#worklifebalance

Just got a RTO related email outlining ground rules which included packing up all of your stuff if you plan to be in meetings for an extended period of time. It's bad enough not to have a permanent desk, but being expected to vacate a desk during the business day is beyond ridiculous. If you want me in the office, I need an actual space to work.

Got a job offer to work there. What's the culture like in that office?

The managers I’ve dealt with always sound condescending, micro managing, and pushing extra hours.

Are they trained like this? Cause they su-k

Walking around the place with so much positivity and high hopes. None of them have any clue that the rest of us are bitter, angry and mostly dead inside because this company su-ks.

sick of this nasty working environment

Wasting 3-4 hours in car - just to tap badge , login logoff again on the meetings - really its counterproductive - makes NO sense in the year 2026...Well I get it Gunjan comes from old school industrial manufacturing background - This is really damage the bank on the long term - meaning less RTO ...Really

Is anyone else going extra days just to add a buffer in case tracking is wrong?

I guess my night time gummies are day time gummies now.

Where's "RTO is industry standard" guy? Probably carpooling with the "see you on the commute" guy. I'm sure that's a great conversation between the two.

Should we keep touting how much we make data-informed decisions around here? 8 and skate brah.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-25/more-people-worked-from-home-in-2025-despite-rto-mandates?utm_source=website&utm_medium=share&utm_campaign=copy

More US employees worked from home in 2025 than the year prior, a small but notable shift that suggests companies’ years-long efforts to get workers back into the office have hit a wall.

Last year, 34.9% — or 32.5 million — of full-time workers did at least part of their job at home on the average day, according to the latest American Time Use Survey published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics Thursday. That’s up from 33.4% in 2024.

CEOs across industries have demanded employees return to the office, trying to reverse a shift toward remote work that picked up during the Covid-19 pandemic. But the BLS data released today add to growing evidence that the pandemic-era paradigm shift is here to stay; the share of workers who work at home at least some of their day remains more than 10 percentage points higher than in 2019.

Hi there, the company I worked for has been bought by Accenture. What can you tell me about Accenture? Is it a good place to work? Flexibility? Overtime? Career plan? Salary? Etc.

I joined this industry a decade ago bright-eyed and excited to write code and implement solutions. Now everything is just AI. AI this, AI that. It's utterly soulless. I'm seriously considering going back to college and switching to a different field or something.

Whenever we get a few weeks of peace, I still can't breathe properly. The anxiety is constant these days since I know what's coming eventually. This is not a healthy way to live.

I’ve been in the workforce over 30 years ( including 16 of them at US Bank) and I’ve never encountered this level of micromanagement where salaried professionals are treated like they’re hourly employees. This is not meant to disparage anyone hourly at all but being on salary has typically meant you aren’t tracked on an hourly basis. You are trusted to be mature and professional enough to manage your time and perform your job and if you aren’t getting your job done, you get fired. You are evaluated based on your overall performance not based on where you’re sitting and for how long. Simple.

This just boggles my mind because it’s so draconian.

Bumping from @aq+1kt7a1e2m.

I've learned that when you go above and beyond for a company that sees you as a number, you're only hurting yourself. They won't reward you or remember the extra hours, the extra effort, and the extra stress you put yourself through. None of it changes anything. So stop doing it. Do what you're paid for. Nothing more, nothing less.

Anyone have experience with doing less than 8 hours in office? I am required 8 hours in office 3 days a week. I am not in any customer facing role, everything can be handled over a teams call, I don’t “collaborate” in person. Other than this requirement I mostly like my job.

I don’t think my manager cares either, as long as I am not “flagged” in the system. And he gets notified he needs to chat with me..

I know the new requirement was a hard 8 hours in office. Originally I did that. But occasionally I have done 6 or 7 hours in office and haven’t heard anything from my manager, I don’t want to push it too much.

I am wondering if anyone has insight on what the limit is? Or how the system works?

Optional Background:
I can comply with being in office and not coffee badging, sure. But the strict 8 hours in office, especially coupled with an over an hour commute including traffic is tough. That is 2 hours a day commuting, and then maybe an additional hour needed to wake up and get ready in the morning. Sure it’s doable, but that time really adds up. And if it’s not necessary…It’s also difficult to be flexible and meet with offshore team members in the early morning or late night.

Being able to do 5,6,7 hours helps a lot to bypass traffic and manage time better. Any insight please?

Does anyone know the trick to keep teams status green, even if you are curled up in the fetal position on the floor?

RTO is absolutely driving me crazy. I'd quit tomorrow if I could afford it, but since I can't now I just keep hoping they lay me off.

But I'm yet to hear that anybody found it. That's how bad it is out there. And that's the main reason why not just Verizon, but most of the companies can currently get away with treating their employees like cr-p. There's literally nowhere else to go for the majority of us.

I read this forum and it seems like everyone hates this place. But I don't. I'm not thrilled with the uncertainty, but I genuinely enjoy the work. I hope I can keep doing it. Is there anyone else out there who feels the same?

" spend time with your family take your kids to that soccer game"

Also DF: let's Implement "productivity" tools and surveil our employees.

How productive are you the last 2 weeks? Are you able to focus or get anything accomplished? Are they actually watching what we are doing at this time? In her email Tanya McNally wrote "For our people leaders, our ask is to afford your eligible team members the space and time to contemplate whether the VSP makes sense for them".

What is being said there?

They are a failing company thanks to their own doing. Offshoring to India is going to run it into the ground even more. All they care about is the money they line their pockets with. There has been a steady and steep decline to every company that GP touches- in all realms. Profitability, benefits, work life balance, employee retention and satisfaction, etc.

Why wouldn’t gp cut McKinsey loose at this point? It’s known that consultants throw spaghetti at the wall and hope something sticks. But thus far, nothing has even marginally improved by retaining them.

I certainly hope gp is shopping around their vertical markets to sell to keep gp afloat. I do not foresee gp being around for much longer at the rate things are going

Well said, @bm+1kt6r66mv.

The amount of stress this company has caused in the past year to me and my colleagues is unbelievable.

They expect us to work as if everything is ok, while hearing every couple of weeks that someone is laid off.

Today has been an especially difficult day, and I can’t focus on anything. Supposed to leave on holiday on Monday, not knowing whether I’ll have a job to return to.

Not worth it.

Rumors of a sick out on the system?

I hate that phrase. I am so tired of it. Anymore leaning in and I’ll fall over. Fall over I guess really means burned out.
Ever notice how meetings begin with gratitude and then ask us to do more? Like it’s up to each one of us to fix the culture that rotted from the head prior to Hemsley’s return. There comes a point where the boat can’t right itself and I’m not talking about financially— they’ll fix that. It’s the purpose, drive and passion for your profession they can’t restore because they broke it and don’t even know it— or at least refuse to take ownership of that fact. Still, we lean in, we are met with gratitude, take more surveys and in the end it’s just the same sad thing over and over. Take your PTO, turn off your phone, hug you wife, husband, kid or neighbor. That’s my advice

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ceo-pay-2025-d2885ea3

[Didn't quote entire article text, just extracted AK's info. from the interactive table in the article].

AK ranks 34th out of 392 CEOs on the list:
Total pay: $38M
Pay Change: +51.1%
1-Year Return: 38%
Median Employee Pay: $49,630

Waiting with bated breath for my 51% raise this year!

Try to print :-)

Obnoxious posts about drinking and eating on the company dime. Zero meetings

I don't get it. Just telling someone to do their work is now seen as aggressive. If you're not constantly praising people, you're being too critical. It's gotten ridiculous.

If you're planning to leave (and who isn't, right?) here's some advice from someone who's been around. Pay and title matter, but culture and environment matter even more. I focused too much on the first two and ignored the rest. Don't make the same mistake.

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.

They happened once in a while and for the rest of the time we were able to focus on our work properly. Can we ever go back to that? Or is that behind us for good?

"Our new research reveals that the objection to any work from home is more likely to be driven by something else entirely: ego.

"The only trait that consistently predicted objections to remote work was narcissism — the tendency to be self-centered and entitled. The higher the opinions of themselves leaders expressed, the more they coveted power and status — and the more they favored return-to-office mandates.

"Return-to-office mandates fail to increase financial returns. They succeed only in motivating star employees to quit, reducing the satisfaction of those who stay and discouraging new talent from joining."

I wonder how many of us is lacking motivation to be productive now. Personally I am just waiting on the outcome of the VSP. I have no motivation now since this has came up. I have tried to be productive up until this but I just can’t get motivated enough to go above and beyond like before. It’s a struggle to remain focused.

I'm not sure how they will have US layoffs when July 3 is a holiday. I checked in talent central. I work for SMBC and I think they are still doing financial projections or have a buyer that doesn't want to pay. I hate this company and hope I'm part of this round, but I will probably be spared because of financial year end.

SmartAsset, a financial technology company, released a new report. The report identified America's newest boomtowns nationwide. SmartAsset assessed over 400 cities based on economic output, housing, and labor force growth. Four California cities were ranked among these rapidly growing areas. Menifee, Rancho Cordova, Santa Clara, and Sunnyvale made the list.

https://www.aol.com/articles/four-california-cities-among-americas-180001216.html

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.