#management

The problem isn't that we have too many people. That was never the real issue. The problem is that our strategy is bad and our systems are broken and have been for some time. But instead of fixing those things, they just cut staff. And then they're surprised when nothing improves.

he classic Apollo playbook:

Buy distressed debt at 60 cents on the dollar
Take control of the company
Extract management fees, dividend recaps, sale-leasebacks
Pile on more debt to fund those extractions
Flip it or take it public at an inflated valuation
Leave the debt burden with the company and its workers

They got extraordinarily rich essentially being vultures with spreadsheets. Toys R Us being the most notorious example — a viable retail business that might have navigated the Amazon era with investment, instead bled dry to service the debt load private equity strapped to it, then liquidated. 30,000 jobs gone.
The reversal now:
The very mechanism that made them wealthy — cheap abundant debt — is now the thing squeezing their portfolio companies. They loaded businesses with floating rate debt when rates were near zero. Now those same companies are paying 8-9% on debt that cost 3% when the deal was done. The interest coverage ratios that looked comfortable in the pitch deck are underwater in reality.

Apollo's problem today:
Their Private debt funds are being squeezed.... Investors are queuing to withdraw their money, but Apollo, ever the masters at extracting cash are blocking investors from extracting their cash.
Their own fundraising depends on showing strong returns
Strong returns depend on not marking assets down
Not marking down depends on not being forced to sell
Not being forced to sell depends on keeping redemption gates in place
Gates signal distress which makes future fundraising harder
It's a trap of their own construction.
The human cost dimension:
What makes it genuinely poetic rather than just financially interesting is that the people who will suffer least are the Apollo partners who already extracted their carry and management fees in cash — that money is gone, sitting in their personal accounts, insulated from whatever happens to the funds now. The people who suffer most will be:

Pension beneficiaries whose funds allocated to private credit chasing yield
Workers at portfolio companies that get restructured when the debt becomes unserviceable
Retail investors who got sold private credit products in the democratization push of the last few years

The democratization push was particularly cynical — Blackstone, Apollo et al spent the last 5 years lobbying to open private markets to retail investors, framed as giving ordinary people access to returns previously reserved for institutions. In reality they were hunting for new pools of capital to absorb the assets institutions were quietly becoming reluctant to buy at current valuations. Distributing the risk downward while keeping the fees flowing upward.
The SEC under the previous administration largely went along with it. Whether the current regulatory environment does anything about it is another question entirely — though given the administration's general disposition toward financial deregulation, probably not.
The deeper irony is that the whole private equity model was built on information asymmetry and complexity as a moat — if you can't price it, you can't challenge the valuation. That same opacity that let them extract value on the way up is now the thing preventing orderly price discovery on the way down. They built a machine that works brilliantly in one direction and catastrophically in the other.
Though as usual, the architects of the situation will be largely fine.
The mob analogy is more apt than most financial commentators would dare say — and the structural parallel is remarkably precise.
The bust-out:
What the mob called a "bust-out" is almost textbook private equity in distressed situations:

Take control of a business
Immediately establish credibility and access to credit
Draw down every available credit line
Extract cash through fees, dividends, sale-leasebacks of assets
Leave the hollowed shell with the debt
Walk away before the collapse

The only difference is the mob used fear and the occasional arson. Apollo uses leveraged buyout agreements, management fee structures, and Delaware holding company law. The end result for the target company and its stakeholders is frequently identical.
The Sears case study:
Eddie Lampert's destruction of Sears is almost a perfect bust-out in slow motion:

Merged Kmart and Sears creating a vehicle loaded with real estate value
Spun off the real estate into a REIT — Seritage — extracting the most valuable assets into a separate entity he controlled
Starved the retail operations of capital investment while collecting fees
Watched the retail business deteriorate "unexpectedly"
Meanwhile the real estate value had already been extracted
175,000 jobs eventually gone
Lampert personally fine, operating from his yacht in Miami

The language is Orwellian by design:

"Operational efficiency" = cutting staff and maintenance
"Rightsizing the balance sheet" = loading debt onto the target
"Unlocking hidden value" = selling assets the company needs to operate
"Strategic transformation" = preparing for bankruptcy while extracting fees
"Aligning management incentives" = giving executives options to flip quickly while workers get nothing
"Patient long term capital" = we have a 7 year fund life before we have to show returns

The vocabulary is specifically engineered to sound like value creation while describing value extraction. McKinsey does the same thing — provides the intellectual laundering that makes looting sound like strategy.
The legal architecture is the real innovation:
What makes it genuinely different from the mob — and arguably more insidious — is that generations of lawyers, lobbyists and academics built a legal architecture that made it not just legal but celebrated:

Delaware corporate law optimized for shareholder extraction
Carried interest tax treatment meaning PE profits taxed at capital gains rates not income
Bankruptcy law allowing secured creditors (the PE fund) to jump ahead of workers and pensioners
ERISA rules that let pension obligations be shed in restructuring
Limited partner structures insulating the fund managers from portfolio company liabilities

The mob had to corrupt individual judges and officials. PE corrupted the entire legislative and regulatory framework over decades through campaign finance and the revolving door. Far more efficient.
The revolving door completes the circle:
The regulatory capture is almost total. SEC commissioners become PE partners. Treasury officials join Apollo or Blackstone. Fed governors sit on advisory boards. The people who should be watching the store have a financial interest in not watching too carefully — because their post-government career depends on the industry's goodwill.
Where it differs from the mob:
The mob at least had a certain redistributive quality within their community — the money circulated locally, bought loyalty, funded neighborhoods. PE extracts value and concentrates it among a remarkably small number of people. The carried interest on a successful fund can make a handful of partners billionaires while the pension fund that provided the capital gets an 8% return it could have gotten in an index fund with zero fees and zero complexity.
The cultural damage:
Perhaps the most lasting harm is what it did to the idea of business itself. A generation of the most talented people from the best universities went into finance and private equity not to build things but to financialize things that already existed. The engineering talent that built America's industrial base was replaced by financial engineers whose skill was not creation but extraction. That's a civilizational cost that doesn't show up in any fund's IRR calculation.
The instinct that it's essentially organized crime with better tailoring is — while impolite in polite company — analytically pretty hard to refute.

And instead of fixing things, they've created a workforce that doesn't care anymore. The failure is just getting worse.

It’s time to lose the useless triplicate managers managing the managing . Long overdue . VZN doesn’t need these useless directors

Just curious, does our American counterparts unfairly compensated ? Seen so much hatred especially MW and his LT.

Other part of the world,in my side of the world, the trend is the mid-managers got the hatred due to poor leadership skills, not performing yet promoted due to some connections with some American leadership connections so called build relationship.

Our leadership has never sat where we sit. They don't know what it takes to get things done. They don't understand why certain things take as long as they do. They're completely disconnected from the reality of the people who actually do the work.

At Western Union, the vibe has changed completely over the past few months. Teams are thinner, expectations are higher, and there’s a lot of silence from management after recent internal emails.

Wow, this article triggered me! Why? For decades radio measurement was exclusive to Arbitron. Much like Nielsen, they were considered a monolopy. The thought of Nielsen one day buying Arbitron thus hoarding both TV/Radio measurement was unheard of...until it wasn't. As digital became pervasive, and the TV landscape started to change at a drastic rate with streaming...somehow the gov't was convinced Nielsen buying Arbitron would be a good thing. But for who? Not us employees, either Arbitron or Nielsen. I was on the TV side during this buyout and basically overnight we were ordained radio "experts" with full responsbility of managing all client contracts and relationships. Middle mgt and finance didn't give a cr-p how you pulled it off...as long as you kept that money coming in. Basically double the work for the same compensation. It was a nightmare One of the reaonons I eventually burned out. I can only imagine how hard it was as well for the Aribtron folks now having to listen to Nielsen mgt BS. Anways, seems none much has changed. Read the article.

https://barrettmedia.com/2026/05/11/nielsen-ceo-karthik-rao-radio-promise/

Ran into a colleague who was hired same time I was nearly 20 years ago and I considered to be a friend. He has a higher potential than I do. I was so sad to hear the way he was talking. Total disdain for workers. I guess he has become management.

The cliquishness/exclusivity is strong, and managers operate on fear-based leadership. Where is the psychological safety?!

The travesty of Omnissa continues under the disabled leadership of our CEO. Lots of folks got promoted at the top levels of management from directors to VPs whereas genuine promotions at lower IC levels were denied and sent back under the excuse of 8 percent limits on promotions. People who are doing the heavy lifting were denied whereas top management promoted folks who report directly to them. Most of the companies are going with flatter organisations but Omnissa continues in the wrong direction. Corruption and nepotism at highest levels.

That's what we can find solace in.

Why are there MDs arm-twisting their staffs to complete the code of conduct that we have a month to complete? Same with the feedback theater. Is this what scores points now - harassing staff to get meaningless things done ahead of the deadline?

I have worked at several companies and so far this one is the worst. Pretty much everyone I work with seems to hate their job. Many people are very difficult to work with and have a very horrible energy and attitude which makes work unpleasant because they don’t want to do anything and are only here for a paycheck and feel stuck.

I guess I can’t even blame them cause I hate it here too. However it is draining when you’re constantly around people that hate their work and team and have a horrible attitude about doing their job. Management only cares about managing up and cant even bother to pretend to care about their team. We are all in a weird matrix environment where everyone is out for themselves while the managers only care about showing off and kissing up to the higher ups. So why am I here? Bad job market and I have bills to pay so I am here hating it too.

Engineers rolling up to a Supv who rolls up to a Sr Mgr who also has engineers as direct reports. If leaders get one “5” to hand out, who does it go to? Does the Supervisor even get a shot at giving them to their direct reports, or will Sr Mgr get one and hog it for themselves?

How will RTO be used in place of a layoff? The managers in my group don’t even show up all the time and take a lot of PTO during connect weeks.

I assume nothing will really happen to managers but what will the trickle down impact will this have on their teams? I assume managers are also nagged about their attendance?

I’m hearing that it was mostly US employees affected.

Input from overseas origin management drove much of the selection process.

What are you even "managing"? It's ridiculous.

The TOP companies are getting the message yet this dinosaur is not excelling but just managing.

It costs $2.2B–$4.0 Billion a year for this.

• people managers
• program managers
• product managers
• project managers
• engineering managers
• sales managers

So 7,000–13,000 people managers

And another 4,000–9,000 program/product/project managers

.......do you REALLY need >20,000 managers managing to manage?

Are these 20 thousand even technical?

If not, what do they even do?

Fidelity pushed the non-tech to tech roles during the pandemic. Then finally someone realized it’s better to pay more for people who know what they’re doing.

Next cut will be managers who aren’t qualified and have been in their roles too long. Weak managers cost the firm too much, it’s not just one expense, but there’s a serious ripple effect.

Culture comes from the top down and when the top are filled with people that only have one brain cell, the rest of the company takes a hit.

Don't ki-l yourself for this place. It's truly not worth it. The people running things now don't respect us, so why should we respect them?

We brought someone onto my team last month who used to be a senior manager at a major tech firm. Over a decade of management experience. Two decades total in the industry. He's now an individual contributor at a mid level role. It really shows how quickly a career you spent years building can evaporate.

I’ve watched this happen multiple times. A manager decides they don’t like someone, not because of performance, but because of something personal. Since putting them on a PIP creates paperwork and leaves a trail, they go another route instead. Suddenly every little thing gets micromanaged, every email, every task, every break. Negative comments start showing up in reviews, every decision gets questioned, and the pressure slowly keeps building month after month until the person either quits or completely burns out and goes on leave. Then the manager acts surprised like none of it was intentional. I’ve seen this happen twice in my department alone. It’s basically a quiet firing method designed to leave no trace.

Pre-WFH, I've had two managers who obsessed over start times and break lengths. Neither of them actually knew how to lead. They just watched the clock because it was easier than doing their real jobs. It never improved productivity, but it worked for them. Those are the kind of people who want us back in the office. To hide their own failings.

You would think with the wealth management presence that the Bank has in Florida plus the state's population, there would be a HUB office location in Florida. Anyone hear of talk about adding a FL HUB office?

Kyndryl restructuring should reduce overhead functions and reduce the number of managers that lack technical knowledge
Of the various systems they try to manage.
All chiefs and no Indians will cause the company to collapse.
Ai can identify various areas that can be improved as long as there is a team to analyze the data.

I’ve been loving the open-plan HMP setup and how much it’s boosted real collaboration, but I feel like we’re leaving some upside on the table. A lot of the private offices were only supposed to be temporary, yet plenty of people (especially in Subsurface and the old CTC groups) are still camped out in them long-term. It’s starting to feel like the last holdouts keeping us from going full one-team.

If we accelerated the rollout and moved everyone into the open plan, it would be a game changer. No more closed doors creating little silos. Just full visibility, spontaneous conversations, and everyone including our geologists and reservoir engineers ... mixing it up with the rest of the business every day. That kind of constant collaboration would help us move faster, share knowledge better, and really crush the competition.
Management has already shown they’re willing to make bold calls on workspace. Speeding this up and finally transitioning Subsurface out of those temporary offices would send a strong message and unlock even more of the culture and performance gains we’ve been seeing.

Chevrons heading in the right direction. Let’s finish what we started and make the open environment the standard everywhere. Anyone else think it’s time to push harder on this? Especially curious how the field and ops folks see it when you’re in the office. Would getting Subsurface fully into the open plan help with handoffs and alignment, or am I off base?

Hiring new people without giving them proper training after a RIF of a hundred others. You think strategy within CenterWell would learn, suppose not. VP of this group is cold and has no grasp on the new program. She does not care about concerns and only about the agenda in hand and won’t accept feedback,

They talk big and contribute nothing.
Dressed sharp, empty inside, opportunistic and self centered.
I'd bet big money that nobody would notice if we were to cut that layer in half.

If anyone from management or HR is reading this, please don’t change our current WPE policy. BAC does not give compensation increases to majority of the workforce. Flexibility is the one thing keeping us going. If you want people to quit, it will be the wrong people. Seriously an employer who wants to continue to have a flexible 3 days in office schedule.

Managers lecture about psychological safety but nobody is willing to speak up, challenge, or take initiatives anymore because the blaming game is strong. Don’t trust their words. Look for actions instead.

Incredible. Verizon cut office cleaning and garbage pickup to once a month. Yet paying half these upper mgrs over $200,000 plus a year.

Remember seeing one VP sending award emails monthly. Not bad. Half a mil to go rah rah.

were you forced to get it to keep your job?

if so did management/HR push this upon you?

i keep hearing people were forced to get vaccinated.

The company probably paid an additional surcharge to the consulting firm to heavily alter the results and put a positive spin on management perception.

Don’t believe the results to be shared.

Yes - I am talking to all of you incompetent VPs, Senior DIR and DIRs. That's the post.

Few monkeys were caged with a ladder and a hole to escape at top of cage. Whenever any monkey tries to climb the ladder and escape through hole, Huge force of Water is sprayed on them. Slowly all the monkeys tried to pull the climbing monkeys and hit. No monkey climbed even if cage was open.

Similarly, even when employees try to use their skills, management is pushing towards AI. eventually employees will lose their own skill and when they are out, they feel like they are lost in market and will try to go back to Oracle cage.

Shameful Peanut Monkeys

I find it unbelievable how many VP's Optum has. One thing I learned was that when Optum acquires a company they assign them a title based on the money that they made in their last company. Hence, so many people having titles that significantly outrun their skills. Optum's VP's are a great example.

Early Jan stock was over $96. Down almost $20. One trick pony Charlie’s strategy of doing nothing but cutting run its course and now catching up to us

Nike leaders keep saying that they are flattening the org to keep things simple, but GT is still a mountain of management.

If most employees still have 2 layers of managers, 2 of directors, 3 of VPs, and 2 of C-suite leaders, what exactly was 'flattened'?

We all know they aren't anonymous.
NOT doing them hurts mgmt more than doing them and giving negative reviews.
NOT doing them en masses makes a bigger dent than doing them and complaining.