Wow that PPD townhall was my first time watching Harmeet speak. My god, talk about monotonous, boring and uninspiring.
Seriously when people ask questions like how will people who lost their skip level or direct managers be fairly assessed on their work this year, the response shouldn't be a plain "yes they will be assessed for their work throughout the year". Duh, people are seeking clarity on the HOW, for goodness sake. Talk about how you already drew up the relationship graph of people remaining in the org, how you guys took stock of how the entire ecosystem of projects fit together, how teams are going to be assigned under new leaders who are genuinely excited at what they have to provide.
What's the point of these townhalls if you're going to be as vague and sombre as possible? When people ask questions about motivation, you don't just tell them to sit with their feelings for this week and look forward to the future. Tell us what exactly we should look forward to, and if layoffs are done for the foreseeable future, then use that to motivate remaining workers. Give people a carrot or something! When people asked if alternatives were considered, talk about how existing employee benefits cuts were considered, whether costs regarding AI models (why are there 80 available models btw) could be cut, whether this was made accounting for that crazy phase of token maxxing, will leaders personally taken salary cuts / pay increases this year during such a "sad and difficult time" as they claim.
Do these people even know how to motivate or show empathy at all? Have they been in genuine leadership positions outside of the corporate world where you actually have to inspire to get people to follow? In the military you have servant leadership (personal sacrifice) at the core, on sports teams captains are expected to display leadership by example, these people have no idea what any of these concepts mean!
They're genuinely soulless puppets, you can see it in their eyes, Harmeet, Rajat and whoever that HR minion brought up to speak during the townhall was. Actively applying for other roles right now, whatever culture Al Kelly instilled is completely gone.