#performance

Great to see all the initiatives and strategies correlate into strong earnings.

Lead to One should continue to drive meaningful value and strong financial results.

I received my smallest raise ever this year (aside from zero during Covid). I had a good rating this year as well. Is this normal or does my boss hate me?

Referring to claims but may be other departments too. I really didn’t think it could be worse than rock bottom but here comes big blue with the excavator. My manager used to be ok but he is becoming militant and aggressive, due to those above him. A low performer on the team got fired. Threats of performance management for missing a single metric. More and more being dumped on the plate. This job has always been a toxic cesspool, but somehow it’s getting worse

John should be realizing with all this cash, employees are looking around going what about us? He and the executives will be making cash for themselves but we don’t get anything extra at all for all these record breaking results.

Him and those over paid HR goofs better start thinking of ways to give employees a bit more or the motivation to keep preforming won’t be there.

In the communication, the condition of receiving of your severance is a good standing: What does it actually mean? Let's say your performance is degrading and you get thrown to NI/NSI pile, what more can the company do? Getting rid of you sooner? With extra 3 months of additional severance if they put you on PIL?

Has anybody ever reported their PL to ethics or HR? They are giving easier assignments to their friends and I am not meeting metrics. Now have a weekly meeting with them and am sure they are looking to try to fire me to not have to pay severance. Trying to see if anybody has had any experience with escalation.

On July 1, 2007 , Stephenson's first day as CEO, AT&T's share price was $37.62.

Keep patting yourselves on the back.

They changed the rules so now managers can only give out a finite amount of "exceeds expectations" - just another way Oracle is now sc--wing over employees and making teams compete internally with each other!

Now that we're approved we all need to watch out because they'll be looking for any reason to performance people out. Those that are staying behind, be sure to watch your back. Spoke to two different people leaders today and they confirmed layoffs are coming.

Amazing. Is there anything wrong with the American system? Are we winning?

Those with a 4 performance rating. What what was your increase? I'll go first. 2%
This can't possibly be normal.

Yes, I am actively job hunting.

Good job by BB& his team!

Each asset will have to have the bottom 15% (5% of them will be PIP). HR doesn’t know how or what the process looks like. Gotta love Human Energy and The Chevron way right? Those messages are dead. It’s a dog eat dog world. Get the most out of your job and take care of your family. The Chevron of even 10 years ago is a but a distant memory. If you think high oil prices and great quarterly reports are gonna make a difference, you’re wrong

Where I work the L and D “leaders”at HQ messed up our operations training so badly that Operations had to take operations training back from HQ. Now the training is almost as good as it was prior to 2023.
This is just one example of how Malformation has been a total flop.

What’s the new promotion guidance? Do managers have some discretion or it’s all automated?

What are the main factors? Eg Is Outstanding (or Excellent) in consecutive 2-3 cycles required for CL promotion? Does it depend on current CL?

I exhausted myself at Dst just to get the same level of respect an employee at another company would recieve if they were in the bottom 5% of employees as ranked in performance. Even thought I was the top performer in my area. After I left, I did tell my supervisor's wife that he was cheating on her. I had no obligation to not disclose it. My supervisor criticized everything I did at Dst. So I did the same thing after I left, and there was plenty to criticize about him. I imitated him after i left by pointing out his faults to his supervisors in my exit interview

All this dbag does is lie out his a-s. No new business but he wants the world to believe bny is bringing in millions and hes saving with AI. No bi--h you are saving because all you do is terminate U.S employees

Trying to post this for the third time. Keeps getting taken down. Asking when DF will be replaced. For his efforts in losing talented team members and hundreds of millions in AUM, he was rewarded with the Chief Investment Officer role for the fifth largest bank in the US-you heard that right. Leadership, and I use that term loosely, has lost scads of talent and BILLIONS of assets under management. No one ever pays the price in PWM. When Minneapolis lost their most talented team members, and some of its most lucrative relationships-those managers remained in chair. There are never any repercussions, unless you point out the problems which are so glaringly obvious. The dirty kittle secret in PWM is that the thing driving sales is banking-primarily mortgages, which don't even count towards goals at any private death shop worth its salt. Those of us who have been in chair for a long time will muddle through. Younger members should run not walk to get out of here.

Mid-year performance reviews are done with the new stacked rankings structure putting 10% of the workforce below “meets expectations”. So, when do we expect the mass firings to begin?

Book by Jim Collins. If you know, you know.. Somehow, seemingly NOT ONE of our “leaders” have read the book, or understand, or care to understand the importance of ‘Getting the right people on the Bus’. To me, this is a direct acknowledgment that T is nothing more than a stock or commodity, with no real interest in being a competitive and top performing company. Settling for financial position, dividends, and gains is their game and none of us should expect anything more. We are all an operating expense that can be reduced when needed.

In-depth piece (15-16 minute read) on IBM's Q2 debacle and the company's future viability.

https://www.thestreet.com/investing/ibms-25-crash-reveals-ais-hidden-corporate-casualty

How is IBM able to maintain such a consistent track record - This would also mean for every 4 people who get assigned a PIP, only 1 would fail and be terminated. With the increase in number of PIPs that are being assigned to avoid WARN notice and save on the severance packages, the number of employees who continue to grow at IBM should also increase. Is that happening?

On scale of 1-10, how bad did Enrique fumble the Stripe deal? And how bad will our stock crash on Tuesday? Im wondering if I should just cash my vested RSU’s now before even bigger losses come.

All PE in IT should stop doing grade 5 and 6 assignment. Have every PE provide their top 3 project. Take projects away and assign them to a Grade 7. If the Grade 7 executes, the PE gets BE. Most India worker better than American PE.

I noticed lately they are hiring a lot of young females in AI/ML/Data science/Data engineering type roles. I noticed that they don't anything. They use AI and one junk analysis a day. They are gone by 4 pm because..kids, School pickup or whatever reason. They don't acknowledge any messages and find a way to deflect any responsibilities. I reported one to my director and he terminated one contractor that was not not doing much. But we are stuck with a couple of FTEs we can't simply RIF, he's citing legal/HR . There seems to be a pattern emerging with these hires. They are using proxies to pass interviews. One girl refused to come in camera and after i insisted she did the next day and she looks different than the one in remember in the interview. Interestingly the video was blurry both times, lighting was off, and hair party covering sides of face. Since I don't have 100% proof I can't report to HR. What are my options? Director says just to build up a case n put them on PIP in a few months n layoff next year to avoid legal is issues. Is he being overly cautious? Now I don't have funding to hire 2 more and stuck with 2 useless duds, scam artists

I was curious about why the message from Verizon sounded so different from the Wall Street Journal. I asked Google to explain the differences.

"Verizon's official corporate communications emphasize positive operational highlights like subscriber growth and adjusted earnings beats, whereas The Wall Street Journal provides a comprehensive financial evaluation that also factors in declining total revenue and non-operating joint-venture costs.

Verizon's Presentation: Focuses heavily on adjusted metrics, beating subscriber estimates (184,000 net postpaid phone additions), and raised full-year guidance.

The Wall Street Journal's Reporting: Highlights the complete picture, noting that total companywide revenue ticked down slightly year-over-year and quarterly profit was weighed down by significant costs (such as a $746 million loss from a joint venture with BT Group)."

I wonder if the truth lies somewhere between spin A and spin B

A new piece from Bloomberg makes the case, comparing the Tesla vehicle to the misfortunes of Ford's Edsel, which was first introduced in 1957 and discontinued just two years later. After spending years building up hype for the car, Ford predicted selling 200,000 units in its first year, but ended up selling less than a third of that.

That's comparable to expectations versus reality of the Cybertruck. In fact, the Cybertruck is actually doing worse in key ways. Tesla's annual sales target was 250,000 units, but it didn't even crack 40,000 sales in its first year. And like the Edsel, it's sold less with each successive year, with barely 7,100 registered in the US in 2026 so far, according to S&P Global Mobility data — despite Musk juicing those figures by selling Cybertrucks to his own companies.

https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/looking-cybertruck-biggest-flop-automotive-145559135.html

I’ve been hearing mixed rumours that we’re just going to be paid as if we hit 90% of our target? Is this true?

Sure, may be great for some people who didn’t achieve. But myself and I few others I know are expecting big pay outs with commission from the accelerators for exceeding our targets.

Are we just not gonna get paid out on all of that and it was effectively all for nothing?

Who, or what, is behind the long string of failures in ISG? Jeff B? Travis? Arthur? Who/what else?

Never have we seen such a continuous pattern of sustained failure without a change in behavior or accountability.

BAIN should be looking at common threads in each of these and clean house.

x400 - Failure
ScaleIO - Failure
XC4000 - Failure
DM5500 - Failure
Santorini - Failure
Hydra - Failure
VxRail - Failure
PPDM - Failure
Cyber Recovery - Failure
Apex - Failure
CloudIQ - Failure
EMC Storage Strategy - Failure

Professional and Technical Tier guidelines have those positions

Associate
Expert
Senior expert
Principal
Senior principal
Chief

Do they correspond to a specific CL?
Or rather a CL band (like 27-29)?
What’s the base pay for Expert or Senior Principal ?

as an external hire, just because everyone can see other people’s “tier” online I inferred this isn’t the same as CL. Anyone can shed light on what it is and how to upgrade this ?

stock sinking why CEO's nut heads still around? As a stock holder i want them to be fired for their lousy job.

Foe this group, one thing for sure Dan will continue to do what is “wowking”. These messages is what he lives for, not you.

https://www.verizon.com/about/news/verizon-delivers-record-2q26-results

Verizon needs to skip Hans/DEI 2.0 and announce Verizon 3.0.

Verizon 3.0 is going back Verizon 1.0 and motivate/reward performance on results and execution. Call Denny Strygal/Ivan.

It's impossible to execute with current Board and C-Suite Team.

Go back to skip levels and ask high owrformers what needs to be done.

Start with VCG groups.. learn why desoite having superior fiber in SFU/MDUs over 25 years.. broadband still under 50%.

Then attack Small Businesx and remove sales friction.

The Vz Culture and lack of empowerment and leadership talent will ensure competition continues to as$ kick Verizon in marketplace.

I’ve seen high performers get RIFed…if they’ve been on their ADs sh-t list. Does that imply AD had a say in the job loss? Serious feedback please no trolling

IBM missed every major tech revolution from PCs to AI, shrinking to a $200 billion market cap while private OpenAI is valued at $900 billion.

IBM, which has been poorly run for decades, is on the ropes. The company has had plenty of practice managing decline. When it warned about its earnings a week ago, the stock dropped over 20%. It is down 30% for the year, while the S&P is up 9%. The picture is even bleaker from another vantage point: in early June, the stock changed hands at $329, but it trades at very slightly better than $200 now.

https://247wallst.com/investing/2026/07/23/ibm-is-the-worlds-worst-big-tech-company/

This is right out of Ginni's tired playbook " One quarter does not define a company. Progress is never perfect or linear. But the future is ours to win"

Arvind, read your own headline back. “Company culture was too slow to change.” Not “I set a strategy that leaned on debt-funded acquisitions for five years.” Not “I ki-led a working deployment focus six months ago and had to rebuild it under pressure.” Not “I chased a stock price number instead of asking whether the growth underneath it was real.” Culture. As if the culture is some ambient weather system that happens to a company, instead of the direct, measurable output of what leadership rewards, funds, and tolerates.
Here’s what “culture” actually means when a CEO says it out loud: it means employees. It means the people three, four, five levels below you, absorbing blame for decisions they didn’t make and couldn’t have stopped. You don’t get to spend years building a strategy on acquisitions and mainframe timing, watch the props come due at the same time, and then, when the market notices, hand the bill to “culture.” Culture doesn’t sign off on M&A. Culture doesn’t set the incentive plan. Culture doesn’t decide which function gets ki-led in January and rebuilt in July. You do.
And the board’s own language makes this worse, not better: confident in the strategy, but will “hold leadership accountable for execution.” Read that twice. The strategy stays untouchable. Execution is the only thing on the table, and execution is exactly the layer where the people with the least power to change the strategy live. That’s not accountability. That’s a firewall, built to make sure the decisions at the top never have to answer for the results at the top.
So here’s the honest question, asked directly, not through a euphemism about culture: why is it always easier to say “we faltered” as a company than to say “I got this wrong” as the person who ran it? Why is the sentence “culture was too slow” acceptable in a headline, while the sentence “I ki-led a function I should have left alone” never makes it into one? If you were confident enough to reshuffle the entire org on a six-month clock, be confident enough to put your own name on the outcome instead of a word that conveniently has no face and no bonus attached to it.
Own it, you said. So own it. Not the culture. You

link ---> https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/economy/ibm-s-ceo-sends-a-warning-as-its-shares-take-their-worst-hit-in-decades/ss-AA28tjw7?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=6a61faf0de104c25954b7727766c091c&cvpid=9f9665ade94b4e1994ac75d6ecfc101c&ei=14#image=10

Q2 is out. Revenue basically flat. Free cash flow flat for the half. And yet the letter reads like a highlight reel: double-digit growth here, “strong performance” there, three bold priorities for the back half. Look closer, and the growth is concentrated in exactly the places you’d expect if the story were built on acquisitions rather than the underlying business.
Automation up 3%. Sounds modest until you remember that’s the segment carrying HashiCorp and Apptio (both bought, both being folded into the base, both getting a full year of “integration growth” before the comparison gets tough). Data up 18%, presented like IBM is winning the AI battle. Except Data is also where Confluent landed. Strip out an acquisition that closed months ago and ask what the legacy products in that category actually did on their own (that’s the number nobody puts in bold).
This is the oldest trick in inorganic growth: buy a company, fold its revenue into your segment, get a full year of easy comps while contracts get renewed and “blue-washed” under the new parent, and call the blended number your own performance. It works, for about a year. Then the acquisition anniversaries into the base, the easy comp disappears, and the segment needs the next acquisition to keep the story going. That’s not a growth engine. That’s a treadmill with a one-year lap time.
Meanwhile the parts of the business that were never propped up by an acquisition tell a rougher story. Infrastructure down 7%. Transaction Processing down 9% (they’re the same story told twice). Transaction Processing is the software that rides on Z. No mainframe refresh, no new Z capacity, no large deals closing (no new MLC licensing booked either). Hardware and software here aren’t two separate lines on a slide, they’re one engine: when Z doesn’t sell, the software tied to it doesn’t sell either, and both numbers fall together because they were never actually independent.
Which raises the uncomfortable question: how much of this business is actually layered on top of itself? Acquired revenue propping up Automation and Data while the base underneath goes quiet. Mainframe hardware and mainframe software rising and falling as one, dressed up as two separate growth stories. Each piece needs the piece below it to keep moving, or the whole structure stalls at once. Call it what you want (a treadmill, a house of cards, a pyramid where each new acquisition is there to cover for the last one’s fading comp): the pattern is the same, nothing underneath is generating growth on its own, it’s all leaning on something else that has to keep being fed.
Revenue flat overall at $17.2 billion. Free cash flow flat at $4.8 billion for the half. If the “real” IBM (the part that isn’t riding a recent purchase or a hardware refresh cycle) is shrinking while acquisitions and mainframe timing carry the average, the honest question isn’t “is IBM a software company.” It’s “whose growth is this, actually, and what happens the quarter the props stop arriving on schedule?”
And right on schedule, the answer on offer is another reshuffle (new titles, new coverage models, a new operating structure for the back half). But renaming jobs doesn’t change what’s underneath them. If the growth was never really organic to begin with, no amount of reorganizing who sells it or what they’re called is going to make it real.
And this isn’t a new discovery. The pattern has been visible on the ground for years (it just took a bad quarter for the market to finally notice what employees already knew). That’s the part worth sitting with: this wasn’t leadership missing a hidden signal. It was leadership seeing it, for years, and being too arrogant to admit the story needed correcting. Too invested in a stock price number (chasing $300 a share) to step back and ask whether the growth underneath it was real.
And even if the July reorg were the right diagnosis, it isn’t the right timeline. Deployment takes months to show up as revenue under the best conditions, longer when the team doing it just got reshuffled and has to relearn who owns what. A reorg launched mid-year, needing to prove itself by year-end, is asking for a “wow” effect on a clock that deployment has never once run on. Nobody deploys enterprise software in one or two quarters just because leadership needs a good Q4 slide. So the real question isn’t whether the numbers improve by December; it’s whether anyone at the top is honest enough to say, out loud, that they won’t, and that expecting otherwise is expecting a miracle from a plan that was never built with that timeline in mind.
Numbers tell the truth when you sit with them long enough. Put makeup on them (bold a growth rate, bury the segment it came from, skip the base it’s being compared against) and they’ll tell you whatever story needs telling that quarter. This quarter’s story needed rescuing. The last-minute reorg landing on top of it isn’t the fix. It’s one more coat of makeup on a number that’s going to need a lot more than that to hold up next quarter, when the acquisitions currently doing the heavy lifting start looking like ordinary IBM again.

I'm hanging on for a severance package. That's it. Considering the frequency of layoffs, I don't want to jump ship ahead of time and leave good money behind. I'm determined to leave, I'm just in a waiting pattern right now. I don't care if it's reflected in my performance. I've already given BNY much more than it ever deserved.