#morale

What a joke.

Hey fellow riders of the wonderful hellish stage coach. I had been feeling hopeful again where I had been applying for thousands of jobs and after countless rejections. I’m finally getting offers for jobs. I had been feeling so hopeless up until these last few weeks and I appreciate you guys here. Despite the horrible situation we are in, it feels somewhat somber to have some comrades in the trenches.

The executives in charge are the worst and the toxic environment they are making where there is mistrust, total chaos in the name of efficiency and total lack of professionalism from forced in office, biweekly layoffs of good people, peanut 2% raises and the refurbished POS laptops that they gave out. I’m wanting others to also feel hope and to hang on.

With last week's layoffs, how is the morale of the interns and ldp? I heard they had to sit through speeches by chris flood on leadership and culture already....

You can’t have a “market-based culture” unless you’re actually willing to compete in the market for talent. Stinky keeps talking about building a market-based culture, but what exactly is market-based about AT&T?

Companies with true high-performance cultures usually have at least one thing going for them:

• They pay top of market.
• They offer benefits people actually want like WFH/Hybrid
• They attract top-tier talent.
• They have a culture or reputation that makes people want to work there.

AT&T has… what?… The pay is mediocre and below market. The benefits have all been stripped away. Five-day RTO makes recruiting new young talent even harder. The culture and morale is at rock bottom. Leadership approval is about as low as I’ve ever seen it… Ask around outside of work how many people would recommend AT&T to someone starting their career. That answer speaks for itself.

John wants a market-based culture while offering a rock bottom value proposition.

People work hard in tech because the compensation is worth it. People grind in finance because one bonus can change their life. People put in insane hours at companies like Google because the pay, experience, and name on the resume can open doors for the rest of their careers.

So what’s the pitch for AT&T here, John?… Move across the country, come into the office five days a week, accept weak compensation, lose all flexibility, work under constant scrutiny and monitoring… Why would a top performer choose that?

The only reason anyone is still here is because the job market has been weak. As soon as it turns, and it always does, the people who have options will use them.

That’s how markets work, Stank. People won’t forget how you treated them when a better opportunity knocks.

If leadership really believes in a market-based culture, then they need to start offering a market-based reason for people to stay.

Yes easy questions; what actually been improved as the PA system su-ks, D&S staffing model is confusing as he-l, benefits have only gone one way, morale likewise…I am seriously struggling what has improved….

A lot of struggle these days in the IBM Expert Labs organization. Work is less and less every year, it does not seem like they will survive another year.

Comments?

The main install contract for Flock is being fulfilled by Dish and their contractors.

That's how low ergin will stoop. He'll foist a totalitarian police state on you if it means he gets to stay rich.

What does it feel like working for actual evil?

Ex-Verizon here. Seeing all these RIFs even after I left still hurts. And each time, I see people that I used to work with put on the open to work banner on LinkedIn.

I initially joined Verizon as part of an early in career development program right out of school around the COVID era. I quite liked the program at first, but as time moved on it really seemed like I wasn’t learning anything relevant that could be used outside of Verizon. Still quite glad for the opportunity, met some great people who helped a new kid find their feet in the working world. Though it probably was a silver lining when I got caught in one of the big RIFS a few years back, managed to land in a pretty good company after that.

For those who are still in the program, new grads who just joined, or those that graduated from VLDP/EIC, how is the program now? How is the management and mentorship? I can’t imagine morale being high with all these problems. For those that remember the old program, how much has changed? Hopefully it’s still going strong, but with all these issues it feels a bit hopeless, coming from someone on the outside.

Cutting jobs...

https://freeimage.host/i/COmajIt

Keep it classy, Leahy.

As someone who wasn’t affected by this transformation, I find this little gathering cold and heartless.

The photo op from the smiling executive team is like pouring salt into an open wound.

Didn’t they admit morale was low? This event and subsequent post in the company feed does not help.

Zero emotional intelligence.

Hey MW and Executive Leadership,

Man up and address the turmoil and stress you all have caused the company since 2020. Employees are exhausted and morale has hit rock bottom and is still trying to dig lower. Bring some kind of positivity for employees and remember the country and people who have made Chevron successful in its long tenure. Offshoring is not patriotic or right. You have to have some bit of good voice left in your soul. Use SETH to right some wrongs and grow a spine.

I've been at the bank long enough, and in enough different roles, to finally understand how the place actually rewards performance.

The reward for hard work isn't recognition. It isn't career growth. It isn't additional compensation. It's more work.

Not just any work, either. You get handed the complex, politically sensitive, high-risk initiatives that everyone else has quietly managed to avoid. The kind of work where failure has consequences, success is expected, and if you somehow pull it off, leadership thanks you by immediately assigning you the next impossible project.

Competence isn't rewarded here, it's exploited.

The irony is that the less capable you appear to be, the less you're expected to do. People who consistently fail to deliver, miss deadlines, or spend more time trying to hand off work than actually completing it somehow develop an impressive track record of failing upward. They become experts at managing perception instead of outcomes, while the people actually producing results are too busy carrying the organization to spend time marketing themselves.

Then there are the teams that seem to have won the organizational lottery. Small teams. Clearly defined responsibilities. Minimal scope creep. Leadership that actually protects their capacity instead of treating it like a public utility. Flexible delivery timelines. Dedicated administrative support. They get measured on exactly what they signed up to do.

The rest of us? Apparently our job description is simply "everything else." Need another critical program? Give it to the team that's already drowning. Another governance function? They'll figure it out. Production support? Add it. Executive requests? Sure. Regulatory deadlines? Why not? Twenty-four-hour operational oversight? Of course. After all, they've always found a way before.

Then leadership has the audacity to act surprised when capacity becomes an issue. The best part is pretending this is all accidental. It isn't.

Leadership has the reporting. They have the staffing numbers. They have the capacity plans. They sit through prioritization meetings. They review resource models. They approve organizational structures. They know exactly which teams have half the support and two or three times the responsibility. They know which groups are expected to supervise critical operations 24 hours a day, 365 days a year while simultaneously delivering strategic initiatives.

They're not uninformed. They're informed enough to know exactly what's happening and comfortable enough to let it continue. When you escalate the issue, you get the standard corporate script.

"Prioritize better."

"Focus on the highest-value work."

"Be more strategic."

"Challenge your assumptions."

As if no one has ever considered making a priority list.

You can spend weeks documenting workload, mapping every deliverable, demonstrating capacity with actual data, and proving mathematically that there aren't enough hours or people to accomplish everything being demanded. The response?

"We understand."

Translation: We have no intention of changing anything, but we'd appreciate it if you'd continue accomplishing the impossible so we don't have to explain the problem to someone above us.

The most frustrating part is that leadership often mistakes resilience for excess capacity. Every time a team sacrifices nights, weekends, vacations, morale, or retention to somehow meet another impossible deadline, leadership congratulates themselves on successful planning instead of recognizing they've just normalized another unsustainable expectation.

And so the cycle continues.

The competent become the organizational pack mules, carrying increasingly impossible loads because they've demonstrated they can survive them. The underperformers continue to enjoy manageable expectations because no one expects much from them anyway. Meanwhile, leadership points to another successful delivery as proof that the current operating model works, blissfully ignoring that it only works because a handful of people refuse to let the wheels come off.

At some point, you realize the system isn't broken.

It's functioning exactly as leadership designed it.
The people doing the work absorb the cost.
Leadership gets the credit.

And every year, everyone wonders why the people capable of carrying the organization eventually stop volunteering to do it.

At&t loves a good slogan they can jam down everyone's throats as if that's going to change anything with how terrible the company actually is. Stinkeys "Marketbased Culture" is the latest. "Fast. Friendly. Fixed" is the other and both couldn't be further from reality. Anything to deviate from highlighting the fact that MOST anyone L3 and higher are overpaid, have nothing valuable to contribute and actively waste everyone else's time DAILY. THE ONLY REAL REASON anyone is still working here (and I will say for the majority of people) is the job market is also so trash right now, no one can risk being out of a job for an extended period of time especially if they have homes and families. That whole "just leave" argument is cute though.

What the He-l is going on at Arbroath? Management claim everything is dandy but machinist’s standing around with no work, zero material In the yard, it’s looking bleak. It certainly can’t continue or be covered over for much longer.

The unrest is Real.

Every town hall, they ask us to trust leadership's vision. But vision doesn't pay the bills when half your team gets laid off. We've watched promises get walked back, strategies flip quarterly, and executives cash out while we scramble. So no, I'm done trusting leadership. I think they let us down one time too many for that.

So many rounds of layoffs in just the last 12 months and zero strategic vision, nothing but cost-cutting bandaids. I've watched talented people walk and mediocre ones get promoted, absolutely no logic behind it. My job search started last week, and I'm not looking back.

head of growth and generosity leaving company, not being replaced. a bunch of people promoted from VP to SVP. in same email, layoffs announced. said this was done in the name of cost reduction yet with all the big title promotions, were there any real dollars saved? it's so tasteless to be rah rah let's celebrate promotions and then tell people they lost their jobs all in the same day.

Why are people still working for Phillips 66. No one is making any one of us to stay!

Are you staying @VZ because you believe in the company or because you don't have another option?

CDW used to be an A+ company. It valued its people and understood that its success came from experienced employess w/strong ties to customers... Now, the focus has shifted from people to $$$s. Employees feel replaceable, like #s, no longer valued. Old culture made us great but now is gone. If you've been around long enough you understand what I am saying.

it's all about fear now. no respect, no loyalty from mgmt.

and it's about to get even worse.

i'm unsure what to do. it looks like switching industries would probably make the most sense for me.

i'm not affected, but i'd hate to live in perpetual fear of the proverbial axe.

peace out.

Pretty much…if you don’t like it, leave.

I’m working on that, Gunjan, don’t worry.

It’s clear if you are remote or not in one of the main hubs, there is no longer any growth for you. They want you to leave.

So disheartening after years of dedicated work to just feel like I’m being pushed out!

I have to admit I’ve been feeling a little guilty about spending too much time day trading PSX and talking to recruiters for other companies. But then I heard about the ELT’s trip to Aspen and all the other cr-p that they pull. Nothing is too good for them.
Now I don’t feel guilty at all.

It really stings that it was immediately following the earnings call where all the top brass was smiling and sharing vacation plans

Is this the most tone deaf, worthless, let them eat cake townhall this company has ever had to date? I think so...

Potentially cutting the lease early and relocating because salaries have inflated there and everyone’s demoralized, etc.

Is this true? How would moving the whole operation again help with morale?

We just got another fun email on oneway dell timesheets. seriously its like nothing works here in any place.

Can't even take holidays like normal person in NORMAL company.

After back-to-back meetings about the same things we had meetings about last week and a passive-aggressive ping from a director who can't articulate what he wants, yesterday I was tempted to google "fast food hiring near me." I'm honestly at the point where the simplicity of flipping burgers seems superior to this mess.

What will be left of this place once they're done with us? ESPN will not be the same with so many of the broadcasters that made this place what it is gone.

Whenever they talk about reducing costs, we're the cost they want to cut. Do they seriously think the company can survive without the people who actually do the work? Not the ones who attend meetings about meetings, but the people who keep things running. We're supposed to be their best asset, but we're treated like we're completely disposable. Job security feels like a distant memory at this point.

Looking at how things have been run, it's no shock we're in this position. The whole operation is stuck in the past.

They can't keep cutting forever, eventually there won't be anyone left to cut. But even if it does stop, is there any reason to stay? Whoever's left will just be expected to do the all the work of everyone who was cut, for the same pay. I don't see a happy ending here.

There's no reward for hard work at Oracle anymore. The raises are terrible, nobody gets recognized, whether you're the best or just getting by, it's all the same. So I keep asking myself why I should even try. The answer I keep coming back to is that I probably shouldn't. Just do what's required and move on. It's not worth the stress.

The problem with DXC is that very few people seem to know what they're doing, and even those who do are often locked out because they don't have the permissions they need.

I spend longer on status calls listening to people say they don't know or aren't sure than I do doing any actual technical work. We're all just sitting around waiting for nothing to happen.

I'd probably quit if I thought this was going to continue forever, but I'm fairly convinced the whole thing will crash and burn before the end of the year. So I'm not about to walk away from the possibility of a redundancy package.

For now, the job is basically: dial into two status calls a day and listen to the same drivel on repeat. I have no idea what they are trying to deliver, that bit has been totally lost in all the faffing about everyone does around here.

Live your legend

internal sentiment at this company is too negative. hard to work with some people/teams with sh-t attitude and outlook as a motivated new hire and outsider, trying to make it work. cant even explain how much worse my last gig was and it was rated one of the best global employers, for years, as fortune 100. opentext is no different than other companies: team, manager, business group dictates all. if you’re developing a 30+ year old product to match what industry solution peers already have……please. like get real about who you are, what you do, the market, the future, and show up with some humility and accountability. /rant

Not sure I understand how this happened. I’ve only been here 5 years, but the Sport Research Lab seems to have crazy low morale. A lot of people are abusing the workplace complaints system to attack bosses and colleagues. It didn’t always seem like this. Now leadership is doing these silly culture exercises to try and solve this huge problem because everyone is afraid of being targeted by their own co-workers.

Is it like this in other departments? Because it’s really bad over here in NSRL.

the work you do is meaningless. This job is meaningless. They don’t care about you. Go find a better job. This company will never recover from this. They are programming you to endure this type of dystopian workplace nightmare don’t accept it. Run. Layoffs will continue. Org charts are still bloated.

You should not feel disrespected. You should be grateful and eager to work hard with a song in your heart!