#management

It hasn't been announced yet, but the writing is on the wall.

I'm not sad to see him go; he's a terrible leader and generally incompetent, but now we're likely to report to his self-serving lackey.

Out of the frying pan, into a similar frying pan.

3M has eviscerated the talent pipeline, so everyone in management are the leftover dregs who couldn't find a new role at a better company.

Anyone from Cigna international was JE? Does the managers now? Who decide and who notify you, your manager?

So usually there is a meeting by AVP or above level Mgmt announcing that they are laying off x number but this time around there is no such announcement? Also no word on the bonuses... Seems strange....

I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of some of these VPs on LinkedIn talking about AI and the impact they can have when they can’t even look away from their monitor and the script that they’re reading from. The chief people officer is the worst offender of all. Cisco is not an AI company just like they’re not a software company. Stick to selling boxes that’s where you made your money.

If they are shifting employee led initiatives like employees are responsible for development efforts and writing their own individual goals. What's the point of top heavy management? We dont need them! They cause more risk to the company by being sloppy.

Oracle is known for having too many layers of management. D and his close circle handle all the big meetings, while everyone else only gets small pieces of the work. This keeps the rest of the team from seeing the full plan. If Oracle fixed this and shared more information, the company would be much better off.
Need to get more Directors off-boarded or shuffled from their meeting favorites.

Farce, folly, or felony ?

This should be concerning to U.S. Bank’s CEO:

There is an ongoing concern regarding the excessive number of management positions within EFCC specifically CRT(Grade 14 and higher) within U.S. Bank. From an employee perspective, many of these roles appear to add little to no measurable value to daily operations, production goals, or team performance, yet they command very high salaries.

There is a growing perception that a significant portion of upper management has minimal direct involvement in the actual work being done. Meanwhile, frontline employees and senior individual contributors are absorbing the workload, resolving issues, and driving results—often without corresponding compensation or authority.

The department feels increasingly top-heavy. Decision-making is slow, layers of approval are unnecessary, and resources are being spent on positions that do not directly contribute to productivity, customer experience, or revenue. This structure is not financially efficient and raises serious questions about accountability, role necessity, and return on investment.

At a time when cost control and operational efficiency are frequently emphasized, it is difficult to understand why so many high-level management roles are maintained despite their limited impact. A thorough review of these positions, including role consolidation or elimination where appropriate, could result in substantial cost savings and improved morale among the employees who are actually doing the work specifically the Senior Reviewers.

Poor businesses.

Lam middle management layoffs. Anyone know the actual number.

Looking to apply to another team internally but wondering if I don’t have any backup if management would prevent me from being transferred over.

When people had their "org update" meeting, did anyone else get the "class act" of having their manager read it to them? Probably one of the most childish things I've ever experienced in my life. Lol.

Getting anything done here is a nightmare. You need ten approvals for the simplest task. It's not structure, it's a cage that stops you from actually working. I spend more time fighting the system than doing my job.

Southeast techs have been summoned to meet with direct and second level management the first week of February

How are all of these soft beta simps still around? And why are we bringing in more from outside? They clearly lack competence and confidence, have no authority and serve no purpose other than being middlemen.

What have you seen brokers be fired for most commonly when management wants someone gone?

My manager of 5 years, along with 99% of sr.managers last Feb. were demoted to a lesser role - consultant/PM - and stripped of their leadership/manager level rank. Not sure if their pay changed but regardless, my manager was sadly demoted.

He is a GREAT manager and is now our "PM" but official title is consultant. Not even Sr Consultant. We all still consider him our manager anyways but, our new manager is a director and he's OK but like, might as well live in fuqing Antarctica because he never does anything with us; and all of our 1x1's are like 5-8 minutes long lol.

Anyways, my manager was demoted from mgr to consultant, and was previously hybrid. Well then they closed his office so was forced to be full remote. Since remote employees are not eligible to be promoted anymore he's quite literally in a dead end job.

It's not just him but like, we have an ultra smart and INCREDIBLY valuable guy on our team who is an i8 or i9 but is remote, was hired on as remote, and then they did their BS so this guy is also now stuck in a dead end job. With a family. Along with any remotes who were hired prior to this bs policy change 2 years ago when they gave ppl the chance to be remote or hybrid.

I mean, I get and understand that Dell wants all employees to be local to an office but like, when a MASSIVE portion of the company is remote... Are they really going to can the vital remotes? I think they would but I feel it'd be more expensive to do so

If Dell were to help financially with relocation then I'd assume a good 50 % of remotes would relocate but, why TF would someone relocate on their own dime when Dell has been on a layoff frenzy for the last 6-8 years?

In general, can contractors be positioned to lead teams within organizations?

Is it a problem? He moderate bonus. Big project he put everyone name in to take credit. Let my demoted old boss take my just assigned work which is half way done. Tolerate any team member misbehavior to keep everyone a job! Rate everyone 3 to tell HR no difference effort when Citi changed to performance base. Switch work assignment to make smart ones to teach dead wood. Should I be nice and cover all deadwood in my team? Is my team overstuffed? But claimed understaffed?

More and more field sales roles being eliminated in storage and networking without any input from actual sales reps. Middle management has changed numerous times without a clear direction everyone basically is freelancing

... when it's talking about the 100th anniversary of its IPO. Is that even a thing? Has any other publicly traded century old company -- GE, GM, Coca-Cola, etc. -- ever "celebrated" its IPO? (What about the years when NCR was part of AT&T, shouldn't that be excluded? Current management probably doesn't even know about that.) How much did management spend on this NYC junket?! Did David and Eric come back?!

This company is in very bad shape. James Kelly's strategy is to load the company up with payments-related bells and whistles and sell it to Global Payments. But the payments industry -- any company that isn't Visa or Mastercard -- has also become a commodity.. Nobody's going to buy this dog, unless it's out of bankruptcy.

The way things are going, that just might happen.

Xerox is not announcing Chapter 11, but it is clearly working hard to avoid it.

The company is handing out free warrants to shareholders and bondholders as a way to quietly re-engineer its balance sheet before things get worse.

This is an out-of-court, shareholder-inclusive, quasi-restructuring tool designed to reduce debt without filing for Chapter 11, while neutralizing lawsuits and buying time.

In other words: advanced financial engineering designed to keep control out of a bankruptcy court.

If the business stabilizes and the stock recovers, those warrants can be used to turn debt into shares, cutting leverage without burning cash.

If the recovery never comes, the warrants expire and nothing happens... except that Xerox might still be standing.

Behind all the financial and investment jargon, don't lose sight of what's really important:

Management is fully aware of how close we are to filing for Chapter 11 and is using the last tricks in the book before being forced to do so.

This move doesn’t mean that bankruptcy is happening tomorrow, but it does mean the current capital structure is extremely fragile and time is a crucial factor.

In short: this is about survival, control, and avoiding the kind of court-driven restructuring in which senior management (yes, the people architecting this measure) lose all influence.

If Schwab is serious about expense management, start holding MD levels accountable.
Not sure how many are in STS about 50% can be reduced… they all just enable politics and misdirection as they are not needed…. If we already have 2 MD layers why are 1-2 more layers needed?
Such a wasteful org model, and mismanaged dept that is hindering our firm. Starts at the top.

Let the unfettered McKinsey begin. Get that efficiency ration down now. Layoffs anyone,

Where do I begin? I got hired in September. During my interview, I looked past a comment made after several rounds of interviews with product and cross-functional teams. I remember the Engineering Manager saying, "Hey, we'll give you an opportunity, and if you can't get it done, we'll find someone who can."

I didn't think anything of it at the time. I should have taken that as a red flag, but I wanted the job. I accepted the offer, choosing Floor and Decor over three other offers. It definitely wasn't perfect; honestly, it was a bit of a sh-t show.

As a Product Manager, I asked fundamental questions about documentation, business rules, and features, but they couldn't answer. It was all domain knowledge locked in their heads. They couldn't point me to any documentation, so I always had to ask people for help, which slowed down the process tremendously.

Lo and behold, my immediate manager left for maternity leave after two or three months. I was supposed to report to my VP, but I ended up in limbo. From what I learned, the Engineering Manager was pushing for a product person to get in there. However, I didn't report to Engineering; I reported to Product and the business to deliver on their strategy and goals.

Once I got in, the Engineering Manager—who had only been there eight months and came from Home Depot—was walking by my desk telling me to get things done in 24 hours. He was a total je-k.

I started to see that they were very Type A personalities. The Product team was all women, mostly white, and they didn't seem to like men. They claimed to be DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion), but that was a lie—a disguise. The place is a nightmare. I feel they are racist. The C-suite and high positions are white, and I didn't see much opportunity there.

I am African-American, but my observation is just that—my observation. I noticed there was no good structure. Because it's retail, it has a "family feeling," but there is a lot of knowledge hoarding. Teams compete against each other, and it's really bad.

Let me back up. About two months in, there was an Oracle project migrating from a legacy ERP system. It touched all 40 of their systems and took up everyone's time. The project is supposed to cut over between February and March, and it has consumed the company for a year.

I came in new and was told to work on projects with specific timelines, including one for drop ship. The stories and mapping by another PM weren't done until December. I was trying to get stuff done in January, and unbeknownst to me, I got in trouble for it. I was let go because the Engineering Manager was upset I wasn't focusing on what he wanted, even though that wasn't the priority.

My VP sent an email to the whole company saying, "Don't work on this without me knowing; we need to slow down and take it through the PM process." Yet, when I did that, it wasn't fast enough. They didn't even have the resources. Even if everything was ready in January 2026, the Oracle project isn't done until March. The CEO said not to work on anything until that's done, but I was punished for not going fast enough.

They used that as an excuse to get rid of me because the Engineering Manager didn't like me. If they don't like you, they will find a reason to fire you. Be very cautious about working at Floor and Decor. Don't drink the Kool-Aid immediately. They will make plans to let you go.

I did the work. I was turning around documents and creating slides. They allowed AI, so I was actually able to move faster. But they have this strange culture where they claim to be DEI, but they aren't. It's on all the TVs in the break room, but it's just a disguise to protect themselves from lawsuits. There are no Black board members, no Indians, no Mexicans, no Asians. It's an all-white "Good Ol' Boys" club.

To go deeper into the story: I agreed to be a POS (Point of Sale) Product Manager. Once I got there, they told me the POS shares data with two other web applications for inventory and orders, so I was the PM for those too. I had three products, three ceremonies, and requirements to build. I got played and set up for failure.

I did the best I could, but there was no documentation or training. They expected me to piece it together in four months with high performance. The expectations didn't match what could be delivered.

When I started pushing back on work to Marty (the Engineering Manager) because I reported to Shannon (the Product Leader), he got upset. I requested a Product Owner to help manage the boards because they didn't have a Scrum Master. Asking a Product Manager to also be the Scrum Master for three products doesn't make sense; you don't have the time. That is why Scrum Master is a dedicated job title.

Just before I was let go yesterday, they pulled an older Black woman from another team to "help" me. It wasn't help; it was a sign they were pushing me out. They put her there to protect themselves with DEI optics because they knew they were firing a Black employee from an all-white team. They brought her in late last week, she asked a few questions, and then they fired me on Tuesday.

I'm not stupid. I'm in my 40s, and I see how they move. I know the games corporate plays, and this was clearly one of them. I was set up for failure with staggering demands and no documentation. It was an absolute termination because I didn't kiss the Engineering Manager's a-s.

Be aware when you go to work at Floor and Decor. It's not what it seems. It's a sla-ghterhouse, and they just had a mass layoff last week. That should help you with your decision. Thank you.

Thought this was only for project managers?

Is Amazon laying off caretakers and giving discounted soap to Engineers for kitchen cleaning? Or is it the dawn of a Day 2 era? Probably the latter. Layoffs only prove management incompetence - essentially a Bandaid batch for much bigger problems like inflating free cashflow and uncontrolled AI datacenter overspend.

Amazon announced its plan to trim management layers to address bureaucracy. It makes you wonder when will we take a similar look, so the people delivering the real work here, aren’t always the first on the chopping block. Something about the current approach just doesn’t add up

The worklists are empty and running out of new work to assign on a daily basis with high paid case manager sitting there waiting on work. rumors of layoffs or doing away with case management. Anyone have any insite? Any managers brave enough to let us know what to expect?

Just a quick rant….why in all that is holy do we have to wait for management, who does not live in a location where they are dealing with ongoing below freezing temperatures and lasting impacts of the winder storm that hit this past weekend, to “allow” us to WFH

Why won’t a team manager who is onsite just say I am the manager on site and the conditions are still bad so I’m going to let my team WFH.

Just sad…..

IMO - Optum should completely overhaul and replace the incompetent and absent middle management from all the inherited poor performing Kelsey-Seybold Clinics within Houston Metropolitan area. Most of these pseudo leaders were promoted by their sleezy, biased, discriminatory, and undeserving Grandfathered department chairs. Supervisors and team leads nearly out number the true blue collar employees.

My manager pulled me into a last minute meeting with zero context and kept a straight face the whole time. It turned out to be small talk, but my nerves were shot for hours after. Do they not realize how on edge all of us are?

Does anyone know where to view your positions pay range ? I have asked manager and hr and will can’t get an answer

I have it on good authority that they are working with a management consulting firm to revise the severance package policy. They won't change the 2 weeks of pay per year of service, however it won't start increasing until year 5. This is due to the 60 day notice period. Everyone at 4 years or less will get 2 months of severance, regardless of tenure before accumulating more starting on year 5.

Essentially what they're doing is eliminating the overlap with the 60 day notice.

To survive or to have a job you need to be the favorite's person under management compared to other associates even though other associates works more it won’t be the enough as long as their favorite person works they elevate but they doesn’t know how that person finished the work.
This is in GBD very first team in ..

What is the best way to report? HR, Speak up line, Sr Leadership? Should I? Have fear of retaliation.

Apparently there have been some talking points given to managers to help soften the news of no raises this year for higher end earners, specifically in risk. Can someone post those talking points? I want to know what is bs and what is genuine from my manager. Thank you.

I’m looking at all the people between me and MW on the upstream ladder… 9 layers total. Looking closer, I truly don’t understand how this org chart got approved. MW has (arguably) at least 3 layers of unnecessary management between him and the front lines. Take MN for example - he only has 3 (and that is being generous) real employees reporting to him. Within those three, CN seems to be running 70% of the company.

Even MW’s team is pretty small if we look at the very top. Arguably the only people of consequence that report directly to him are RB, EB, FM, and MN. That’s it? What gives?

I know at least a few low-level senior execs read this forum. How about we send MN & BN into retirement with a nice package, give BN’s job to CN; and have Shale & Tight, Exploration, Offshore, and International/miscellaneous all report directly to MW along with a midstream person & the various corporate support leaders. Dump everything else in operations underneath those people in one, big, beautiful org chart.

Is the idea that MW isn’t involved in operations in the slightest, and MN/CN are expected to handle everything? I’m not a McKinsey management expert, but generally it seems like the more you understand what your company actually does on a day-to-day basis, the higher quality your decisions. I find it hard to believe that the current structure facilitates this kind of transparency for MW.

Didn’t MW explicitly call out this problem in SETH ‘24 when he blamed middle-management filtering for clouding the disaster that was FGP? So why did we go and keep the same number of people between MW and the front lines?

In 2030, maybe we should try flattening the pyramid instead of narrowing it. Food for thought!

Happy WFH Monday everyone.

The company decided to pause their AI push, as the low hanging fruit has been harvested, and further adoption requires substantial investment and training. To decrease costs, they now aim to reduce the number of MDs by delegating their work to VPs, reduce the number of VPs by delegating their work to AVPs, and to reduce the number of FTEs in India to Indian contractors.