#worklifebalance

No time to think…just Go!

Are your managers encouraging or discouraging taking your half day Summer Fridays? With all the layoffs, I have more work than I can handle as it is.

It takes two or three years to really learn a job here because everything's held together with tape and nobody wants to fix anything.

Along with pretty much all of the company's institutional knowledge - both gone with all the key employees who either left or (most often) were forced out.

There is no such thing as a team here. You work in isolation and only hear from management when you messed up. Climbing past a certain point is impossible and they offer zero support for learning anything new. Do not put yourself through this. Your home life will suffer, your relationships will feel the strain, and you will need a break just to recover. Work somewhere that actually cares.

I've accepted that my time at AT&T is finite, and that the end will probably come sooner rather than later. I have to tell you, that realization's actually been freeing in a way. I don't feel the need to give any extra effort or sacrifice my evenings for a place that won't hesitate to cut me loose. Instead, now I use my working hours to look for other opportunities, to build skills that'll help me elsewhere, and to do exactly what's asked of me and nothing more. There's no point in pretending otherwise.

Polaris efficiency is really just shifting of work to a different cost center. A few examples:

1. I now spend time every pay period downloading my paystub and emailing it to myself. This used to be automated. With Lolaris I now take time to do it that I would otherwise be working.
2. Time writing now takes multiple clicks and entering in archaic codes to get to the actual timesheet where in the former program it just opened up to the timesheet immediately.

Multiply these small time wasters by thousands of employees. Where is the productivity gain?

Anyone still doing summer hours? Unofficially, of course. Send that last email about 12:17 and then get a head start on the weekend?

Of course I would NEVER do that!

AI is making many mistakes, especially in testing and validation. In many organizations, employees are becoming overly dependent on AI and are gradually losing fundamental problem-solving skills. AI is a tool, not a complete solution. Without strong domain knowledge and fundamentals, AI-generated results can be inaccurate and sometimes create bigger issues than they solve.

Many companies are rushing to automate everything with AI, but blindly trusting AI outputs can lead to costly mistakes, rework, and quality problems. In addition, the increasing use of AI models results in higher token consumption, growing infrastructure costs, and expensive subscription fees.

The most effective approach is to use AI as an assistant while keeping experienced employees involved in critical thinking, verification, testing, and decision-making. Human expertise combined with AI is far more valuable than relying entirely on AI.

Till the next stock cycle, How many going to drop?

Such a step backwards to no longer offer automatic email copies of our paychecks. Why in the world would this functionality be removed?

Will we go to a full 4 days in office? Hourly tracking? Walking back of RTO?

I had 35 hours in the office already this week before I woke up this morning. That meant only 5 hours were needed to get to my 40 hours. Got in at 7am, found my desk, connected to the wifi and chilled for 5.25 hours. Left the office by 12:30 and grabbed lunch and a beer before getting home. Forcing me to work 40 hours a week in the office really opened my eyes to what is really important. That I can thank Stank for.

Make peace with the fact you could lose your job at any moment. It's less draining than the constant roller coaster. And at the end of the day, no job is worth sacrificing your health, peace, or well-being.

ELT, GPs and other senior leaders - Please watch Company Retreat on Prime before you do anything more. It's the sequel to Jury Duty and raises many themes we're all experiencing now. Watch how your families react. Notice which characters resonate with you, your (age appropriate) children, and spouses. Notice who the bad guys are and why.

Associates on this forum, please watch it too, if only to remember what a workplace family can be like, to mourn what we're losing, and laugh a bit too. Remember, most people are GOOD people and not solely in this life for money. Yes, it's a fictional story, but the themes are real as can be and at once topical and old as time.

Yes, you read that right. Twice now I’ve had to watch where I walk because someone decided to de-----e in public. I never experienced that while remote. Before I forget did anyone see the pervert exec on the home page this week. Gosh it’s going to be so uncomfortable when he speaks to us at the June town hall. Hopefully he doesn’t ask us about our boxers or briefs 🥴 >> https://www.thestandard.com.hk/finance/article/167954/BlackRocks-Mark-Wiedman-sorry-for-off-color-comments-to-women-such-as-boxers-or-briefs << When I’m not playing frogger to avoid stepping in sh-t I’m either (1) hoping for my bus to arrive less late than usual (2) watching my back as a woman amongst the crazy people in town (3) witnessing open air dr-g use/dr-g exchanges and public urination (4) avoiding confrontation of any panhandler because I’ve seen the tension escalate to punches being thrown and if it comes down to it I would like to defend myself but I can’t carry a pepper spray deterrent with me and into the building (5) calling the babysitter to let her know I might be 80 minutes or 120 minutes before I get home (6) chatting with my son to see how soccer practice went since I can’t be there as often (7) hoping that my vehicle didn’t get damaged sitting at the park and ride lot (8) wondering if I’ll have enough time tomorrow to complete what I couldn’t get done in office the previous two days. Plus much more. Don’t ask me how many home cooked meals I’ve been able to make and eat with my family like we usually did before May 4. On the financial side of things I am struggling with this worrying dilemma. Do I cancel my IRA contributions to cover the cost of daycare and a frequent babysitter? Do I cancel my HSA contribution to pay for gas? What can I cancel to pay for my time? Seriously I am drained. This is the 2nd payday under the RTO policy and I am in the negative yet again. Thankfully my enormous 1.25% raise allowed me to buy a few tanks of gas this month. Not sure what I’m going to do next month. Probably have to bring the older child into work to avoid babysitter costs. My team is loosing talent soon. I’m sure my workload will increase. I’m sure I’ll be asked to get things done in the same amount of time. I’m definitely sure I won’t get any additional compensation for covering an empty seat. As of May 4, working here has become financially unjustifiable, incredibly stressful and a waste of time. It would be different if this was a job that physically needed my presence. But it isn’t. Same goes for the rest of my team. We have this futuristic ability to do our work remotely like we were doing for years but now all of a sudden we are needed in office to justify their real estate investment. Here is the best part my team is all remote with respect to each other. We are at least 250 miles from each other. The policy literally makes no sense. It’s causing me to lose cents too, well actually dollars — lots of dollars. So yea my testimony is sh-t is literally hitting the fu--ing fan. So if more sh-t hits the fan we can expect to have to avoid more human sh-t piles. If this is brilliantly boring well I am having trouble finding anything brilliant about it. Maybe I’ve been too generous by meeting or exceeding all expectations every year for over a decade. To Bill: make the brilliant decision to reverse the RTO policy completely before you wreck the careers and lives of more of your loyal employees and customers. The customers who no longer want to bank with us because of this terrible decision.

Don’t forget Bill gets a 30% comp increase and executive security. We get pennies on the dollar and a mandatory RTO five days.

He-l, use up your vacation while you're at your new job!

It's so easy to stay on the payroll doing the very minimum work just to not get fired while taking as many paid days off for all the many reasons we can easily get away with. See, the difference between many of us and the bootlickers is that we just don't give a fck. We know we can't be fired and some day we'll be surplussed and when that happens, which it inevitably will, well celebrate and move on with our nice termination pay, which is much better than the bootlickers get. lol

Shoulda popped that in the survey.

If a manager ever told me I needed to work unpaid overtime and sacrifice my life outside of work, I'd start job hunting the same day.

So burned out. This place is unhealthy.

I am so tired of scrolling past random selfies with captions pretending to be deep insights. What does your pose have to do with industry trends? Nothing. We need LinkedIn to stay useful for networking and opportunities, not become another social feed full of empty posts. This is getting ridiculous.

Kevin O’Leary said recently he doesn’t care if someone works “from their basement” as long as they can execute and deliver results. That’s the part “leadership” still doesn’t seem to understand.

https://fortune.com/2026/03/10/shark-tank-kevin-oleary-ai-tech-gen-z-rto-office-cubicles-corporate-america/

We already proved remote work works. The job gets done. In a lot of cases productivity improved, turnover dropped, and companies saved money. Even Stanford research still shows hybrid schedules had zero negative effect on productivity while reducing turnover.

Instead, we are doubling down on badge swipes, presence reports, and forcing people back into traffic for work that still happens on laptops and Teams calls all day.

People aren’t frustrated because they “don’t want to work.”

They’re frustrated because leadership saw proof that flexibility worked… and ignored it anyway. They chose max pain and misery over common sense and happy employees.

Every week I hear about somebody new being let go. No announcement, no explanation, nothing. I've started getting near panic attacks because of it. I want to go back to the time when job security was an actual thing.

All on my laptop. But hey, good thing I'm at the office because...why exactly?

And when that happens, it tells you all you need to know about this place. It means being unemployed and uncertain is somehow less stressful than staying here one more day. Think about how bad things have to get for that to make sense. That is where we are now.

Im sorry i dont mean literally but i have to question whats happening there because not many people i work with have a damn clue how to do their job and have no freakin work ethic what so ever. And its getting worse with each new recruit brought on board. That location has always been known as an issue so very shocking when it was announced a growth location but something has got to give. There are way too many of you that are just a red flag so what gives seriously

Currently in prod support, WLB is not there and looking to pivot. Which is better? Or is it all bad?

I've been thinking a lot about the people I've watched burn out here, the ones who stayed late every night, who answered emails on weekends, who pushed through stress headaches and sleepless nights because they thought it was what they had to do. Every single one of them would tell you now that it wasn't worth it. Their health declined, their relationships suffered, and the company didn't reward them for any of it. Your health matters more than their bottom line, and I wish I'd learned that lesson earlier.

I have been a employee of Oracle for 10+ years in Asia Pacific - many jurisdictions in APAC have failry strong labour/labor laws.

Sales targets have over the past 2-3 years increased substantially, to the point one could reasonably claim employee harrassment or "setting the employee up to fail"

Question: Would you bother trying to fight FY27 targets as un-reasonable, or leave with your head held high and maybe return when the job market favors the employee rather than employer?

I put all my ducks in a row to the best of my ability, but I'll be honest here, I've started thinking that being laid off would be better than staying here. It's not normal to have layoffs all the time. They want us to think it is, but it's not. The job is not supposed to be the source of so much stress. It's really not. I remember a time when it wasn't, even here. And I'm just so tired of it.

Anyone who says otherwise hasn't learned that lesson the hard way yet.

I used to honest to God believe that if I worked hard, stayed late, and gave everything to my job, I'd be valued and protected. I've learned the hard way that this isn't true. Ford will happily extract every ounce of energy you've got, praise you for your dedication, and then fire you with no notice the moment it helps their bottom line. And they won't feel bad about it. They won't even think about you again. Hustle culture's a sickness.

Can we go back to the time when we were able to focus on our work without having to worry about losing our jobs 24/7?

Every time I survived. The only reason I stay is because I refuse to leave severance on the table after spending almost two decades here. The way it's been going, I'll retire before they lay me off, with my luck.

I started quiet quitting, and I remembered why I was doing my job in the first place. I went back to doing just my job, the work I was actually hired to do, because I was getting close to quitting over how overloaded I’d become. My plan was to quiet quit while I looked for something else.

Six months later, my energy is back, I’m actually interested in my work again, and I genuinely like what I’m doing. At the beginning there was some pushback, but I held the line with “I’m too busy” and “I’m doing my job,” and eventually people stopped bothering me about taking on more.

The funny part is that I don’t even want to leave anymore. Turns out a huge part of what was making me miserable was how much extra work I kept piling onto myself. Go figure.

Everyone’s stressed, everyone’s worried about where they stand, and collaboration disappears the second pressure goes up. What happened to this place?

I'm going to be such a mess before it finally happens. Not gonna lie, this feels like psychological torture to me.