#meeting

Since the expanded in office 8 hours mandate has it been harder to plan meetings. Most people I know, including me, have hard start and stops now. Good luck trying to set up a call with india, nyc, mn and az. There is a window of like 3 hours. When they treated us like professionals most of us would take calls before going in to the office or after we got home. No more. When the measurement is time and not quality they get time but not quality.

Anyone got the numbers? One side, both sides? It’s odd they won’t tell anyone in the town meetings.

Looks like I was on one email that was sent on behalf of Phil McKoy. Body of email says note 1 of 4 invites sent. Any reason to be concerned? Are layoffs or a reorg here?

This company has lost there way it’s a good ole boys club they spend thousands on meetings that have no relevance just a big ole party and in same breath bi--h about a couple thousand dollars needed to keep operations going they do not upgrade there equipment are bring anything innovative into the industry they have lost hundreds if not thousands of years experience in the last few years due to cuts but keep top loading the boys club it won’t be long before they are irrelevant mark these words

What was the point of the meetings today? Nothing new shared. SVP one for downstream had a Q&A for entertainment.

What were some of your favourite quotes? "A Canadian company by and for Canadians" is surely top 3 of the day

Why was Bob Kirby reporting the numbers on the whole business? Is he taking over? Is DV merging with ITS?

I keep getting dragged into so-called alignment meetings that reveal absolutely nothing. Hours upon hours of buzzwords and vague reassurance with no real clarity. It feels like they are delaying bad news and hoping we do not notice how nervous the managers look.

Does anyone have thoughts on the whole One Medicare thing after the meeting today?

Literally he just talked about is life and growing up for a quarterly meeting, seems like she's trying to pass on the crown to him

SAS Cloud seems to run entirely on project managers.

No actual SAS experience in sight, yet somehow they manage to present themselves as experts on absolutely everything.

No wonder the whole place looks like it’s permanently waiting on a meeting about a meeting.

#bootstrappers

Every simple task takes three approvals, two meetings, and one person saying ""this could have been an email""

Just had one of those... it was a meeting about why the last meeting did not achieve what the meeting before that was supposed to fix... You cannot make this stuff up. We are doomed.

Does anyone else have an onsite meeting for Thursday the 4th? Not sure if this is restructuring or what.

Anyone got a 1:1 for tomorrow?

National salary program meeting today, what are the key takeaways?

For those of you in East Coast who never got meeting invite this morning . -
then you are safe until Tuesday Dec 9

I thought managers were supposed to manage, and that all our bloated procedures supposedly served a purpose. Out of all the meetings we had lately, maybe one or two were actually useful, the rest were a complete waste of time. Most of us actually know how to do our jobs. But I guess some managers still need to justify their existence somehow.

I wish I’d recorded our faces while he went on about “dedication” and “hard work.” Even he couldn’t hide that he didn’t believe a single word coming out of his mouth. I honestly don’t get how these corpos still think this kind of theatrics works. Are they really that out of touch? Incredible. And on top of it all, he wasted half an hour of our time.

How are you all maintaining 8 hrs in office ?
Staying 6 to 7 hrs is easily manageable to stay in office.
With early meetings, and again need to login at night to coordinate with offshore, maintaining 8 hrs is stretch.
Is it that mandatory to maintain 8 hrs or 6 to 7 hrs is acceptable?

Does this mean we are safe or we are cooked?

15 minute one on one with my director, a bit outside the 8am - 10am window but they’re in a different timezone than I am.

email from CEO at 7am...
meeting for 1:1 with SD in over an hour...

gonna make me STRESS over what this is about? BRUH

He could not hold his excitement and sent the invite before Dan's email!

Meeting Invites being sent out today. From what im hearing there is going to be a trimming of the fat. RIF's for Christmas!

I'm in corporate out of Basking Ridge. The place has been a ghost town. My boss and teammates have all been distant. I am seeing meetings cancelled left and right.

Serious question. When will the "new normal" start for those that make the first cut?

No comments necessary. Just upvote if true...

Looks like there’s a meeting with a lot of managers at 10 today. I’m going to assume it’s the HR call coaching them on RIFs…

I have meetings tomorrow and need somewhere to work in between meetings while waiting for clients. And of course need to connect to the network.

How often is your manager doing 1:1s

Our weekly team meeting on every Tuesday just got rescheduled to Nov 21st Friday for this week. Maybe they wanna accommodate the Nov 20th layoff day? Not looking good.

Manager meeting tomorrow? Any one know for what ?

Just received a 1:1 with my manager tomorrow. It’s been an honor serving with y’all. You people are the ones who make this company tolerable. Not management.

Why? Why is that needed? Most of those meetings are nothing but people repeating things that were said many, many times before just packaged another way. It's not like something positive or new comes of it. So what's the point, other than to keep useless people busy?

Very vague/confusing meeting name said (Option 3 at the end), so I'm guessing it's not good news.

Just a quick reminder that while we’re all committed to collaboration, scheduling meetings at 4 a.m. feels less like ‘flexibility’ and more like a hostage situation. Work–life balance shouldn’t require night vision goggles. Unless the building is on fire or we’re launching a rocket, no one should be required to function professionally at that hour.

As a retired, original LP owner I am wondering why the most obvious question was not addressed.
How will this change affect annual payout percentage, for original owners, in the future. We have enjoyed an average 20% for many, many years. Will that most likely be reduced.

At BNY, leadership isn’t something you do—it’s something you post about. In this gilded age of corporate theater, where substance is optional but hashtags are mandatory, BNY has perfected the art of appearing important while doing absolutely nothing of measurable value. Welcome to the House of Optics™, where the louder you are on Teams, the closer you are to God (or at least to a LinkedIn shoutout from someone with “Global” or "Head" in their title).

Let’s begin with the sacred ritual of the Selfie of Significance™. At BNY, no moment is too trivial to commemorate with a front-facing camera and a forced grin. Did you attend a 15-minute “Leadership Listening Session” where no one listened and nothing was led? That’s a selfie. Did you stand near a VP while they cut a ribbon on a building funded by tax credits and the dreams of displaced mid-career professionals? That’s a selfie. Did you walk past a banner that said “Innovation Starts Here” while wondering what your job actually is? Selfie. Bonus points if you tag the Executive Committee member who once waved in your general direction at a town hall.

But the real magic happens in the Testimonial Industrial Complex™, where associates are gently nudged (read: strongly encouraged) to post about how “energized,” “inspired,” and “humbled” they are to be in the presence of greatness—greatness being defined as someone who once said “synergy” in a meeting without laughing. These testimonials are often indistinguishable from hostage notes, except with more emojis and fewer demands. “Feeling so proud to be part of today’s strategic alignment session with our fearless leader!” reads one post, accompanied by a photo of a man in a Patagonia vest nodding at his own PowerPoint.

Leadership at BNY is not measured by outcomes, impact, or even basic competence. It is measured by decibel level and calendar saturation. The true leaders are those who speak the most in Teams meetings, regardless of whether they say anything. In fact, saying nothing is preferred—it reduces the risk of accountability. The goal is to be seen speaking, not heard making sense. Bonus points for using phrases like “double-click,” “value prop,” and “let’s circle back” in a single breathless monologue.

And oh, the meetings. BNY has elevated the Meeting as Performance Art to an Olympic sport. There are meetings to plan meetings, meetings to debrief meetings, and meetings to align on the outcomes of meetings that never had outcomes. If you’re not in at least six simultaneous Teams calls, are you even leading?

Meanwhile, the Executive Committee floats above it all, like a celestial body emitting vague strategic radiation. They are thanked profusely in every post, regardless of their involvement. “Huge thanks to [Insert EC Member] for their visionary leadership!” reads a caption beneath a photo of a hallway. No one knows what the EC actually does, but their names are invoked like corporate deities—part reverence, part insurance policy.

But BNY’s pièce de résistance is its Public Diversion Strategy™, a masterclass in distraction marketing. While morale craters and more layoffs loom, the company unveils a new building, a new partnership, or a new initiative with a state college mascot no one’s heard of. These announcements are accompanied by drone footage, branded cupcakes, and LinkedIn posts with captions like “So proud to be part of this journey!”—a journey that, coincidentally, involves replacing experienced professionals with interns and new college grads who think COBOL is a TikTok dance.

These partnerships are not about education or community impact. They are about labor arbitrage agreements with a side of PR frosting. BNY receives generous economic development credits to build “pipelines” of low-cost, inexperienced talent while quietly offboarding seasoned employees like expired yogurt. The message is clear: if you’ve been here long enough to know how things work, you’re a liability. Please collect your commemorative stress ball and don't let the door hit you in the a*ss on the way out!

And yet, the illusion persists. Awards, merit and promotions are given for “visibility,” not value. Promotions go to those who master the art of Strategic Echoing™—repeating what someone just said, but louder and with a slide. Recognition is bestowed upon those who “lean in” to performative enthusiasm, not those who quietly deliver results. The loudest voice in the room is assumed to be the smartest, even if it’s just reading the agenda out loud.

In this ecosystem, actual accomplishment is a liability. It implies you were focused on work instead of cultivating your personal brand. Worse, it might make others look bad. The safest path to success is to be loud, visible, and vaguely inspirational. Think TED Talk energy, but with less content and more acronyms. Afterall, who started this practice and how has this become the fabric of the Robin Vince BNY culture?

So what’s the lesson here? At BNLie, it’s not about what you do—it’s about what you appear to do. Leadership is not a function of impact, but of optics, volume, and proximity to power. The currency of success is not competence, but curated enthusiasm and PR hype. And the ultimate sin is not failure—it’s silence.

So smile for the camera, tag your favorite executive, and remember: the building may be empty, the strategy may be incoherent, and the talent may be fleeing—but as long as the LinkedIn post gets 100 likes and 450 impressions, everything is fine with the personal brand.