#management

Fiserv needs to same for Directors and above. We have so many.

Or just us, the lowly peons?

No targets, no customers, no headaches. Approve PTOs, time cards, and weekly check ins that no one cares. They rarely get LRed or PIP.

The Acquisitions: Overpaying With Other People's Money

Altice's US story begins with two enormously expensive bets made almost entirely with debt. In 2015 Altice paid $9.1 billion for Suddenlink, and in 2016 $17.7 billion for Cablevision — the parent of Optimum. The combined $27 billion was financed almost entirely through leveraged debt, leaving the entity with roughly $25+ billion in obligations and almost no margin for error.

The theory was straightforward: cable is a cash flow machine, and Altice would extract European-style efficiencies to service the debt while the business ran itself. That theory worked in less competitive European markets. It failed badly in the US.

Regulators saw the warning signs immediately. In early 2016, New York City's Public Advocate Letitia James and the state Public Service Commission staff formally opposed the Cablevision acquisition, warning that Altice's planned $900 million in cost cuts would damage customer service, eliminate jobs, and harm affordable broadband access. Moody's agreed, estimating realistic savings closer to $450 million. Both James and the PSC pointed to Altice's French wireless unit SFR, which had lost approximately one million customers after identical cost-cutting. The deal was approved with conditions — including a $10/month low-income broadband option, a fiber upgrade within 36 months, and no elimination of customer-facing jobs for five years. Altice agreed to those conditions and then largely ignored them.

Vanity Over Practicality: The HQ Move

One early signal of Altice's priorities was the decision to move the company's headquarters out of Bethpage, New York — the heart of the Cablevision footprint — to Long Island City, Queens, in the former Citigroup building. Long Island City sits just outside the Optimum service territory and offered no operational benefit. The move was driven primarily by the preferences of European executives who wanted proximity to Manhattan rather than any business rationale. Bethpage would have been cheaper, less disruptive, and actually inside the footprint. Instead, the company spent heavily on a prestige address to accommodate transplanted leadership while cutting costs everywhere that touched customers. It set the tone for the management culture that followed.

The Cost-Cutting Playbook: Too Deep, Too Fast, Too Corrupt

What followed was a systematic extraction of value from the US business, much of it benefiting Drahi and his inner circle directly rather than the company or its customers.

Call centers gutted and outsourced to an insider-owned vendor. Thousands of local US call center employees were laid off and their work transferred to Intelcia, a Moroccan call center company that Drahi owned. Customers called Optimum and reached agents employed by a Drahi-controlled entity, with fees flowing back to him. Drahi has since sold his Intelcia stake, but the damage to customer experience and the conflict of interest were real and lasting.

Chat support outsourced to an unqualified insider-owned BPO. Yossi Benchetrit — a key Altice USA executive and son-in-law of co-founder Armando Pereira — opened his own chat support BPO company and forced Altice USA to do business with it. The company was real and did handle chat interactions, but Altice USA was their very first client — meaning a major cable operator's customer-facing chat operation was handed to a startup with no track record, no experience, and no proven capability. The results were predictably poor, directly harming the customer experience. After Benchetrit was pushed out following the Portuguese corruption investigation, the company was able to exit that agreement within three months — a telling detail about how quickly the damage could have been remedied had anyone with authority been willing to act sooner.

Field tech work funneled through a shell entity. A short-lived company called Altice Technical Services briefly existed during this period. Key executives including Hakim Boubazine were allegedly shareholders. Field technical support work was moved into it so the company could charge Altice USA for services previously performed in-house. It failed, was shut down, and the technicians were brought back in-house — before eventually being outsourced entirely to MasTec, where they are employed today.

Fiber deployment outsourced to a connected contractor. The fiber upgrade Altice promised regulators was handed largely to Excell Communications, a contractor whose ownership traced back to Dunas de Contrastes, a Portugal-based firm heavily linked to Altice insiders and Armando Pereira's network. Excell received massive fiber deployment contracts almost exclusively from Altice USA. When Portuguese authorities raided Altice leadership in July 2023 as part of Operation Picoas — a corruption and money laundering investigation — Altice USA abruptly terminated nearly all its contracts with Excell to distance itself from the scandal. Stripped of its primary revenue source overnight, Excell filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, taking with it hundreds of US telecom workers and leaving Altice's fiber buildout in disarray.

Armando Pereira arrested. Altice's co-founder was placed under house arrest in Portugal in July 2023 as part of the same Operation Picoas investigation covering corruption, money laundering, and the insider contracting schemes that had been running through the US business for years.

The $1 billion NYC network loan. As financial pressure mounted, Altice USA secured a $1 billion asset-backed loan using its New York City HFC network infrastructure as collateral — essentially mortgaging the physical plant that serves millions of customers just to maintain liquidity.

Sotheby's. Drahi's 2019 acquisition of the auction house raised eyebrows from the start. A 2025 New Yorker investigation documented the turmoil and controversy his ownership brought to the institution. High-value art and collectibles are among the most commonly cited vehicles for moving money across borders in ways that are difficult to trace — a dynamic that has drawn regulatory scrutiny globally.

The Network Decision That Sealed the Outcome: Fiber vs. DOCSIS 4.0

Amid all of this, Altice made a fateful technology decision that accelerated the competitive deterioration.

Rather than upgrading its existing hybrid fiber-coax network to DOCSIS 4.0 — which would have delivered multi-gigabit symmetrical speeds across the entire footprint at roughly $100-200 per home passed — Altice chose to build fiber-to-the-premises in select markets. FTTP runs $800-1,200 per home passed depending on density. On a network of several million homes, that difference amounts to billions of dollars Altice simply did not have.

The technology choice wasn't purely operational. Altice Labs, the company's internal technology division, was developing proprietary fiber equipment and solutions. Deploying FTTP in the US served as both a revenue source and a proof-of-concept for that technology — benefiting Drahi's broader empire even when it wasn't the optimal choice for the US business. Once again, insider interests shaped decisions that harmed customers and shareholders.

The result was the worst possible outcome: billions spent on a partial fiber build covering only a fraction of the footprint, while the rest of the network remained on aging DOCSIS 3.1. Competitors — Verizon FiOS in the Northeast, T-Mobile Home Internet nationally, Comcast with DOCSIS 4.0, and fiber overbuilders in the South and West — had either already upgraded or were upgrading faster and more completely. Optimum was losing customers in markets where it was sometimes the only broadband provider, which is a remarkable operational failure.

Had Altice taken that same capital and deployed a full DOCSIS 4.0 upgrade across the entire network, they would have delivered multi-gigabit speeds everywhere, spent a fraction of what FTTP costs, maintained a competitive product, and preserved the cash flow needed to service the debt. The customer losses that have driven the financial collapse would have been materially lower.

The Outcome

The combination of over-leveraged acquisitions, systematic insider extraction, regulatory commitments ignored, a vanity headquarters move that prioritized European executive preferences over operational logic, a technology strategy distorted by self-dealing, and a competitive market that punished every one of those mistakes has produced a company with $25+ billion in net debt, hundreds of thousands of lost broadband customers, a stock fallen from $30+ to under $1, and a restructuring that will hand control to Apollo Global Management, Oaktree Capital Management, and JPMorgan Chase.

The warning signs were visible to New York regulators in 2016. The corruption was visible to Portuguese authorities by 2023. The competitive deterioration was visible in the subscriber data every quarter. What was missing was any ownership accountability that could have forced a course correction — because Drahi's dual-class share structure gave him 90%+ voting control with a minority economic stake, insulating him from the shareholder pressure that might otherwise have stopped it.

AT&T is going to end up just like Sears and Kmart. Terribly management!

It is wild how quickly a strong team of employees (Direct channel) can fall apart under the wrong leadership.

Once they put the two channels together everything started falling apart.

How does a powerhouse team disintegrate over the past 2 years?

Why are the people at top not looking at previous scorecards prior to putting the channels together compared when they were separate.

The smartest managers that were at the top for years are now at the bottom. What changed? Only management.

Executives have done a great job destroying employees in HC10 countries. Everyone has zero confidence in the management and worries constantly about losing their job to India and being unfairly PIPd before reaching retirement age.

How does Fidelity expect to thrive as a Fortune 500 company when women have no where to put their purses during the day and end up putting them on the floor next to their desk? Are there no perks at all for managers? No offices for managers…just sit with the rest of the associates, nothing special for you. Do managers even get to make decisions? Or do they just carry out the tasks that the Senior Managers tell them to? No wonder they have a problem with no one wanting to take managers roles. No perks.

What a joke. Left after a couple years of dealing with unqualified managers. Who decides to hire the failures from other companies into management roles?

Is this the new truth and trend on how Cisco is now run? Is this even legal?

No intelligence, but using AI Chat box to generate questions to ask during meetings and interviews. WOW!!! 🤩

Fellow Comcast employee here 13 years with the company and I wish I wasn't posting this. I was a manager with accommodations and leave management. I know the company has to do whats best for its future and I accept that.

It’s completely demoralizing seeing junior McKinsey types—who have never spent a day in the trenches—making high-stakes cuts. Honestly, having seen it firsthand, I wouldn't be shocked if their playbook is just: protect the fellow Wharton MBAs with cushy VP titles, and sacrifice the salt-of-the-earth talent with less fancy degrees.

Has the nine-box talent grid always been a thing at Carefirst? I am hearing that we are being evaluated by managers, directors and VPs who have no interaction or direct oversight of our work. Has it always been a thing or is it an excuse to PIP more people so its easy to lay them off or shaft their AIP next year?

How can supervisors game the system? Rank system is so sc--wed up. Seems like the best approach would be just to cycle everyone through the assessment categories and take turns being PIPed. Would need to keep people with enough years in their current CL high to try get them their CL promotions as quickly as possible somehow.

In the last week there has been a huge push to eliminate experienced talent across a lot of branch based positions including UBs, RBs, BLs, BOPs. Many including myself have been given similar reasons of “This is a performance based decision that has been made by the appropriate level of management” regardless of actual results. Too many “effective immediately, __ is no longer employed with Truist” emails this week for this all to be a coincidence.

Hired ~2 months ago. Exited today. Wow.... I have never seen such a devotion to the PMP PMBOK as if it were a religious text at the total and complete detriment to delivery and lack of any/all knowledge of the last decade plus of shift-left and automation of processes.

How is this place still afloat? I watched teams struggle to implement a single standard REST API a single developer should be able to deliver in a day.

Seriously thought about staying and going the over employment route but the thought of sitting in so many pointless meetings any longer...

To whoever is going through manager scrutiny, remember to file ER cases and complete your Workday check-ins. You will not win ER cases, but they serve as supporting documentation for the EEOC. Keep EEOC categories in mind, and make sure those wording appear in your paper trail to prove that it is an EEOC-related complaint, not just a performance dispute or a regular disagreement with management.

Any word on sales? Frontline? Call center? Enterprise? Indirect? Field reps? Wholesale? Outbound? SDR?

Mostly management? We’ve heard nothing but rumors.

we all know what’s going on in Lake Mary is completely wrong. especially the departments that are supposed to be independent. fire them all. replace with outsourced resources

I’ve been with the company for over 10 years. I came into my position several years ago and was doing quite well. I lost my manager as a result of Temu closing the Denver office while she was at the Olympics or Wimbledon. Then all of a sudden I’m told I’m making mistakes. It’s been a year now, and that’s all I keep hearing, though I successfully complete my work. The only thing that’s changed is the management team. It feels I’m getting pushed out, and honestly have to say, both my mental and physical health have suffered as a result of it. I read lots of posts on here people who’ve left and are better for it. When compared to this place, I think the grass is greener and healthier.

We’re always waiting for the 1 very not available VP or SVP to bless a decision because they won’t let an AVP or SD make basic decisions.

The reported pending reduction in force this is not something new in cable tv world. For those of us who have been around for a while, TCI did a massive reduction in force in 1996. Due to many of the things that I read on this board, lack of vision and reality by senior HQ management (Thank you Barry Marshall) sinking stock prices and the like. It just seems history has a way of repeating itself. Fortunately cable was still young at that point. we still had digital tv, vod, hsd, phone, wireless and security ahead of us with lots of opportunity for growth. And grow we did. Unfortunately I have yet to see what the next big thing is for cable to grow with. Just an old retired person's two cents!

My brain recently came up with the chaotic ideas listed below. I am purely sharing them for "awareness" purposes. DO NOT do any of the things on this list. We must protest peacefully!

Personally, I plan to sit quietly at my desk like a rolemodel employee. That is the true path of resistance. I honestly have no idea why my brain keeps generating these wild thoughts. I need help. Please recommend a comedy club.

To ensure we maintain a completely safe, orderly, and undisturbed environment, please strictly avoid the following:

1. Do not waste company resources. For example, do not send empty elevators on joyrides, leave every light burning, run coffee machines just to pour the drinks down the drain, or use toilet paper to cause plumbing emergencies.

2. Cafeteria Boycott: Do not avoid the company cafeteria.

3. Hardware Sabotage: Do not unplug office devices.

4. Strict Work-Life Balance: Do not refuse to log in from home after hours.

5. Do not disturb your hardworking colleagues.

6. Corporate Gossip: Do not spread unverified rumors.

7. Do not use anonymous platforms like X or Reddit to coordinate synchronized mass sick days at specific office locations.

8. Do not coordinate synchronized car honking flash mobs in the parking lot.

9. Do not withhold or refuse to perform Knowledge Transfers.

10. Contractor Silent Treatment: Do not cut off communication or withhold project details from external contractors.

11. Internet Capacity: Do not stream mandatory video trainings all day long just to single handedly choke the office internet bandwidth.

12. Government Invitations: Do not report questionable hiring practices to immigration authorities, nor should you invite DHS or USCIS agents to tour the facility. Definitely do not hand over specific managers' names to immigration enforcement.

13. Do not skip office potlucks, team lunches, corporate activities, or volunteer events. e.g. If they ask you to dress up Red, wear Red not Green. Don't eat at the potlucks that you have not contributed to or invited to

14. Do not cancel your Citi credit cards or cashback accounts, and do not tell everyone else to do the same because we have to make the bank great again. MCGA.

15. Do not share any intrusive thoughts.

Protest peacefully!

I put this list together based on Glassdoor reviews - I'll track layoffs using this table. This is for my personal use but can share if you'd like. Am I missing anything?

Roles by Inferred Function

### Administration & Executive Support

Administrative Support
### Business Operations & Strategy

Business Analyst
Business Operations
### Customer Service, Support & Retention

Business Operations
Customer Service Representative
Technical Support Representative
### Data, Analytics & Research

Data Analyst
Data Engineer
Data Scientist
Researcher
### Field Operations & Construction

Construction
Dispatcher
Field Engineer
Technician
### Finance, Accounting & Billing

Accountant
Auditor
Billing & Collections
Finance Analyst
Finance Management & Operations
### Human Resources & Talent

HR Professional
Recruiter
### Legal & Government Affairs

Government & Regulatory Affairs
Legal Support
### Marketing, Communications & Advertising

Advertising Operations
Communications & Content
Marketing Professional
Sales Representative
### Missing or Withheld Title

Unknown
### Network & Technical Operations

Business Operations
Network Engineer
Network Operations
Technician
### Product, Design & Delivery

Designer
Product Manager
Project / Program Manager
### Retail & Store Operations

Retail Associate
Retail Manager
### Sales, Account Management & Partnerships

Account Manager
Business Development
Sales Engineer
Sales Manager
Sales Operations
Sales Representative
Technology Manager
### Security & Risk

Security Professional
### Supply Chain, Procurement & Facilities

Facilities & Warehouse
Health & Safety
Supply Chain & Procurement
### Technology & Engineering

Engineering Manager
IT Operations
IT Support
Infrastructure Engineer
Software Engineer
Technology Associate
Technology Manager
Test Engineer
### Unassigned Function

ACPM
Account Representative
Analyst (Function Unspecified)
Architect
Commops
Community Account Professional
Dev3
Economist
Engineer (Specialty Unspecified)
FSM
Intern
Investigator
Manager (Function Unspecified)
OTM Consultant
Operations
PM 3
RSA Agent
RSP
Specialist / Coordinator (Function Unspecified)
Subcontractor
TAOS Consultant
Technical Writer
Technician
universal router

So the list is still not finalized yet? Any director level folks here, can you confirm?

Big changes today, moving management to OKC?

The protection racket around certain incompetent managers has gone on way too long. Hopefully that shield is finally starting to crack and accountability starts mattering more than decades old relationships and loyalties

Oracle’s eDelivery portal is wide open—anyone can just download any on-prem software they want, no customer account required. We’re basically giving the stuff away for free while the company bleeds millions. Management doesn’t lift a finger to fix it. Then they turn around and cut our jobs. Peak incompetence.

It's a numbers game for me, and all numbers line up on 1/1/27. The management knows this is a possibility, I was planning to give them 4 weeks. Would it make sense to offer that they lay me off instead of someone else? I know they will be careful not to eliminate me due to age, I wander if they'd consider it though. Do not want to rock the boat right now, I was thinking that I gently and diplomatically suggest this without spooking them - I am afraid that they fear a lawsuit and that will not consider it. I am an IC.

Any higher ups here on layoffs - how would you react?

I've counted 15 new linkedin posts back to back today on this laid off from L&D and Sr Analysts and Project Managers being let go yesterday. Dont listen to these people in denial that dont even know what's happening in reality. Its already started. Are people living on the moon or what?

Why bother buying studios if you're only going to end up closing them in the end??? BioWare made some of the best games of all time. And now EA is ki-ling it. I can guarantee you one thing, I'm done giving a single $ to this company.

Welcome to North Korea, aka, Goosehead Insurance. 1min late? Written up. Leave right at 5? Threatened with a write up. They just had a major layoff on the tech side. Some new cto came in and one side lied about the other so bad to the new cto it got all of them laid off (80 people) and now they haven't done any work in two months because they dont know what they are doing. 100 million dollar public company has its tech and software development side ran by 20 year olds now. Its really really bad now. Service side we are getting it too. Unreasonable changes to us to. Oh and no meeting Wednesdays? I guess they only ment that for the c suite people on the 5th floor. Cause they just call them huddles on Wednesday lmao Place is a joke I heard tech side app called da or something only does like 3 binds a week and they are scrambling to sell more

Why are there Directors reporting to Directors? VPs reporting to VPs? A bloated org tree for sure.

The shareholder lawsuit in U.S. District Court in New York City dates to July 2025. Besides Fiserv, the lawsuit names as defendants former CEOs Frank Bisignano and Mike Lyons, along with Bob Hau, the former chief financial officer, and John Gibbons, the former head of Fiserv's financial institutions group.

Bisignano left Fiserv before the lawsuit landed, in May 2025, when he was confirmed by the Senate to lead the Social Security Administration after being nominated to the post by President Donald Trump in late 2024.

A few months after Bisignano's exit in October last year, Lyons overhauled the company's management team and pursued what he called "a critical and necessary reset" for the payments processor. But then this year, Lyons also resigned, in June, to lead Truist Financial.

About 90% of the individual defendants' income was tied to meeting specific targets, according to the plaintiffs. Bisignano made about $700 million in July 2025 from "illicit stock sales at inflated prices," according to the plaintiffs' filing on Tuesday.

Going the road of Charter, Comcast......
Elon will pick up AT&T for pennies.....
Tie up Stanky's comp package in red tape......

What is going on here? So many of the managers and directors are taking new roles elsewhere. People that have been with the company for years are now at Wells and other places on the east coast! A friend of mine here asked one of them who moved and they said the writing is on the wall, but I don't see it. What is going on?

Here in Anchorage, AK , got word today that lay offs will be happening in the next two weeks. Expect 30-40% reduction in middle managment and egineering. Oil price is ripe and Willow valuation promise is right to divest. Finally. BP or Hilcorp to buy?

Hundreds laid off between yesterday and this morning, mostly managers and directors

I feel like something is going to happen, maybe a huge wave of layoffs, etc. My people leader is acting strange recently and it feels like he is hiding something from us. Does any one know what may be brewing in Centene, anyone from the upper echelons, etc. Don't be shy, devulge with us, pure mortals.... we need to know!

a whole team was removed (including mgmt) from CISO org ~10 people. Others just trimmed on the side. No one really talks about it