#toxic

It has now been over a year since I left State Farm. I know people rant and rave on here about toxic environments, dysfunctional leaders, etc etc etc. But one thing I've discovered over the past 12 months is that the State Farm environment can truly damage a person's well being and self confidence. I was in leadership when at SF, not in Claims. When I started at my new company, in a senior leadership role, it became clear to me right away the stark difference in work environment and leadership health. State Farm subtly pushes you down, questions everything you do, and makes you feel that anything you do is just not good enough.

I didn't realize, even as a leader, just how oppressive and damaging that is to an individual. There is no loyalty, support, appreciation for the workforce from executive leadership. State Farm leadership will praise you one minute and then turn around and make you feel an inch high because something wasn't done according to their expectations.

Instead of complaining, make the decision to leave, if you can. The subtle mental harm that State Farm propagates is worse than you believe.

The current wave of layoffs is doing far more than just thinning out payrolls—it is poisoning the well for those who remain. When a company pivots to mass terminations, it isn't just "restructuring"; it is dismantling the psychological safety and cultural foundation that keeps a business running.
### The Hidden Costs of "Survivor Syndrome"
While leadership focuses on the balance sheet, the "survivors" are left to navigate a toxic landscape. Here is why the post-layoff environment is so damaging:

• The Erosion of Trust: Constant job insecurity ki-ls loyalty. Employees stop thinking about long-term innovation and start focusing on exit strategies.
• Burnout and Burden: Remaining staff are often expected to absorb the workload of their departed colleagues. This "do more with less" mentality leads to rapid burnout and a decline in work quality.
• Demoralized Culture: Watching talented friends and peers escorted out creates a heavy, somber atmosphere. The office transforms from a place of collaboration to a place of anxiety.
• Loss of Institutional Knowledge: Layoffs are a "brain drain." When experienced people leave, they take years of process knowledge and client relationships with them, leaving the existing team feeling lost and unsupported.
  ### The Reality Check

  "You cannot cut your way to growth."
  A company’s greatest asset isn’t its capital—it’s the collective energy and motivation of its people. When you treat employees as disposable line items, you don't just lose headcount; you lose the heart of the organization.

  If companies continue to prioritize short-term stock gains over long-term stability, they will eventually find themselves with a workforce that is physically present but mentally checked out. A demotivated team is a stagnant team. It is time for leadership to recognize that protecting the environment for existing employees is just as vital as managing the budget.
  Is this for a LinkedIn post, or are you looking to send this as a formal internal feedback letter to leadership?

I’ve been shocked by the amount of disdain directed at long-time T. Rowe associates on this board, especially toward IT staff. It’s hard to tell whether this comes from just a few loud voices with axes to grind or a broader sentiment. My experience up until the past year or so has been with nothing but great, hardworking, kind people.
It’s concerning to think that some of the people I work with may hold these same toxic views about their own coworkers. While I can see why management might have incentives to move jobs, I don’t understand why other associates — who aren’t protected from future layoffs — would voice such contempt. It makes me wonder if their presence here is more about stirring trouble than supporting those who are impacted. Perhaps to expedite the exodus by creating conditions where more people depart on their own?

So many companies were doing fine until they got greedy. Squeeze more profit, treat people like trash, then they wonder why they go under. We're watching it happen in real time here.

We made the Top 20 on Forbes' America’s Best Employers For Company Culture 2026. Company culture??? Who makes these lists? Are they paid for?

I can't figure out any other way for this to have happened. Anybody working here knows that culture has deteriorated so much over the years that it's now unrecognizable. What once was friendly environment is now incredibly toxic. And it makes No. 17 for culture? WTF???

The title says it all and we know the truth. This mess of a company can be best described by toxic, dysfunctional, hostile, depressing to be around and bad for ones health. If it was a family it would be a toxic, dysfunctional one with violence and hostility. as a relationship it would also be toxic and dysfunctional headed for divorce or separation. a civilization based on exxon would be doomed and fighting within itself. The exxon civilization would collapse upon itself as a corrupt empire. Only the ones who have suffered at exxon know the horrors of working at this toxic, vile , disgusting monster of a company.

Let me list what seems impossible here. Having executives who aren't a complete clown show. Keeping talented employees. Having a work environment that isn't toxic. Recovering from the gross negligence we've seen. I could keep going but you get the point.

This African proverb explicitly warns that in an emergency, you have to stop trying to "be right" and start trying to survive. If you keep bickering, you’re essentially choosing to allow the house to burn down just to win the argument. This is the perfect depiction of what is happening at BNSF and everyone is playing right into it. Managers against employees. Employees against managers, Employees against employees, managers against managers. HUGE Trust issues. Is this a huge daycare??? The competition loves how BNSF is having its managers go after their employees and pitting everyone against each other. "A house divided against itself cannot stand" -Matthew 12:25 The leadership is probably the worst i have ever seen. If you want to thrive, take Buffets advice and "Stop writing people up" Even he saw the ridiculousness in the way it was being ran. Looks like its gotten worse unfortunately. So glad I left that toxic place. Never in my life did I see more people against each other than at the bnsf. That culture shift starts at the top. If you want your company to change, then YOU have to change.

Anyone else hope they get laid off at this point? Everything su-ks here!

So I just got off a 1:1 with my manager and it was just the quarterly check-in, thinking it will be for the worse. The past few days were filled with anxiety with the rumors and the posts on this site. I think on a mental standpoint I'm done reading these comments and posts. Not to say that it may or may not happen and I do relate to those affected. For those who are worried and anxious these are just rumors. Take care of yourself.

i only started 3 months ago n i see a whole bunch of things and everyone around me is always on edge, paranoid, and not in a good mood

someone chime in is this the norm for Verizon retail culture

Hey all, here again. My long tenured role within capital one was not fairly compensated. Amidst my rapid, unjust departure, all I was provided for years of high level work was a cheap necklace from capital one. It’s actually broken and is being held together by my hope and dreams crushed by capital one and their toxic work environment. A cheap necklace is the embodiment of capital one as a company.

This shithole wouldn’t know talent if it punched them in the face. HR is a bunch of talentless Karens that only use is to be a meat shield between employees that do work, and our d-mb as fu-k C suite. Can’t wait to be out of this dysfunctional company

As a whole, HR Advisory Services for Elavon / MPS is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. They are literally salivating to fire individuals. Spreadsheet management hacks at best. Placing any trust in this team of veiled “consultants” would be a bad move. Stay far away, the clock is ticking and they’re out for blood.

So you mean to tell me this dude with a degree mill degree all the way in India cares about US patients and US healthcare?

I work in PA, joined Honeywell as an experienced hire. Band 4. There are so many great colleagues here. And yet somehow there’s also this overarching toxicity. How can both exist and how do the long timers overcome it personally?

So mismanagement loses the Marriott account and immediately out come the travel cuts! I don't think we will T&E our way out of this poorly run company! Does stopping manager travel and meetings, training events, back filling roles send the right message? How about stripping Senior Leaders bonuses? Those bloated million dollars payouts for poor performance? And if you say we will lose them so be it there has not been a strategic decision made in over 5 years! Funny how we blow smoke up everyone's butts on Town Halls but behind the scenes we do this cr-p!

The culture is so bad that people end up becoming worse versions of themselves the longer they stay here. It takes a special kind of talent to pull that off, but SF has always been an overachiever.

Ready for the pain to end

So be a yes person and have no opinion of your own? Kiss your bosses a$$, shake your head up and down and get in line? Definitely not a culture or company that I want to be a part of anymore, regardless of what today brings.

I’m excited to provide my kids visibility to the wonderful life of being a Vteamer today! They are also honored and humbled to attend. We have been going through post it notes as a family to train them for today with key critical learnings. These include inquiring about the power of convergence, setting the foundation, playing to win, JOMO, and of course harnessing AI. They also know not to ask about building closures, layoffs, offshoring American jobs, reorgs, aol, yahoo, blue jeans, Verizon global services, plus play and more. I can’t wait to follow up, circle back and close the loop to hear about their day. Proud to be vz. Let’s go team!!!!

Working at Mondelez is making me sick. Not metaphorically. Actually sick. The stress, the harassment, the constant toxicity, it's affecting my health. And I'm not alone. Good employees are leaving every week. I've heard from people in the industry, nobody respects this company anymore. And they certainly don't respect the people who work here. The way we're treated is awful. Harassment is normal. Bullying is standard. This place is toxic from top to bottom and it's taking a real physical toll on the people stuck here.

I literally have to work 12 hrs a day, 5 days and on weekends 5 hours , npu team su-ks in India , do not join Qualcomm

I didn’t think it was possible but it seems as though the experience at Nike has only increased in toxicity. I cannot even imagine being there now. I left many years ago after 22 years.

Org is hemorrhaging top performers who are choosing to leave rather than swim in this toxic cesspool or stay but continue to do the bare minimum. No one wants to work anymore and most don’t even try to hide their distain annd indifference toward management and every day is an exercise in misery. Legg once again injected ominous innuendo and gloom in his latest townhall with a message of AI up or leave or be ready to board a surplus boat and join the breadlines. Rather than profile the type of AI integration needed at an individual contributor level, he sees his work as done after giving us Ask AT&T and GH and a forward kick in the pants to go figure it out before our peers and better than our peers and don’t forget to crush our peers in using it along the way. Too bad it was his knee and not his mindset that got a recent upgrade. I guess we all have to hobble around and suffer as his campaign to crush and demoralize us continues. Retirement can’t come soon enough and I will do the absolute minimum in office for the handful of years I need and only what keeps me under radar on big brother reporting. Tomorrows surplus notification will affect mainly Product and roll them off on 5/5.

I thought I'd feel better right away but I was so wrong. It took months. Months of not being there to undo what that toxic place did to me. They take everything. Your energy, your optimism, your sense of self. Getting it back takes time. I'm now so happy to be away, I can't even describe it. If you can, leave. You'll feel like a new person.

Absolutely one of the worst companies to work for in America. Tons of losers, horrible Leadership, people that can’t work anywhere else! Trash stock too! And then you got the Siffords!

We had some bs under Charlie but never have i ever experienced anything like this now under Robin. It has become so toxic and everyday could be your last with what they have been doing to employees. And yet he goes on the news or does his little interviews and has everyone thinking hes amazing and doing great things

When will this woman suffer the consequences of her actions?

Stock is tanking today. Normally, after a big RIF, the stock market reacts favorably.

She is TOXIC.

Gail or any of her flying monkeys that read this - STOP, just stop your greed and corruption is beyond even the great COVID scam.

I understand that during the pandemic, the company needed the people who work to stay in their jobs… so they hired those who don’t as managers.

But I don’t know how much longer I can stay and have said managers make fun of people who have college degrees. The culture is so toxic now and it’s really embarrassing for me to work at a company that lets unqualified people stay in jobs they are terrible fits for.

Well I stayed way too long at exxon. Now I am working at a place where my work is valued and I am not being told I constantly need to improve. I do my engineering work and design work for this new company and get paid well. I keep feeling like the manager is going to berate me and tell me I am not doing a good job. I also keep wondering if my co workers are going to back stab me. None of this is happening at my new company. It could be because the company is small and they need experienced engineers like me. They allow me to do a good job and leave me alone. I can proposed new ideas and they are not shot down, Instead new ideas are welcomed and implemented. There is also no push to work more than 40 hours per week. I do a little extra because it is a nice environment to work at. I feel like I am suffering from PSTD because of the toxic workplace at exxon. It takes a while to get used to a healthy workplace. I have been away from exxon for 2 years and it feels so good to be away from all the horrible people and toxicity.

That's Fiserv's recipe for disaster.

I was offered a position as a contractor with very low pay through two staffing companies, and the final link is Capgemini. Interesting... they take a big share of the negotiations, which has been a trend since I was a FTE at TU.

Anyway, I didn't accept the offer. I know the TU culture is toxic, and I would probably be overworked.

Any thoughts?

The constant negativity of this place and the absolute zero value the bank puts on employees is soul crushing. Take care of yourselves!! Bill is a monster.

I left Qualcomm back in January. The toxicity was just way too much, and I had to get out. I posted about my experience here a couple of times.

I started a new job two weeks later, and honestly, it’s such a breath of fresh air. People here aren't "warm and fuzzy" or anything, but they get the job done without all the drama. It’s nice to actually feel productive and professional again in a normal work environment.

The pay here is also higher.

I know layoffs happen, but Oracle has created a culture of fear and uncertainty that can't be ignored. Why put in extra effort when raises are like unicorns? Why work hard when promo's are nonexistent and dry most of the time? Why give 110% when there is a layoff target on your back no matter what your value to the company?

It's nauseating to live this way

I am a 20+ year vet and years ago I would happily recommend Oracle as a place to work...not so much now. I tell anyone who will listen to go somewhere else unless you are desperate. And if you do join, stay no longer than 3 years. There just isn't an upside.

Oracle is late to almost every technical advance and plays catch-up which is how we get where we are.

It's toxic and depressing to know you are coming into the cross hairs every 3-6 months.

Constant pressure, endless questioning, no acknowledgment or reward, and then you're dismissed without a word. Eventually you start doubting everything - your skills, your capacity, your value. And yet, the people I've worked with here have been genuinely competent professionals. That's no accident. Companies do this on purpose. They'd rather have a workforce that's limited and easily controllable than one that's thriving and knows its own worth.

It seems BNY is preparing for its next round of layoffs by trying to make people leave voluntarily (shock horror). I’ve been a people manager here for several years now and was told last week I will no longer be a people manager because I’m not senior enough (need to be Sr Dr or above), my staff are in a different location and there aren’t enough people in the team. Every time I hired I wasn’t able to hire in my location because it was ‘too expensive’, whilst at the same time new MDs and Sr Dr’s were being hired at ease. The team I’m in has reduced from 32 to 18 FTE over the last 18 months and we’ve not been allowed to replace anyone. This is a clear tactic by the company to get people at my level to leave by making us all utterly miserable, and if that fails they’ll just use it as an excuse to give a lower performance rating. They do something like this every time a layoff round is coming to get people to leave voluntarily and save them paying out. Got to hand it to them though, they really have created the most toxic and intolerable workplace that ever existed, so they are meeting their metrics in that regard and we all know how important metrics are at BNY.

JPM is a company full of losers. Ship everything off Hyderabad and promote bootlickers to ED.

JPM has fallen….You id--ts who still work there deserve what you get.

This is one of the worest way address your financial issues you don't know how Runa company as nd to save your a-s you are effecting the lives of employees. You are not even calling them employees you are saying resources like a chalk if you re done writing handing over to other person to use. WE ARE PEOPLE NOT CHALK SO TREAT US LIKE ONE. If you have problems tell us upfront and be a human and tell us on the face rather you made our lives LIVING HE-L. Constantly laying off reshaping rebadging riffing people ( sorry resources) and playing with them. YOU ARE NOT ONLY EFFECING PEOPLE YOU ARE EFFECTING FAMILIES YOU ARE RIPPING THE DAMILIES APART.