#management

Why are supervisors constantly traveling to Bangalore? I thought the whole basis of the model is remote support works. So why do they constantly need to be going there in person? What do they do while they are there?

Fidelity is a very successful profitable, but I do not think it is a very well-managed company.

People see trillions of dollars in assets, huge revenues, a prominent brand, and decades of survival and assume that the people running it must be exceptionally capable or the business is well wrong. That conclusion is wrong.

Of course Fidelity has enormous structural advantages. It has scale, customer relationships, brand recognition, distribution, infrastructure, regulatory barriers, and the economics that come from operating at enormous scale. Those advantages create a substantial moat. But while a moat protects helps protect a business, it t does not prove that the people inside the business are intelligent, creative, or competent.

In fact, Fidelity has a serious problem with managerial mediocrity. This starts with the head, Abby, who if you've interacted with her you notice isnt the brightest.

Nevertheless Fidelity proves that a firm can make enormous amounts of money while still having weak decision-making, bureaucratic processes, mediocre technology management, and an excessive dependence on H1B1 labor.

Fidelity's senior leadership is surrounded by consultants who make this problem worse. Large companies are constantly sold fashionable management ideas wrapped in impressive language: “digital transformation,” “Agile transformation,” “AI-enabled operating models,” etc.

Consultants can take a straightforward problem, invent a complicated framework around it, give the framework a name, and convince executives that they have received sophisticated strategic insight.

That is not necessarily deception in the Executives start believing that because they are discussing sophisticated terminology, they are doing sophisticated management.

Fidelity's technology organization is where I find things especially troubling. Outsourcing software development is not inherently stupid. The problem is becoming dependent on contractors and third-party organizations for core technical capabilities. If the company does not maintain deep internal engineering expertise, its executives can end up depending on H1B1 to explain their own systems to them. That creates exactly the kind of agency and information problems that organizational theory warns about. You cannot effectively manage technology that you do not understand.

Returning to leadership: My assessment of Abigail Johnson is that she does not demonstrate the creative or strategic imagination I would expect from the leader of an institution of this size. I regard her leadership as fundamentally unremarkable. Calling her a “mo--n” is obviously an opinion rather than a measurable fact, but it captures the level of intellectual confidence I have in the leadership.

Fidelity is what i would call a wealthy mediocrity: an organization with enormous resources that does not appear to use those resources with corresponding intelligence. That model can work for a very long time.

But that does not mean the model is sustainable forever.

In fact I think Fidelity is sc--wed.

(More on this later)

The new system is arbitrary and reeks of tribalism. Lots of good people getting unfair grades in Irvine and GO. Shame on management for this disgrace.

I know no one cares, but this utter nonsense of hub consolidation, has costed my family $180K per year with my husband letting go of his job to follow me to hub, as he has similar colocation issues too from his company if he moves out of state. What’s up with these corporate id--ts? Why aren’t they fired for poor performance? We need to write to Trump.

my finance avp told us she doesnt care when we log on or log off to work. she said it just matters that we get our work done. she doesnt do work and her directors don’t either. you can be we arent working

Some of the leaders on here are insecure enough to work extra hard to have it taken down. I did not say anything that was beneath the belt, but sure admin… burry the truth

What in the world happened to the two EVP’s of upstream? After all the merger planning, they picked these 2 and then so soon after the merger they both had to be abruptly fired? This is highly unusual. What happened?

I honestly can’t fathom what sort of su-king up, political maneuvering, or just plain lying has to be done for anyone to still to have any belief that he is at all qualified for his role or isn’t hurting the company. His teams despise him and have to work behind the scenes just to get anything done as he lacks any strategic direction with zero market experience. And if his lack of skill wasn’t enough, it’s his poor character and how he speaks down to folks that is the worst. It has to be fixed!

some of the SVPs so long with the company makes So much money & the new ones hired recently in tyber kelurity or dinfo jack are m
M plus assets. All they tout & show arrogance on diedentity & sacess dmanagement or drought dmanagement. in private these so called dooders are nothing but unprofessional, arrogant unhumans.

Flying a bunch for people to India for what??? WTF. TUs execs are very good at planning lavish trips for no business value but are less good at actually increasing the stock price.
I'm sure when there are layoffs and sh---y bonuses and increases, they'll cry about how hard things are and forget about their many boondoggles.

Friend from another group told me their manager asked them to leave Glassdoor reviews and implied they needed to be positive. I'm having trouble believing him, even though he has no reason to lie to me. Why in the world would anybody care about something like that. Has this happened to anybody else?

🔗 Read more: https://on.wsj.com/3UvDBja

The most-endangered species in corporate America today might be the manager overseeing a tiny team.

The latest broadside against small-team bosses comes from Uber. The ride-sharing giant said it would reduce the number of “micro-teams”—those with only one or two direct reports—by nearly half.

The move is part of a broader plan to cut 10% of its staff, about 3,300 people. Ultimately, the company will have 20% fewer managers, a spokesman said.

The cuts highlight a larger shift afoot: CEOs want managers overseeing bigger groups, with fewer layers between individual workers and executives at the top of companies. Many employers now expect managers to do less coordinating between departments, and to spend more time in the trenches building products or generating revenue themselves.

For the supervisors still standing, that often means doing a job that is bigger, and more complicated, than ever. Workers, meanwhile, say it can often be tough to get time with bosses overseeing evermore people.

Watching the burdens on bosses grow, many junior employees say they have no interest in pursuing the management track.

They are going to start managing people out the door that do not keep up with training, in office requirements, and so on. The announcements around this are coming any day now. I wish they would make an example now on some of the C16s that never go into the office. My boss hasn’t been in the office in a year. This other C16 comes in for 4 hours at a time. They are going to be watching our numbers but they aren’t event going in themselves.

Just got a gem of a note from my manager stating that my team isn't using AI tools enough. Based on the "latest reports" we're lacking compared to other teams. Apparently our usage is getting monitored now. Oh joy. Copilot is practically unusable but I guess we're supposed to train it to do our jobs.

Obviously things are good in the US with this many hires last month yet Dell is in another major canning spree...

We continue to do great numbers too quarter after quarter. Makes no sense other than MD getting bad advice from JC to cut cut cut.

I highly doubt either of them know whats actually happening in the trenches.

Inside scoop: Heard some concrete info from a very solid internal source about the roadmap for backfills. If you're a manager in the US, Canada, Germany, India, or France, you already know how brutal it is to replace departures right now. Managers are being forced to provide double and triple justifications just to get a basic backfill approved, and even then, finance is pushing to have them relocated.The funniest part? Management has officially panicked themselves into believing India is "too expensive" now. Yes, you read that right. The old corporate golden child is suddenly a margin liability because of high Bangalore wage inflation which now makes it not a low cost hub anymore. So while the West and even get starved out through natural attrition, Egypt is the new favorite child. They have about 450 people in Cairo now, completely insulated from the layoffs, and corporate is quietly funneling the core software and EDA tooling work over there because the currency devaluation makes it a fraction of the cash burn. If you're waiting on a local backfill approval in the US, Germany, Canada, France, anymore in Western Europe or even India—don't hold your breath.

Accenture and the Nike directors that lead them su-k.

Calling Fidelity managers “leaders” is the biggest insult to the term leader. There is a difference between a leader and a manager and i could probably count on one hand how many of the ~90k employees I would count as a true leader.

Give the term back to the universities that believe someone could lead.

What kind of company makes you interview for a promotion.. Why should I have to interview for a company I already work for, for a promotion I deserve.. If the managers and higher ups can’t appreciate dedicated employees then why do we go above and beyond.. going forward they will get the bare minimum

Too much bureaucracy and inefficiency. Management to employees ratios are off the charts for support roles.

Now its not just I.T. feeling the pain , and navigators are mostly remote

C’mon Lores….use your little knowledge of the English language to get a deal done to sell this pile of sh-t company. Or fire half the company. Either way I don’t care just doing something useful you waste of space.

Cicely Simpson wrote about this, and it's worth building on.

Every leader gets tested by a moment they didn't choose.

And you can't control the moment, but you can control whether you hand over your composure or hold onto it.

These are the 7 moments that test that composure, and what to say instead of reacting:

1️⃣ Someone talks over you in a meeting
↳ Hold your point, then keep going.
↳ Say this: "I'll come back to you in a moment, let me finish this point first."

2️⃣ Someone questions your decision in front of the room
↳ Show you're willing to explain, just not right then.
↳ Say this: "Happy to walk through the reasoning, let's take it after this meeting so we don't lose time."

3️⃣ Someone takes credit for your work
↳ Put the credit back where it belongs.
↳ Say this: "I want the team to know this started with [name]'s work last quarter."

4️⃣ Someone uses a dismissive tone with you
↳ Ask them to repeat themselves, calmly.
↳ Say this: "I want to make sure I'm hearing this the way you intend it. Can you say that again?"

5️⃣ Someone tries to bait a reaction out of you
↳ Decline to engage.
↳ Say this: "I'm not going to respond to that right now. Let's stay focused on the decision in front of us."

6️⃣ Someone goes over your head
↳ Name what you expected instead.
↳ Say this: "I'd have appreciated hearing this from you first. Let's talk it through directly next time."

7️⃣ Someone undermines you in writing
↳ Move the conversation somewhere it can actually get resolved.
↳ Say this: "I see it differently. Happy to talk it through rather than go back and forth here."

Staying someone your team trusts matters more than winning whatever moment is in front of you.

Every leader has a moment like this waiting for them, this month or next quarter.

And how you handle it becomes the story your team tells about you afterward.

Most leaders react to protect their ego in the moment.

But the ones who don't protect something that matters more, their team's trust in them going forward.

Total mismanagement at the top, they have all this money in the bank and they are doing nothing with it. Total Cash: $1.96 billion = Total Cash Per Share: $12.25
Why aren't they paying employees? Why aren't they repaying $1.5billion of debt? They don't know how to run a business

If you take a look at the org chart, 6 EVPs reporting into Chief HR Officer with countless VPs underneath them. Seems very excessive for a corporate function? Corporate Relations doesn’t seem to have anywhere near as much bloat

HR to managers - don’t bully reps into thinking they have to be here 100% of the connect weeks. The requirement is they have to be here 50% of the connect weeks.

Managers to people - per HR you need to be in the office 100% of the time or HR won’t give you a bonus.

HR to managers - no that’s literally what we told you NOT to do. Also don’t blame us.

HR to managers - let’s try this again, we’re going back to the office full time. No assigned seating.

Managers to reps - the higher powers of being decided they want all the sociology majors to quit so they don’t look bad by firing them. We’re working on a seating chart.

Months later

Managers to reps - ok we have your assigned seating come find where you will sit. Also remember there is officially “no assigned seating”. Just remember this is your desk and you cannot sit anywhere else.

After repeated layoffs, burnout, and a media leadership culture that seems to treat people as disposable, dropping a 20+ year media agency partner without a pitch feels completely on brand. It’s the same management philosophy applied at scale: destroy institutional knowledge, call it transformation, and assume a shiny new operating model will compensate for the human damage left behind. Then send an internal email written by AI, announcing the new media partner - an email so cringe that reads like ChatGPT huffed a whiteboard full of “synergy” and “growth driver” and vomited out a LinkedIn thought-leadership post wearing a suit

Town hall..whew what a sh-t show. What's up with the non stop AI push. Not a single person that's qualified to build and ship out a production grade AI application in leadership positions. All show ponys presenting . His Sr. Directors leading AI 😂. They presente generic slides, ZERO value, VB seems like a con artist trying to act technical with his Internet copy AI generated aidlc slop slide. The other one was so annoying that even SC cut him off. One lady does data gathering about team members on a mismaged Excel sheet and calls herself a AI stewart. One lady just sets up calls and coordinates q&a and she's an AI director. LMAO. These people will not get hired in AI leadership roles anywhere except at UHC. Anyone can presented the slop we saw today. Why is zmuda be here in UHC Tech when she has zero knowledge? This whole thing is a sham and will end really bad unless they start getting real technical director with real AI skills and not copy paste slop directors. Shareholders/board would love to fire this entire sh-t show in a heartbeat if they understand what a joke this entire org leadership is. Looking for non existent nails to hit with a few wobbly broken soft headed rubber hammers in that's totally useless. Sh--Charidoesn't realize what a sh---y org he got into, after ruining his previous order he probably thought he can get a fresh start, but guess what his last team was already real engineers and architects, ruined the entire culture there and jumped ships. He'll realize soon enough what a clown show this org is.

In my personal experience, Jeff Nibler and Kyle Goodwin are two of the worst managers I have encountered in my career.

Their leadership was an exhausting combination of unclear direction, poor communication, weak accountability and an astonishing lack of meaningful support. Problems were allowed to fester, legitimate concerns seemed to disappear into a void, and employees were left to deal with the consequences of management failures they did not create.

Working under them felt like being trapped in a leadership vacuum. Instead of providing clarity, they created confusion. Instead of building trust, they eroded it. Instead of helping employees succeed, their management approach made already demanding work needlessly frustrating and demoralizing.

What made the experience particularly intolerable was the apparent disconnect between leadership’s perception of itself and the reality experienced by the people doing the work. Accountability seemed to flow downward, while support rarely did. Their management did not merely fail to improve the workplace—it actively made the workplace worse.

This is my personal assessment, and I do not claim to speak for anyone else. However, anyone considering a position reporting to either of them should proceed extremely cautiously. Ask current and former employees direct questions about morale, turnover, communication, psychological safety and how management responds when challenged.

A difficult job can be manageable with good leadership. Under Jeff Nibler and Kyle Goodwin, the leadership was the most difficult part of the job.

Laid off in March from the bank, and I still can’t find work. Funny thing is I see them rehiring for a position I had but I’m not in a hub market. I was less expensive than people they kept on board, so why the he-l lay me off? I was a good worker. Now I’m afraid I’m about to lose everything. To the snakes who put this in motion for me and for so many others, remember the pain you cause others always comes back to you. Evil. This company and its management are pure evil.

There was a recent director meeting which was stated "we have to many sales manager" expect cuts here.

All or almost all proposed projects at this time coming out if EMTEC are bogus. Please ask questions 3-4 layers deep and they will be exposed. The managers are intentionally covering up bad ideas in the guise of next big opportunity to get their bonus and move to their next role, while the future organization suffers with their terrible decisions.

Managers are intentionally spinning the wheel on ‘technologies’ and ideas that no one in the industry will touch or have already made a clear decision to never pursue. Closely look at Upstream research, they will drain the company of $$ shamelesslessly, or just out of incompetence.

Under the threat of unemployment, the Research company is also joining in on these made up technology cases, especially getting a chance to contribute on the Upstream side.

Please look closely, just throwing millions of dollars for projects known to be failures is crazy. It is not innovation.

Don’t burden your technical staff with turning slogans from clueless middle manager into engineering execution, when it is simply not possible.

It is one thing for you to ask someone to become a better basketball player — it is possible. It is another thing to ask someone to grow from 5 ft 10 to 7 ft in a year to then become the best player of NBA. It is is impossible, factually impossible. What these managers are forcefully promoting are IMPOSSIBLE ideas.

only ask is please ask critical questions, these Yes men need to be held accountable.

Has anyone actually physically seen the reporting management is receiving based upon computer usage?

What exactly is on this report?

Now that One Cisco is dead and the era of "Cisco is not a family" is upon us I have to wonder what Cisco could have been like if we had kept our values. The amount of backstabbing and sabotaging and general toxic shittiness that has become normal in the last year or so is baffling.

We were so much more productive and collaborative in the One Cisco era. Instead I'm hearing my management chain talk about cutting certain teams out of the development process. I'm seeing managers lie about agreements in their EC decks in order to steal headcount from other teams.

We're in a cultural death spiral and I don't see anyone fighting the good fight anymore.

JonO hasn't done much good for STAR since the Symantec days, and his grasp of cybersecurity appears somewhat limited.

There are competent managers below him who could run security response more smoothly on their own.

I love writing plan to write about CNC and managed care failure while the needy suffer. Give me some book name recommendations ideas.

How often is management reading chat messages or reviewing and monitoring emails with coworkers?

How often is management reading chat messages or reviewing and monitoring emails with coworkers?

When is clean-up happening for thousands of directors, ADs, AVPs under Ramesh Babu Ramakrishn*n coming?? Simply too many folks bullying others

On a scale of 1 to 10? I'd give mine a generous 3. And he's the best of the last three I had.