#strategy

Just kidding.

Dell mgmt is lost. The leaders they have in place are the worst they have ever been. The BS charade of AI is finally being shown for what it is, which is nothing. The modern dev initiatives are falling apart. The stock is on a nose dive even though they had “record revenue”.

The employees are not happy, there is clearly a lack of strategy and the company is being driven into the ground.

MD only intention at this point is to su-k the company dry and sell pieces of it off.

Even as UPS continues to navigate a challenging economic environment, it continues to demonstrate strategic leadership. In its first-quarter earnings report, UPS announced a reduction in its workforce of 20,000 in addition to the closure of 73 buildings. In return, this will save the company $3.5 billion, allowing UPS to come out on top of a shifting economy and competitive industry.

https://www.bostonherald.com/2025/09/02/noakes-sell-the-u-s-postal-service-to-ups/

Was wondering how the small format stores are doing/are they successful? And if so, any future plans for them?

As Phil scuffles into the sunset, leaving the company as weak as it's ever been, welcome Sanoke.

Welcome to a company struggling with bad leadership, no strategy, and unfocused product decisions. Organizationally a mess and one reorg away from a buy-one, get-one reward at BCG. More turf wars than West Side Story with enough passive-aggressive energy to power any high school drama.

FactSet needs a reset; you can be that change agent. The rot reaches at least L3 as the blind lead the blind(er).

Please give us an idea of why you're here and what you're hoping to achieve. Give people some hope that something new will happen.

Is TSS IBM GLOBAL SERVICE or whatever they are called these days. What is the plan for that?

FF had promised to release a plan at the beginning of the year.
Now we’re in September, and still waiting…
Does anyone know when it will finally be delivered?

Time to get rid of the low hanging fruit.

Spoiler alert: the closer you are to the valve the safer you are.

Major oil companies are actively laying off workers in 2025, driven by a combination of falling oil prices (hovering around $63 per barrel, below the $65 threshold many consider necessary for profitable drilling), post-merger redundancies, cost-cutting initiatives to boost shareholder returns, and broader industry shifts toward efficiency through technology and offshoring. These layoffs are part of a larger trend where U.S. oil and gas production has reached record highs, but employment has declined by about 25% compared to a decade ago, as companies produce more with fewer workers via advanced drilling techniques, automation, and remote operations. This has led to job losses even in booming regions like the Permian Basin, affecting communities in states like Texas, California, and Pennsylvania.

It’s a no-brainer, really. I just hope cuts won’t be massive. Most of us need this job, no matter how little we like it or how underappreciated we feel.

https://www.chron.com/business/article/exxonmobil-baytown-plant-jobs-21019567.php

“ Houston oil giant to revamp Baytown site, bringing 700 jobs”

I love that we are trying to chase what Exxon has done 10+ years ago and now while CVX has decided to go full Darth Vader and throw the baby out with the bath water, they are strategically making moves that will make us (I.e. our yes-men, short sited management) look terrible. Guess we’ll add those jobs back in 10 years too when they’ve moved on to their next strategy. #thechevronway

Is this good for the company?

Nothing says ‘financial recovery plan’ quite like betting the company’s future on a boy-band side quest. At this rate, the only thing timeless about Fossil will be the bankruptcy papers.

In September there will a massive change in S&T - layoffs… Data Product Management teams and DPA will combine which will create layoffs… others will be affected… hold on to your butts..

Whiting in the news again last week. This refinery must make Bri’ish Petroleum a lot of money for them to put up with this.

The latest 13F filing was done. Cap Management has $9.3B in Q2 in 2025 compared with over $10B in Q1 of 2024. Market has been up about 13.5% per annum since then. Is there a stated strategy to actually grow the AUM or is it mainly loss avoidance ?

Thoughts?

Anyone else questioning this rationale? A diversion from Model E losses or a move in the right direction for Ford?

Expecting some big announcements during GSX

The Oregon battery manufacturer formerly known as Powin plans to lay off another 25 employees, including nine in Oregon, after entering bankruptcy and selling most of its assets to a company in North Carolina.

https://www.oregonlive.com/business/2025/08/another-25-former-powin-employees-will-be-laid-off-after-bankruptcy-asset-sale.html

Does leadership have an AI backup plan? So many companies are realizing AI isn’t going to save them any money. It’s producing too low quality of code and is costing too much in compute. The biggest misconception for people is that AI is already an AGI. These models are LLMs and only know what patterns they’re trained to understand. They just don’t get a deep understanding of enterprise code.

AI is still awesome to have in the workplace. Its understanding of documents and Eliza features like proof of concept apps are cool. But let’s be realistic, it’s not replacing anyone. If it has, BNY might regret it later.

Does leadership see this at all? Or will they die on the AI hill since our senior leadership team and CEO talk about AI so publicly? I think they need to loosen their expectations.

Intel, as we know it is officially OVER.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DMf0cKQN2VX/

Congratulations to the board for a fine pick! You can count on them to make the right decision at the right time.

Executive leadership could have made a significant difference with Cisco - when you look at Google, Microsoft, NVIDA, etc they have very smart technical CEOs and have been able communicate and lead their companies into new key technology trends - unlike Cisco which always seemed to be caught flat footed over the last 15 years. Having a CEO that has weak technical aptitude has been one of our Achilles heel for way too long… so many missteps… so many lost opportunities…. it’s just embarrassing and has cost us dearly over the years…..

It’s really amazing that we’re going to create another org filled with external executives that are not from telecom. She signed a lot of bad deals in supply chain.

With the Administration owning 10% of Intel (Phase 1), it's basically guaranteed that domestic companies who want to avoid tariffs and the Administration's ire will start sending business to IFS (Phase 2). Granted, it's unlikely going to be 18A, or even 14A anytime soon (but eventually)... but I think they'll test the waters with 14nm and 10nm... and packaging (heck, even Nvidia and Tesla signed on for packaging before this deal).

Phase 3 will be to arm twist TSMC into taking management of IFS, so it can be efficient and competitive. I am predicting that the Administration will entice TW by selling them more advanced we-pons, and make some more overt statements around TW's sovereignty.

Then finally, Phase 4, in five three to five years, IFS could be spun off as a working, profitable, stand alone company. Any sooner than that, they are just fooling themselves.

Letting people go to improve results is short-sighted and self-defeating. It doesn’t solve anything and just shifts the pressure onto those who remain, making everyone miserable and less productive.

Leadership seems completely focused on short-term gains, cutting costs wherever they can, and keeping stock prices up for the moment. Employees feel like replaceable parts, and it’s clear that long-term health of the company is an afterthought. There’s no sense of investment in people or the future here.

IMO we need the following to bring in more clients:

-“TIAA ETFs - some attractive ETFs that compete.

• Fidelity offers others’ annuities. Can’t they offer TIAA Traditional? Get that thing on other platforms!

• Expanded fund lineup. Where’s the sector funds? The specialized funds? Our lineup is so 1995. It’s ok to to risk some assets!

• A hot brokerage app. How can we compete with Schwab and Fidelity with a trading app that’s eh at best? Make it hot then market it. Name it something more memorable than TIAA. Then market it like crazy.

I feel we’re too conservative and this perceived safety is actually detrimental to growing assets over a long term.

Thoughts? What else should we do? Why don’t they ask us these things? How do your other firms compare?

Very strong focus on selling these days. From delivery partners to client partners: everyone has been asked to contribute to quarterly revenues. Looks like the old IBM days of shoving iron ( aka Z systems) down everyone’s throat and generate revenue.

The board has been working with a financial company for a year behind the scenes to prepare any and all parts or the whole for sale. Mark had FY25 to stop the bleed but also, simultaneously, start positioning business units to be lean and attractive to buyers .

Today's call was clear as stated by the board member that they have been working with FIN analysts and will continue to do so.

The fact is that a significant amount of preparation for sale has been in play for many months and we can expect and should be ready for a series if announcements when the new CEO comes on board before the start of Q2 in 6 weeks.

@be+1k2f42xsy makes an excellent point.

Is that the end goal?

After closing hundreds of branches through merger and project star, the latest bright idea to save the bank is to build hundreds of new branches lol. Analysts (particularly Mike Mayo) promptly p-o-p-o these plans as too little too late, pointing out the plan doesn’t actually solve for the banks primary issues.

Looking in my crystal ball, I can see in ~ 2 years time we will have new leaders whose “bold” idea to save the bank will be to consolidate/close branches.

That’s the only thing you can truly count on working here. So I’ve stopped getting invested. There’s no real career path, no long-term payoff, and definitely no sense of job security. I treat my role like a temp position now. I show up, get my required tasks done, and that’s it. No extra effort, no engagement beyond what’s necessary. When my number’s up I’ll be ready to walk away without regrets. It’s just how you have to approach this place if you want to stay sane.

We have serious organizational and leadership challenges that a headcount reduction alone can’t solve. Yes, there may be redundancies in some areas, but at the same time, we’re missing key roles that are critical to moving forward. What we need is competent leadership with a clear, thoughtful vision for where we’re headed and how we’re going to get there. Letting go of 30 people, seemingly at random, without a strategic plan to address the root problems won’t take us anywhere.

The Economist, Aug 21st 2025 | 6 min read

To survive, Intel must break itself apart

• And it should do so before it is too late

Intel once set the pace of technological progress. Gordon Moore, one of its founders, predicted in 1965 that chips would get faster and cheaper with metronomic consistency. Over the decades Intel brought Moore’s Law to life, designing and building the processors that powered servers and, later, personal computers. Today it makes headlines for its turmoil more than its technology. On August 7th President Donald Trump demanded the resignation of Lip-Bu Tan, Intel’s boss, citing his links to China, only to praise Mr Tan four days later after meeting him. Reports soon surfaced that the government was pursuing a 10% stake in the company, which would make it Intel’s largest shareholder. On August 18th SoftBank, a Japanese tech conglomerate, announced that it would invest $2bn in the company.

The drama has refocused attention on Intel’s plight. The company has missed nearly every big shift in its industry over the past two decades. It failed to profit from the rise of smartphones, was slow to adopt advanced lithography tools and has largely sat out the bo-m in artificial intelligence (AI). Between 2021 and 2024 revenue dropped by a third, from nearly $80bn to just over $50bn; last year it made a net loss of almost $20bn (see chart 1). Over the past five years its market value has fallen by roughly half, to around $100bn. TSMC, which has stolen Intel’s crown as the world’s leading chip manufacturer, is worth ten times as much.

Yet Intel still matters, as Mr Trump’s interest shows. The most advanced chips, vital for smartphones and AI, are now made almost entirely by TSMC. America’s tech giants depend on it. Such reliance on a single supplier—particularly one based in Taiwan—is risky. Intel is one of the few firms that could rival TSMC. But it will need more than government subsidies to do so. If it is to recover its chipmaking prowess, Intel will need to break itself apart.

Throughout its history Intel has designed and built its own chips. That integration let it use its manufacturing prowess to deliver better products even when its designs lagged behind. From the mid-2010s, however, repeated missteps in its manufacturing saw it fall behind TSMC. Deprived of that advantage, Intel’s processors became uncompetitive with those from AMD, a long-term rival which gave up on manufacturing long ago. In 2021 Intel, too, began outsourcing production of its most advanced chips to TSMC.

The erosion of Intel’s manufacturing leadership has coincided with fiercer competition in the market for designing processors. As recently as 2019 Intel controlled 84% of the global market for PC chips and 94% for servers. By 2024 those figures had fallen to 69% and 62%, respectively (see chart 2). AMD, using the x86 architecture pioneered by Intel, has developed better chips. Cloud giants such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft, which were once reliant on Intel, now design their own processors using outlines from Arm, a British company owned by SoftBank. In December Amazon said that half the server capacity it added in the preceding two years used its own silicon.

Pat Gelsinger, Intel’s boss from 2021 to 2024, tried to reverse the slide. He split design and manufacturing into two units, allowing the product arm to shop around for the best manufacturer while opening Intel’s chip factories, called “fabs”, to outsiders. To build a contract-chipmaking business, known as a “foundry”, Mr Gelsinger then set about splurging $90bn on new fabs in four American states. He tapped private equity and bagged nearly $8bn in subsidies under America’s CHIPS Act to fund his vision. But the plan was thrown into disarray by a combination of technical problems at the foundry, which deterred external customers, and falling sales at the design arm.

Pat on his back

Mr Tan, who took over in March after Mr Gelsinger was sacked, seems to have different priorities. He has rightly identified that the company is bloated; at the end of 2024 it employed 109,000 people, nearly as many as Nvidia, the leading designer of AI chips, and TSMC combined. Mr Tan plans to cut Intel’s workforce by a quarter by the end of this year. When it comes to AI, he believes that the firm should focus not on designing chips for training models, an area that Nvidia dominates, but on inference, the task of running them. As for the foundry, last month Mr Tan scrapped projects in Germany and Poland, and pushed construction of Intel’s advanced fabs in Ohio back to the early 2030s. He also hinted that the company might retreat from leading-edge manufacturing if it cannot secure external customers.

All that may help buy Intel time. Yet it lacks the boldness needed to save the company from fading into irrelevance. Evercore, an investment bank, reckons Intel’s design arm might be worth more than $100bn on its own. But it faces a crowded field and its products are no longer distinctive.

Mr Tan could sell the division to another fabless chipmaker such as Broadcom while it still holds value and focus solely on the foundry, which is troubled but holds more long-term promise. Its newest “18A” process incorporates transistors that are ahead of TSMC’s, as well as a novel way of feeding power through the back of the chip to save space and energy. SemiAnalysis, a consultancy, reckons Intel will need to invest a bit over $50bn between 2025 and 2027 to make it competitive in leading-edge manufacturing. A sale of the design division would more than cover that.

Parting with the design business would help in other ways, too. Foundries must serve many customers using the same process. To do so they provide “process design kits”—the blueprints chipmakers use to design their products. TSMC’s kits are broad and easy to use. Intel still tunes its kits for its own products first. One veteran designer who has used both says Intel “lacks the experience” of working with outsiders. Ian Cutress, a semiconductor analyst, notes that Intel sought to buy that expertise with its attempted acquisition of Tower Semiconductor, an Israeli foundry, but the deal collapsed after Chinese regulators withheld approval.

By making its foundry truly independent, Intel may be better able to persuade other chip designers to work with it. More customers would, in turn, make Intel a more compelling choice. Foundries live or die by yield—the share of chips that function as intended. New processes start buggy and improve only with volume. Foundries typically need yields above 70% to break even; the current rate for Intel’s 18A process is reportedly closer to 10%.

America’s tech giants would certainly welcome another alternative to TSMC. Samsung, the only other contender in leading-edge chipmaking, recently secured a $16.5bn contract from Tesla, a car company, to make AI chips at a new fab in Texas. But the South Korean company has a reputation for being difficult with customers and has faced technical challenges of its own. Indeed, if Intel’s shareholders would rather pocket the proceeds of a sale of the design arm, it is possible that a consortium of would-be foundry customers could be persuaded to invest instead. SoftBank has also reportedly expressed interest in acquiring Intel’s manufacturing business.

Intel faces a difficult choice. A foundry-only business would certainly be a gamble. But the longer it dithers, the lower the chance of success. Intel’s greatness once lay in doing everything. Its contribution in future may come from doing one thing well: making chips.

I've never been a part of a more confusing, meaningless, awful meeting.

There were recent layoffs and the only explanation was "streamlining" without any explanation of the actual business strategy around it (if there was one).

Managing committee low scores were blamed on middle managers when it's literally his score as the leadership team to contend with.

Recognition only means Best in Us cards when people literally said career development, salary, and workforce strategy.

We're supposed to define our own roles.

If we want to grow we should learn other disciplines but if we want to be a leader we should specialize?

Constant mention of mystery open roles coming after layoffs with zero explanation of what they are and what the business strategy for them is. Almost veiled threat that we should all be applying for them after layoffs.

Blamed a typo on his direct reports not catching it.

0/10 stars

This was ridiculous.

Anyone know how Amazon business is effecting WB B2b sales ?

The marketing person that came from Peloton. The new logo has been nothing short of spectacular and customer growth is at a record pace. Keep up the good work and don't ever leave.

Could big oil have to give up equity share to the government to pay back green energy and carbon capture grants given to them? This could lead to a national oil company which the administration would live to have.

Shell is shutting down Volta, the EV charging and media network it bought in 2023 for $169M. The company will dismantle more than 2,000 charging stations this year and lay off around 190 employees.

Volta’s model combined EV charging with ad screens to generate extra revenue, but it was losing about $140M annually and couldn’t meet sales targets. Shell reportedly tried to sell the business but found no buyer.

The decision marks a shift in Shell’s EV strategy toward high-speed charging at its own branded stations and hubs, rather than maintaining a separate ad-driven network.

https://share.google/fIXukQcWXjiR0vLTR