working.

Instead, many feel they’re being asked to sacrifice more, commute more, give up flexibility, and then accept blame when the outcomes don’t improve.

The most dangerous thing a CEO can do is become so convinced of his own correctness that he stops hearing what everyone else is telling him.

That’s the disconnect employees have been talking about all along and why another company will soon pass us by.

Honest question: Why does Dell have software Engineering Leaders and 10s of thousands of software developers?

Every piece of enterprise software we develop either doesn't work, has to be recalled, or is already 10 years behind the competition when it releases. So why do we have these groups?

Kudos to our IT leadership.
It takes real talent to invest millions in new software and end up with something less capable than what we already had. I can’t help but feel for the business leaders who are funding these projects and expecting better results.

Push the button and nothing happens (people die). Can’t recall Patriot systems deployed.

From Ford Authority:
Ford has a long history of supplying the U.S. military with various goods, beginning way back during World War I and extending to World War II, as well as the Korean and Vietnam wars. As Ford Authority recently reported, the Trump administration previously approached Ford and other automakers regarding the possibility of shifting some capacity to we-pons production, and Ford CEO Jim Farley later confirmed that the automaker was "in early discussions with the U.S. government on some defense-related projects" - as well as the European Union, too.

Now, those talks have seemingly progressed, as U.S. President Donald Trump recently revealed that both Ford and General Motors are in discussions with defense contractors that could result in the repurposing of certain plants for we-pons production, according to CBS News. Trump noted that those we-pons include things like the Patriot and the Tomahawk missile.

The B levels in my dept all got fully remote status a year ago. And the C levels got an increase from 2 to 3 days in office. Anyone know why this is? I thought at some point C levels would get remote status too.

a senior manager doesnt know how to do something like run python

therefore we need 6 meetings.

Hundreds of people axed in Kalamazoo, no WARN filing. Leadership has tanked the stock price and its in the toilet. A complete and utter disaster! CEO and CFO lied about Librela numbers and are being sued. Stay away from this company, more layoffs happening in Jun/July 2026.

St. Charles Health System eliminated 22 leadership positions. This action followed a reassessment of leadership roles. Twenty-three vacant positions will also remain unfilled. CEO Michael Hartke mentioned recent growth. Direct patient care staff were not impacted.

Bend, Oregon

https://bendbulletin.com/2026/06/23/st-charles-lays-off-22/

The people who actually know how things work are either retiring without documenting anything or getting laid off. And leadership thinks it's fine because they have their VPs. The same VPs who don't know the details and don't want input from anyone below them. It's scary to watch the company make such a huge mistake and not care.

The people I thought were untouchable are gone, while others seem to survive every reorganization without a scratch. After a while you start wondering if doing great work matters less than knowing who to keep happy and when to keep your opinions to yourself.

Serious question: where is the senior leadership team?

Employees are required to come into the office five days a week, yet it’s rare to see Directors, VPs, or SVPs in the Blue Ash buildings. Are they held to the same in-office expectations as everyone else? If not, what are the expectations? Can our CIO give direction to the entire KTD?

If leadership believes office presence is important enough to mandate, then employees should be able to see that leadership is present as well.

It was said before and it needs to be repeated. Our management levels are bloated and need to be thinned out. Layoffs are needed, but they keep targeting the wrong people. Focus on managers who do nothing and we'll be golden.

Well, Q2 is almost in the books, and you know what's cooking in the kitchen besides some 30oz steaks on the grill? More cuts, cut the fat, cut the hype, cut me a steak! Man, make it two!

Getting those lists ready as we really need to make the numbers to show just how much a difference getting a new head honcho is making. Let's make sure to keep it under 50 in every state just so that we don't have to put out any WARN notices, OK?

While we are at it, let's pretend we did something interesting with AI, like a security thing-a-jig that is not AI, but kind of sounds like it is. Or maybe we helped a mid-market company no one has ever heard of doing something wh-z-bang with AI? Yes, that sounds about right. Print it!

And also while no one is paying attention to us (really no one is) let's hire more Cisco folks who are washed up and were on the list for LR (go look it up).

Can you name a single company with a more embarrassing CEO? Just one?

If you could change things around, what would you do? Is there anyone who could fix what's broken? Who would you put in charge?

So many shakeups among the leadership over the years and things keep getting worse. It's like we're incapable of bringing in or selecting people who are actually capable of leading.

KELLY AND BILL SHOULD STAR IN THE NEXT SEQUEL.

This is just the most abysmal technical leadership from a cio I've ever seen at any company in a long career. Every word out of his mouth is cringe. This dip sh-t makes even good leaders like jen or olimpia look useless. Who the f makes these slides for our leaders, I'd be embarrassed to present these as a b2.

Previous cio had his flaws too but current guy has zero redeeming characteristics. Look at how pepsico it is leading in AI now that he's gone.

Ftlog p&g ditch this clown

We know someone is reading this...I heard today "this is the last one this year" this is the 3rd time this year I have heard that. That is why you are not trusted. It is that simple. You don't tell us the truth over and over again. This is the last one this year....most dont believe you. Board Members. The execs are not trusted. No exec managers. I know why you tow the company line. You dont want to be next. Grow a pair and stop lying also.

The leaders on this board covering up the poor decisions being made over the past two to three years is epic...right now you are neck in neck with workers that are viewing this board, thumbing up or down!

When the cuts start there won't be enough of you to quell the wave of anger!

Enjoy things for now :-)

Silence should no longer be an option. Since "leadership" is ignoring the call to step down, it’s time to turn up the volume. Let’s keep this conversation front and center until they finally acknowledge the need for a change.

Great Leaders Lead By Example
Therefore, I expect Sarah to be the first to take the new Voluntary Separation Program. But we all know she won’t. She got totally outplayed by the Trump administration and now far too many are going to pay the price for her ineptitude.

So many missed potential sales with these Amazon returns. The dinosaurs in leadership stuck on old rent-to-own tactics trying to convert non rent-to-own people into customers instead of making our business meet their needs and earn their business. I've had success selling to these people and let's just say $.01 starts doesnt work. Averaging $140 in cod with these sales. It can be done. Need new fresh minds at the top. Stop holding us back!

Financial chicanery doesn't cover up Accidenture's big ugly blemishes... years of strategy chokejobs, all-around leadership idiocy, and reactive Indian bodyshop-style layoffs (woe to those who roll off a project for any reason).

Real leaders deliver shareholder value through organic growth and cost containment, not buybacks of their toilet swirling stock. Employee incentives and enrichment? Long-term operational improvements? Real leadership and strategy? Na! Better to artificially prop up the dog$#!+ stock. Better to make a few high profile acquisitions in search of a rationale at the expense of loyal, long-term employee pay and bonuses.

Do Julie and her so called leadership really believe this toiletpaper thin PR cover-up for their horrible planning and utter absence of strategy is protecting them from accountability? Tick-tock, tick-tock...

Ajay from Oracle and Adobe? I guess we like dinosaur companies that move at a glacial pace and nickel and dime their customers for legacy products running on fumes from the glory days.

Panos was a Infra Leader? He had no experience leading entire eng orgs of backend, API, frontend teams. At best he's a SRE/Data Center guy, no wonder.

Tuckness started as a Five9 intern and every 1 or 2 years got promoted? He could not possibly have been that good.

JDR was at Skype? You know that team who's own company replaced it (Teams) because the product went downhill so quickly.

I get it. This is hard. Nobody wants to see their team shrink, nobody wants uncertainty, and nobody signs up for a job hoping to navigate a VSP or a RIF (This is not a layoff folks).

But I've been watching this forum and I want to offer a different perspective, one I don't see getting much airtime.

Companies don't offer voluntary separation packages because they hate their employees. They do it because the alternative is involuntary. A VSP with real severance, extended benefits, and time to plan your next move is genuinely a sign of a company trying to do right by people, even when the business decision behind it is painful. They could have just surprised 20% of us with RIF notices on August 1st. You can disagree with the strategy and still recognize the humanity in how it's being executed.

The personal attacks on leaders here are something else entirely. These are human beings making decisions in a brutally difficult macro environment. One that no one fully controls. Venting is understandable. But some of what I'm seeing crosses a line that doesn't reflect well on us, not on them.

Some of what I have seen has honestly made me realize there are areas where this company can RIF, with some of the narrow sighted and uninformed nonsense I have seen these past couple of weeks.

We're professionals. We can be honest about how hard this is without burning the place down on the way out.

The last domino left has fallen. Anyone left that EH hasn't shown the door?

Here's how people can push back against this.

If layoffs start happening, and I'm one of the people affected, I fully intend to create a presence on YouTube, Rumble, and TikTok focused on the layoffs at Centene and the broader issues with how the company is being managed.

I'd invite former employees to share their experiences (I am sure I can came right here to get folks to speak out) —what it was like working there, how the layoffs were handled, and examples of poor leadership and mismanagement. If I end up getting laid off, keep an eye out for it. Also if I don't get lay'd off please feel free to use my idea!

The reality is that when enough current and former employees speak openly about their experiences, it creates public accountability. Companies pay attention when their reputation, recruiting efforts, and public image are affected.

We've seen major brands take hits when unpopular decisions became public and consumers pushed back (Bud Light and Gillette). The same principle applies here. It's especially relevant when a company benefits from federal and state subsidies while making decisions that negatively impact its workforce.

There was a time when employees had very little ability to challenge this kind of behavior. Today, that's changed. Social media and online platforms give people the ability to share information, compare experiences, and bring issues into the public spotlight.

When enough people tell their stories, it becomes much harder for leadership to ignore what's happening behind closed doors.

How on earth do these people sleep at night? Is this the legacy SF wants to show her children? What a soulless bunch of fools driving this ship. May they ALL someday know the pain that they’ve cause all of us…

Tech is worse today than a year ago. When will Charlie set up the one on one?

WTF. A pre-recorded call to let people go is the most cowardly way to treat employees.

People have given countless hours to this company, and this is how they’re repaid? The company is clearly going downhill if this is the standard of leadership and respect being shown.

The very least you could do is thank people for their contributions and explain why these decisions are being made. Instead, employees are treated as if their dedication meant nothing.

Stephanie, Bob, and TPO should be ashamed of how this has been handled. In some cases, people have sacrificed personal time, family time, and even left other jobs to come here, only to be dismissed through a pre-recorded message.

This is inhumane, disrespectful, and completely contrary to any values a company should stand for. The way employees have been treated is absolutely disgusting.

My people leader was always so laid back and chill- now its emails about everything regarding production- time-claims, etc. I understand he's stressed but still... is this a paper trail for layoffs? Is it to stop me from getting VSP? T to fire me before hand? I plan on taking it anyway.. are people leaders told to be stricter or is this her way of saving her own job? I feel so discouraged now.

Have you all noticed that London pulled all the funding Michael Neidorff had threw out St. Louis and the surrounding areas? It's not only in Missouri, but in the other states too. This is why we no longer have the website that would give employees tickets to events or why we no longer get the Employee Day at the STL ZOO. I heard she got a new jet and she herself said in one of her "London's Calling" video that she "heard it in the hallways in Washington", where she makes notion that she is always up there rubbing elbows with the government. London used Centene as her personal bank account.

Frank was a miserable little criminal troll. Mike had the personality and warmth of a snow pea. Takis is pretty personable and has said the right things. I don't like the idea of not automatically replacing attrition, but nothing has changed in that regard. Having been in meetings with him, he's so curious and inquisitive. I hope we are in good hands. Time will tell.

So my work right now is dealing with reports, and I spoke to my coworker who was like if you are gone she won’t be able to handle it. She told someone else on my team, you better think twice before getting rid of her. The colleague said her leadership is not getting rid of anyone on my team. Another female on my team said she’s training someone else to do her work. So I’m confused. We are all females if you are like what’s happening .