Thread regarding PepsiCo Inc. (Pepsi) layoffs

Oh boy .. hard to imagine her as a senior executive let alone a CEO !

Stock will tank as soon as she is on cnbc with her AI word salad with her ehhhhhh’s and meeehhhh’s in every garbled sentence.

100% She will crash the company and its brands beyond repair but sure will bail before that.

Ram’ne is surely set up for failure by her and it’s a shame he does not realize so probably is not fit to be captain of the ship,. About time he passed the hat to Steven and moved on!

If Athina talks about her role in S&T’s success during today’s Town Hall, I’ll be absolutely livid. Fortunately, there are still competent people in the chain of command between my team and her, but I don’t expect that to last much longer.

@sx and some shady individuals in VP roles in DPA too! New CEO, should come and do proper clean up , since Athina does not have what it takes to do it!
Look how long it took her to get rid of infamous G-yatri, and how much damage and waste of money for PEP it had caused!

@OP I’ve heard Venky is being considered next, but Jeff might be a stronger candidate based on capability. Unfortunately, he may not be considered due to current diversity dynamics. If he were a woman, he might have had a better chance.

Athina's filled the place with fancy jargon, and consultant speak but it's not driving any progress. It's just a bunch of corporate speak that's confusing the sh-t out of everyone. We're all just trying to get sh-t done, but nobody knows what's the direction and how is it helping

The bureaucracy in S&T is overwhelming. Coming from a smaller company, I'm used to a more agile environment. It's clear that bigger companies often struggle with red tape. I'm still adjusting, but one thing's for sure - the focus on status updates for Athina is excessive. As someone else pointed out, it's a huge time su-k.

@sx Add Infosys and Cognizant to that group. They’re here weekly to meet with their business counterparts to cut deeper into PepsiCo budgets.

@r8 as noted there are some very shady corrupt practices taking place. Accenture, IBM, SAP all are definitely giving some people kickbacks to keep them.

@r6
It’s unclear why we’re putting so much emphasis—and spend—on dashboarding. The company has been running effectively with the data we’ve always had. Now, every request seems to require a dashboard, which leads to additional costs tied to Power BI, AI tools, and overlapping efforts. There are so many fragmented dashboards and AI initiatives that it’s creating redundancy and waste. Ironically, we then hire Accenture as consultants to evaluate how we operate and tell us what to do—when in reality, our internal leads are more than capable of making those decisions.

Yes, there’s a lot of questionable behavior, especially among individuals from the old S&T group who continue operating the same way. If HR were to take a closer look and track their actions, the patterns would become evident. There’s a clear need for transparency and accountability in how decisions and vendors contracted .

That’s correct. Athina clearly favors Accenture, which raises concerns about a conflict of interest—though no one seems in a position to question it. There also seems to be some alignment with Tiger Analytics, given how strongly she pushes for business to go to these two vendors. She tends to invest in large vendors that elevate her personal brand and growth, often sidelining objective evaluation. If it were me, I’d trust my leads to make the right decisions and back them fully—but this approach feels a bit off.

@q8 I believe it was G-yatri who hired him ( VP of UX at DPA) - certainly one of the most controversial and questionable figures in S&T !

@r5 completely agree. These consultants must go. I am.convinced there is a high degree of corruption which allows such unchecked level of consultants and no oversight.

PepsiCo's been getting ripped off by vendors like Accenture and Tiger Analytics. We've got a gazillion contractors from these companies, and it's costing us an arm and a leg. The operating model is a hot mess - PMO as a service, value realization as a service, change management as a service, AI as a service... it's all just a bunch of unnecessary complexity. And the cost? Insane. Even a simple dashboard costs a fortune.

And don't even get me started on the strategy leads in S&T. They're just info-hoarders, sitting in on meetings and gathering intel for AK. Name anyone who is driving any REAL strategic value. Nothing comes to mind. The whole culture is rotting from the inside out. Needless to say that things will accelerate south if she becomes ceo

@px I completely agree. There’s a recurring pattern where vendor narratives seem to overly influence Athina’s decisions, and this creates significant misalignment. Vendors walk away with certain expectations based on her conversations, and then the burden falls on the rest of us to either deliver or explain why the commitments are not feasible. It’s challenging when decision-making doesn’t rest with the accountable leads who have better visibility into execution realities.if she micromanages at this level how is she going to run the company?

Regarding job, I know for a fact there is lot of overlaps in Daces organization, Santosh’s org. Which needs to be revisited. It’s frustrating to see at LG1 and above level.

@j9 I've always found it puzzling why someone of that disposition was hired as head of design at DPA ; the decision was quite baffling. Truly uninspired decision to put that character into VP role. Was it a bold choice of G-yatri or Athina?

Athina cannot even set the direction for S&T right, let alone the entire PepsiCo. Look at the various players in S&T running heater skelter just to update her on progress. It’s frustrating to see how much time everyone is wasting just to prepare status updates for Athina than helping the business. Instead of driving business, teams are bogged down in preparing status updates for her, wasting valuable time and energy. The excessive focus status updates that are only meant to enlighten her, is diverting attention away from actual project work. A more effective leadership approach would prioritize project momentum over bureaucratic overhead. Earlier it was DPA, now it is the PMO doing the dirty work

@ft It’s difficult to envision how S&T could deliver genuine digital transformation given the current leadership within S&T and its DPA. Some VPs have failed to build strong relationships with sector stakeholders and suffer from low credibility, both within their own teams and across the broader PepsiCo organization.
The fact is that disgraced G-yatri got rid of a lot of descent American leaders who challenged her poor leadership and lack of meaningful directions, at the same time she appointed some shady individuals of Indian background. While there are certainly high-performing Indian leaders in the organization, not all appointments from last 3 years have demonstrated the capabilities or integrity needed for senior leadership roles.
Serious concerns remain over integrity of some of VP and LG appointments . If this is the leadership profile that Athina is seen to endorse, it may weaken her credibility as a candidate to take on greater responsibility, including potentially the CEO role.
There is also increasing concern that S&T has delivered limited tangible value to the business. Many projects are viewed internally as high-cost, low-impact initiatives that have not meaningfully improved performance, especially at a time when plants close and declining sales are ongoing challenges. Q2 results have only intensified these concerns.

The mood at headquarters reflects growing disillusionment. The energy, optimism, and collaborative spirit that once defined PepsiCo’s culture has faded. If meaningful change is to occur, it will require a reset in leadership—anchored by credibility, competence, and a focus on delivering real business value rather than optics. Conniving behavior, blame game and offshoring to India may help cover some leadership failures in short run, but in the long run these will drive real talent out of Pepsico and push the company further off the edge, as Q2 results proof that point clearly.

Sitting here in Plano HQ. Close door meetings everywhere and no one else is here.

If any of the names mentioned in this thread becomes true, leave immediately. None of those and current names have no bottling/packaging experience.

Hence the reason Coke, Dr Pepper, and 7-Up are laughing at us. Sad PepsiCo world we live in.

@cy unlikely considering type of people she has hired or allowed to into her S&T / DPA senior roles. Too many failures and examples of bad leadership! Departure of G-yatri has not fixed problems with poor leadership, lack of proper planning and execution and simply bad leadership across DPA!

The next CEO will be Ram K or Steven Williams

@a9 she should then start by cleaning properly her S&T organisation! Not many successes there and too many failures, starting with DPA!

Athina wants to be a CEO. If it isn’t here, it will be elsewhere.

Unlikely, and G-yatri’s sudden exit was due to her miserable failures . She was given a year to turn DPA around and she failed, along with her poor VP leadership.