Thread regarding AT&T layoffs

As we continue to optimize our workflows and drive efficiency across the organization, it's equally important to remain aware of behaviors that may inadvertently slow progress. With that in mind, please find a brief, modernized overview of common pitfalls observed in tech office environments. Shared here purely for awareness.

## For Managers and Team Leads

• Demand everything in writing, even for the smallest asks.
  "Please submit a formal Teams message and follow up with an email before I can approve."

• Act confused about project goals.
  "Have we truly aligned on the alignment of our alignment?"

• Refuse to ship anything until it's 110% perfect.
  "Let's hold this feature another sprint... just to be safe."

• Only approve critical purchases after the system crashes.
  "Let's discuss adding more Azure credits next quarter."

• Choose obscure, overly complex libraries and dismiss alternatives as
  "not scalable for our growth trajectory."

• Assign make-or-break features to interns.
  Have your best developer focus on organizing the team wiki.

• Obsess over perfect UI spacing for internal dashboards no one uses.

• Route tickets to the wrong departments.
  "That's definitely a Finance thing... oh wait, never mind."

• Give partial, outdated onboarding docs to new hires.
  "The real knowledge is tribal. Good luck!"

• Publicly praise mediocre work while nitpicking your top people on tone in Teams chats.

• Book daily “check-ins” during critical deadlines.
  Then cancel them after everyone joins.

• Create duplicate documents.
  "We should have this in SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams Files for visibility."

• Require four levels of approval to order a keyboard.

• Apply policies exactly as written.
  "Sorry, you can't expense that $5 coffee—it's not within policy subsection 4.3."

## For Office Workers (Ops, HR, Admin, Finance)

• Mistype account numbers, employee IDs, or office locations.

• Drag out email chains with Legal over one missing word in a standard contract.

• Misfile important documents into the wrong Teams folder.

• Forget to upload the latest version.
  Or upload six slightly different versions with no dates.

• Tell external callers "they're in a Teams meeting"—all day.

• Hold outgoing invoices or reimbursements until someone notices.

• Spread subtle rumors like
  "I heard layoffs are coming... but don't tell anyone I said that."

## For Employees (Engineers, Designers, Analysts, etc.)

• Work as slowly as possible.
  Spend hours rewording one Teams message.

• Invent interruptions.
  "Just updating my Teams status. Be right back!"

• Pretend you don’t understand Teams features.
  "Wait, how do I reply in a thread again?"

• Act like PR feedback is a mystery.
  "When you say 'fix the bug,' what exactly do you mean?"

• Blame tooling.
  "If only Teams integrated better with Jira... sigh."

• Don’t share shortcuts or templates with new hires.
  Let them suffer.

• Submit broken code and suggest the CI pipeline is
  "probably just glitchy."

• Form a working group for every tiny issue.
  Weekly meetings. Minutes. Action items.

• Deploy to production on Friday afternoon. Twice.

• Mix production data with test data. Shrug.

## General Office Vibes Sabotage

• Give long, confusing explanations during Teams calls.

• Hint that security might be compromised.
  "Probably nothing... but..."

• Play d-mb when people ask for help.
  "Oh, I thought you were handling that?"

• Be passive-aggressive via Teams emojis. 👀😬

• Misinterpret HR policies on purpose.
  "I thought unlimited PTO meant unlimited?"

• Complain loudly about vendor lock-in.

• Stop talking whenever leadership joins the Teams call.

• Overreact dramatically to minor Teams outages.
  "WE'RE COMPLETELY DOWN."

• "Accidentally" miss mandatory social events.

• Lose your expense receipts for the third time.