#toxic

I went from being a confident, successful professional to having to seek therapy and medication after working at US Bank. Worst experience of my life. The company is chock full of good people who have turned mean for survival. Thank god I’m no longer there, but the ptsd is real and is taking much longer than I thought it would to heal from. I hate how hard I was on myself when I worked there. The company is culture is messed up. Everyone there needs to be kinder to eachother.

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

Just when I thought it would finally be over, they found a way to sc--w us over once again and prolong our suffering for over a year in some cases. We are run by a bunch of sadist.

That is all! Stuck here until Aug 2027 separation date

Just received email at 12:16pm. VSP accepted. Separation date 9/4/26. Thank God. Get me out of this toxic company.

I quit five years ago and received and offer recently. I thought coming back to USAA would feel familiar in a good way. Instead, I walked into a building full of hopeless faces, a toxic atmosphere, and my first meeting was a layoff discussion. People I had worked with before were gone. The place I remembered didn't exist anymore. I handed in my resignation before my second month was up.

I've never worked somewhere with worse working environment than L3H.

I'm not staying just for a paycheck anymore. I want self-worth, a non-toxic environment, and a salary plus benefits that reflect what I'm worth.

Anyone dealing with Indian offshore manager and .not including you in meetings and chats? My director is now offshore and she has all the meetings during India times which is after midnight for me. I am not even on the invites, no communication nothing. She's spreading toxicity by dividing the teams deliberately. Business team is pi---d nothing is getting done correctly. Quality is sh-t but I am not able to do anything as they are doing whatever they want without consulting anyone onshore. Business told me indirectly that they will cut the funding and go back to their old process. This means layoffs both onshore and offshore. I can't believe a director can be such plain stupid and toxic to a point where she'll ship the sink and drag everyone down. And oh btw, neither she nor any of the engineering she hired are technical yet make all the decisions on their own with no documentation.

recently got a very toxic manager—an Indian guy. He has serious trust issues and creates a highly toxic work environment. I’ve had Exceeds Expectations ratings for the last five years. Should I continue here or start looking for opportunities outside?

If, after all this, Monday comes and I find out I got refused, I think I'm just going to up and quit. I can't handle the mind games this place has been playing with us for months. I guess that could've been their goal, and I hate to say it, but it worked on me. I'm leaving one way or another.

After spending the last three years wondering if this Tuesday was the day my number would come up, my number finally came up.

I knew Wells consistently sets new record levels of workplace toxicity. Whenever one hears stories about heinously toxic levels at other companies, Wells says “Hold my beer.” But still I did everything I could to keep my job. I was afraid that at my age no one would hire me and I’d basically be unemployable, so a toxic job at Wells is better than no job.

However, long before my severance was up I found a better job at a better bank — A bank with a healthy work environment and one that actually values its employees beyond the occasional Wells e-card stating how much they appreciate you until they fire you and send your job to India.

There is another long-term Wells survivor here, and she told me that she believes many of us carry a lightweight PTSD from the toxic environment at Wells. She may have a point in that over time I can feel the work stress and work paranoia leave me, and I’m sleeping well again.

So DAR, you incompetent fools did me a favor by forcing me out after 20 years. But as a final goodbye, at noon tomorrow, 7/23/26, in going to stand in my desk with my back towards Chandler and drop my pants. At that time, please face north and blow sweet kisses at my shiny white a$$.

They see us as a cost to cut. Do they think they can survive without the people who actually do the work? We're treated like we're disposable.

Severance is the only thing that gets me excited these days. This place has turned into a toxic nightmare and I can't see how staying here would be a positive for anybody. I check here in hope of hearing of more cuts coming, not in fear. Give me a package and I'm gone.

The toxicity of Humana is off the charts and they have sleazy lawyers protecting them from all their mismanagement of the business, putting greed before member care, and toxic treatment to employees.

Humana, being one of the largest companies in Louisville and the entire state if Kentucky, is an embarrassment to both.

If I was the Louisville Mayor or the Kentucky Governor, I would probably recognize this and put pressure on Humana to get their house in order and make some changes for the positive, to truly put members first, before shareholders, in regards to the actual business that is their mission. And to start treating their employees much more fairly and to tell Humana to have their Humana Resources department to actually take employee complaints seriously regarding their direct leader’s abuse and to stop protecting the company’s reputation at all costs, even when it flies in the face of all decency.

Don't trust anyone here. People will pretend to be your friend, get you to open up, and then use it against you. The whole culture is toxic.

Don”t speak up unless you do it anonymously. Keep records of everything and document! dated, times etc. Then if nothing changes OR you start to be treated different because your leader knows you are the one that filed the complaint then file a claim of retaliation through EEOC. If this has already happened to you file the claim NOW! Even if you are still employed. Nike has to address the EEOC and we can’t keep staying silent while we work for this company that allows discrimination and retaliation. The EEOC will starts to see the trend. Do it NOW! We deserve to feel safe when we come to work and HR and Legal don’t have our back and it’s toxic! Don’t make this toxic culture the norm. Remember that we spend more time at work than we do with our family. It’s taking a toll! Maybe after we expose how toxic it is then Nike can actually recover. Right now we are in fight or flight mode and nothing productive happens in that headspace.

Time to share, who is the most toxic boss or department in Saudi Aramco. This should be interesting

There's a bit of some odd astroturfing or something going on right before/after the layoffs? Not going to call on anyone here. Mental heath issues? Trolls?

I know you are feeling sad and tired. Exhausted from having to actually do work. It’s okay, that’s what a resignation does. It helps eliminate the toxic waste in a company and allows you to go to other publishers and su-k the life out of them. If you can’t make your numbers, resign. If the pressure is just too much, resign. If you’re just plain old incompetent, resign. Resigning is good for everyone - you don’t even need a new job, resign so you can use your full set of high quality skills and apply them to landing your next sale - making your future employer believe that you can deliver. Happy resigning!

First I'll say that I genuinely enjoyed my small team at AT&T with whom I worked the last 20 years of my career there. I have no resentment to the time I spent there, so this isn't a complaining post, just some perspective after some time away. I was in management, doing technical work and app development for sales support.

Most of my team, about 80%, was laid off for not moving to Dallas (most of the rest were already there; one or two moved there). We were in various focus cities supporting our local sales teams, but the senior leadership didn't understand that and did not make exceptions. I found another position doing similar work for another company and started 3 weeks after my final day at T. The new company has fewer than 1000 people, for comparison.

So here are some of my takeaways, in case someone with a long career at AT&T might be thinking about making the jump, or who might have it forced on them.

1. Surprising that this is the first one, but honestly it's such a difference that I wanted to call it out: I have not opened Powerpoint once since I left T. At T, powerpoint was basically the language of business. We wasted so many cycles "making a deck" to try to communicate to the ever-changing field of senior leadership that I probably spent the plurality of my time in Powerpoint vs. any other program. I got a new laptop at my new job, and realized as I deleted the pre-placed icon from the desktop that I've never once used Powerpoint. We use Teams, sometimes demos, sometimes a mockup or diagram...but I've never had to "make a deck."

2. It really hit me just how many people at AT&T did literally nothing of value. This is not a dig against most colleagues, but rather just that significant subset who didn't have discernible skills, so got placed into positions to just spin their bureaucratic wheels but otherwise stay out of the way. I recall two dozen names off the top of my head that were just there to make people jump through hoops, document workflow (for no followup reason), design a new process that was jettisoned as soon as they moved somewhere else, or just attend meetings and throw in their two cents without really contributing. Outside of T, there are people of various skill and contribution levels, but nobody whose job is simply to fly under the radar. When I read stories about T employees logging in and leaving their laptops in lockers, or sitting in the cafeteria watching TV, it makes me glad to know that where I'm at now, everybody is giving a fair day's work without making work for others.

3. Leadership at AT&T is toxic. I'm not just talking the Stankey/Stephenson types, who, yes, have ruined the company through unfathomable incompetence. I'm talking the people in the mid-level, director-like positions and above. Almost all (not all) of them at T seemed like they got there based on the Peter Principle or otherwise nodded their head enough. Only in the beginning of my career in the late 1990s did I feel any executive director or above at T (SBC at the time) was there due to being a practitioner of their craft, for being respected, or for being a good manager. And that class began to dwindle as time went on, replaced by hollow, empty suits who could spew buzzwords and claim empty victories by cherry picking their numbers. It's like an ever-shifting field of grifters.

4. The hiring process at ATT is irreparably broken. I was a hiring manager, and trying to get someone competent in the door was inexplicably difficult. HR gatekept candidates and had no concept of the hard and soft skills we needed. We got sent batches of candidates who faked their resumes, faked their interviews (even before AI was big), faked their legal ability to work in the U.S., and so on. There were times that it took 9 months to find an entry level programmer because HR kept whiffing. HR gets a lot of flack everywhere, but at T, I believed they were truly a cesspool of rejects.

Maybe I'll think of more but these hit me just this week. There are things I miss about T, mostly dealing with colleagues, but these are definitely things I do not miss! The day-to-day stress and friction they cause isn't always evident when you're in the middle of it. Only after the ATT shackles are thrown off do you realize how bad of an environment it can be!

Tampa data science team is the worst team to work for. Modus operandi is to promote h1b friends and treat citizens and residents as sh-t.
If you want to get into a sh-t hole get in here.

Lots of inequity.

have CyberS DS teams delivered in the last year? I am glad I was pushed out of that toxic sycophantic environment.

Everyone knows that layoffs are coming and the company is restructuring. We also know that WF has no qualms about doing so ethically or unethically. The question is, why aren't we doing everything we can to fight back? The company doesn't care if you get displaced and lose your severance. Trying to play the games leadership makes is only going to hurt everyone in the long run.

Newsflash, you're out of a job. It's no longer a matter of "if" but "when". So you can't save your package or your income here. But what you can do is document everything, practice malicious compliance, and report what you see to your local bureaus/attorney and make the restructuring process as slow and painful for the company as possible. Go to the press and submit anonymous information even.

Because if you got by the mentality of "at least it wasn't me" otherwise, then guess what. You're still going to end up laid off and then come here to complain about how "it's not fair." At least this way it forces leadership to think twice about the battles they pick. And maybe, just maybe it buys you and everyone else some time to get ahead of the curb before they start firing soon instead of complaining constantly, not doing anything about it, and then wonder why things are still toxic here.

I want to say something that might help someone avoid the mistake I made. I bought into all the hype about how great this company was, how it looked amazing on a resume, how lucky I was to be here. Friends and family reinforced that constantly. So despite years of bad management, a toxic environment, and watching good colleagues suffer the same fate, I stayed. I wasted so much time. If even one person reads this and decides to think twice before joining, then saying this was worth it.

My Wells Fargo group is made of seven people, in which five are women and two are men. Of the women, four of them are full-blown Karens and very unpleasant to work with. The remaining woman keeps to herself and has been looking for an internal transfer for months. Of the four Karens, and reason for the group toxicology, not sure if the Karens like each other or see it as to their advantage to act as a group as they like people to think they do.

Anyone else feel like management has been trying to build a case against them after a reorg?

My org has gotten really toxic. I’ve been hearing PIP talk, but I honestly don’t think they have enough to put me on one yet. My past mid-year and year-end reviews have been strong, my attendance has been good except for a few system issues, and I know my job well. It just feels like leadership decided they don’t want me around anymore.

If you’re in this situation, is it more likely they’ll eventually fire you for performance, or would you end up getting surplused first? Or maybe a PIP is a way to set the ground for a surplus (as a way to tell HR “Look, he is on a PIP because he doesn’t work very well, so he is our chosen duck to target for the layoff).
Curious if anyone has gone through something similar. Is it possible to fight it?

I’d like to get everyone’s thoughts on Wells Fargo leaders that are taking over in technology. Starting with Steve Hagerman down as old BB&T and SunTrust leaders are pushed out they’re being replaced by folks from Wells Fargo. They keep hiring their friends from Wells for HUGE money and most of them are getting exceptions to work remotely even they are enforcing the policy that all new hires need to be in a Truist office. They seem quite toxic leading by fear and are turning our culture into the terrible culture they created and left behind at Wells.

...for longest period of time that a public company has posted consistent YOY headcount declines.

I got curious this morning about just how unusual the situation at Wells is, and decided to do some digging. Based on the information I can find, here's some of the existing records for longest consecutive streaks of corporate downsizing:

IBM went through 8 years of downsizing from 1985 to 1993 as the tech market moved from mainframes to personal computers, shrinking from a high of 405k employees to 219k by 1993.

General Motors went through 7 years of YOY headcount reductions from 2002 to 2009 as a result of foreign competition and shrinking market share, up until their bankruptcy in the wake of the global financial crisis and bailout by the US government.

Blackberry/RIM posted 5 straight years of headcount cuts from 2011 to 2016 as a result of competition from iPhone and Android, finishing in 2016 with 25% of the employees they started with.

Wells is currently running a streak from 2019 to today, blowing past Blackberries record and in line with GM. Given the CEO's public statements, we're also on track to beat IBM as well. Don't you feel proud to work here?

(My point was this post was just to let folks know, if this feels like an overwhelmingly toxic place to work, you are not alone. The situation at Wells is extraordinarily, historically bad. This is not normal)

Hate hate hate

I've been thinking about this a lot. Working at BNY was like being in a bad relationship. Constantly stressed and unhappy but I stayed because it was familiar and the money was okay. Then one day I was let go and it was terrifying at first. But then the severance arrived and I had time to rest, to think, and to remember who I was before that place wore me down. And eventually I found something new where I'm actually treated well. In the end, leaving turned out to be the best possible thing for me.

I have stories from my time working there, I want to hear some stories so I know I’m not the only one!

Sorry for the linkedin slop. I'm not about that life on main but yall have been such a huge part of my professional career I have to say goodbye somewhere.

I wasn't surprised when Nike laid me off this time around. 4 months parental leave + sabbatical on the horizon is a tough pill for a declining company.

Anyways. After 6 weeks and 7 or 8 interviews I have my next job lined up. Similar pay, bigger title, bigger responsibilities. Everyone works in the same timezone and the office is full of smiles. I guess I do have to start wearing pants to work though.

I think I'm finally ready to close this toxic chapter of my life. It has been a long while since I was proud to work at Nike. But I can say I've always been proud to call all you OGs my coworker. I'll always fondly remember our golden years of competence.

I'm headed to the other coast though so I'll probably never see any of you again. 🫡
Look out for yourselves. If you start thinking your skills might be getting rusty brush off your resume and move on. The couch is comfy but Nike hates seniority.

There were always cuts, that's part of the business. But I didn't expect the culture to change so completely and so fast. I swear, it became toxic almost overnight. The environment is now completely unrecognizable. It'd almost be fascinating, if it didn't affect us all so much.

I'm not only looking to leave EM, but the entire O&G industry. I can't find a single company that's better than this place, and I'm so tired of all the uncertainty, cyclical nature of the industry, toxicity, and everything else that comes with working here. I'm so done with it.

Has anyone had any dealings with the senior head of HR? My understanding is he is the one pushing RIFS, and a reason behind this increasingly toxic place. He wants RIFS everywhere but has the most toxic people leading HR teams.

Dear “leads”,
What the actual fu-k are you doing up there? If your goal is to make Mattel the least respected, most toxic, revolving door of all time - continue celebrating yourselves, you’ve done it.
Signed,
Someone struggling to care as little as you do.

Why is anyone still working here? Being unemployed would be better for you at this point. Leave the company. Let them choke on their own nonsense. Zuck deserves to be allowed to drive this thing into the ground.

For those promised a severance package towards the end of 2027, are you considering leaving/retiring before the end of this year? Just to escape Polaris, workplace toxicity and overall dysfunction the company is sinking into further each day ?
Despite the promised payout, does your sanity seem like too high a price to pay in order to receive the severance/settlement ?
(Also, what if they keep moving the end date later than year end 2027??)