Thread regarding Verizon Communications Inc. layoffs

Also an AD here. I agree there are useless ADs out there, but not all of us are. The worst kind are the MBAs or leadership development program graduates who went straight into management with zero individual contributor experience. Many of us worked our way up from the IC level to get here. I can do the job of any of my employees as least as well as they can. If you want the company to improve, get an AD/D/SD role yourself and be the leader you think the company needs

lots of emotion and passion around this whole retitle conversation. Let’s bring a few facts and a little perspective into it.

@ba — ADs, Directors, Sr. Managers, and Managers currently sit within the same band 6V … Sr. Directors and AVPs 5V. So if we’re going down the retitling path based on our individual perceptions of what people contribute, let’s at least be consistent and retitle some Managers as Consultants because some can’t even effectively “manage” their own work. See how quickly that logic falls apart? Titles reflect the scope and expectations of a role, not our personal assessment of the person sitting in it.

@bg — The expanded title structure was introduced, in part, based on employee feedback asking for greater upward mobility and career progression within the same job families and functions based on Leader feedback, role expansion and individual contributions. People wanted the ability to grow without having to completely change careers just to move up. Now we seem to be debating whether those distinctions should exist at all. If the expectations or scope of the work actually changed, then yes, going from AVP to Sr. Director makes sense. But that’s a conversation about the role changing — not simply the title changing.

@bh — Sorry to hear your business group operates that way. That certainly sounds challenging. But organizational cultures and operating models vary significantly across a large company. One group’s experience isn’t necessarily representative of how leadership functions everywhere else.

@c1 — The minimizing actually started several posts ago when the conversation shifted toward broad generalizations that ADs contribute very little or are largely ineffective. That dismisses the many leaders who genuinely work to improve the employee experience and deliver meaningful business outcomes.

And if the expectation is that an effective leader must personally know every detail, have every answer, and do all the thinking for the team, I fundamentally disagree. Strong leadership is about setting direction, creating clarity, asking the right questions, connecting expertise from their directs and partners, removing barriers, and holding people accountable for outcomes.

A leader’s job isn’t to be the smartest person in every conversation. It’s to build a team where they don’t have to be. If your measure of leadership is “my boss should know everything I know to be effective,” you may be measuring the wrong thing.

@b9 I absolutely love this word salad:

"An AD managing three people while setting strategy, leading major initiatives, influencing senior leaders, and driving cross-functional outcomes can absolutely have greater scope than a supervisor managing 12 people doing primarily transactional or operational work"

The 12 people doing primarily transactional or operational work, while totally minimalized in your statement, actually know how things work because they work it. And when things get done it's because they know how to do it correctly from past experience.

Please explain how the AD has a greater anything, let alone scope, when:
They don't understand the context of the strategy the want to set.
They can't lead a major initiative if they have no experience in what the initiative encompasses or a current and accurate map on how to get there.
Influencing leaders is just a BS campaign because they know less than the AD.
They can't drive cross-functional outcomes if they don't know what the functions are or how they interconnect with the other functions they cross.

Actually, the AD does have a few greater things. The capacity to fake it till they make it. An overflowing well of denial. An unmatched ego. And unlimited pride.

How is it that everyone on the bottom rung knows this is true but no one in leadership has figured out this is why they and Verizon keep failing?

@ba 100% Slides and poking fingers to individual who actually does he work.

@b9 Accountability? When was the last time any AD was held accountable for the disasters they have created by not knowing what they were doing? They cover for each other point fingers at everything else.

Put some action in your words. Walk the talk.

@br OMG. Truth!! Thanks for that. I don't even know how many times our AD told us specific steps to do something only to find out those steps changed 10 times since that was accurate. And no one knew what the current process was. It's like the blind leading the blind but, really, the blind can do that better than Verizon leaders can lead.

@b9 Verizon leadership, AD, D, EVP, SM, SVP. ABCDEFG, leads like a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy. Each copy is a worse copy than the one before it. This is because the leaders can't lead you to a place they've never been before. They were told by another leader how to get there who was told by another leader how to get there who read in a book somewhere that this is how you get there. They don't know about the roadblock. They don't know about the pothole. They don't know about the detour that was just set up. They don't even know what the speed limit is.

Test it and see if I'm wrong. Ask any of them a specific question about something you encounter every day and know the answer to because of your experience and see if they can answer correctly without having to ask someone else. Many times I was given the name of someone I should ask. And when I asked that person they said they didn't know the person who sent me or why they would have sent me to them because they have nothing to do with anything related to the question.

As one post stated, the people who have been there and know the answers are usually the lowest on the ladder. And they are the ones most directly affected by the failures of leadership leading without a map. They're not allowed to speak up because how dare they make the leader feel like they don't know what they're talking about. There's the ego that another post just mentioned.

And they are absolute masters at spinning the narrative. They will look directly at a dumpster fire full of filled diapers and say "Well, it isn't ideal but it is improving every day and I really don't see that there is a negative business impact were causation can be found. We will look at the scope of the opportunity to see if it scales and what type of initiative we would have to implement in order to get the business moving at a level that meets the expectation of the moment" and everyone on the call will cheer and wipe tears of joy away from their eyes because a leader has spoken. It was all BS, but no one knows the difference.

I wonder what kind of dressing they like on their word salad.

@b9 yeah they led up the strategy and initiatives, and all have been failed, driven the company down to the bottom , but do have the guts to admit under their big egoes

@b9 More general textbook answers without real world specifics that exhibit proven experience.

I have been reading for months but now I need to offer my real world experience with impotent ADs.

Here are some specifics. Never met an AD that ever got their hands dirty and, if they had to, could not perform the most basic of functions that the people they manage do on a daily basis because they have never actually had to work with the systems. They can talk about it all day but wouldn't recognize it if they saw it in real life. Like a cook that read a cookbook claiming to be an experienced chef without ever turning on a oven or picking up a kn--e. And couldn't even tell the difference between a chefs kn--e, a Nakiri and a pairing kn--e. These ADs have run departments into the ground but no one notices because they talk a good game using $10 words they learned at university. We have been trying to fix SAP/S4/1ERP/HANA for years but not a single leader has a clue how any of it works because they have never used it. They demand their direct reports put band aids on everything and then get teams to manually do work in an attempt to complete what the system can't while telling everyone they are leading a successful campaign to fix everything while secretly hoping to get reorged out ASAP. And all the while, the CRs from 2023 still haven't gone in to fix the majority of the problems they created with their lack of experience. Their direct reports can tell them whatever line of mess they want because they know their AD won't know the difference. As long as everyone acts "as if" then leadership will celebrate. Not a single leader is experienced enough to notice that the list of unresolved issues from today is the exact same list from 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025 because each issue gets spun a little bit different each time it is discussed and every issue is always close to a resolution.

It is numbing to come in every day knowing we have the ability to realign almost everything but the glorious AD says it is too much and to focus on the low hanging fruit that will move those numbers to make it look like we moved the needle when, in truth, it hasn't budged.

Get leaders with real world practical leadership skills and hands on experience in what they are leading or tell them to sit down and shut up and let the people that knew how to do it right the first time step up and fix the mess they made and be done with this side show circus carnival of fools and get the systems working the way they should have for years.

I have been holding that in for a long time and now that I got it out, you can bury it so as few people as possible will see it but I will have nothing more to add. Thank you. Bless the people that know the struggle.

why didn't they keep the original style of manager, senior director and vp? besides title complexity, blue jeans, and DEI crying events, what did Hans bring?

if dan really wants to make a difference, he should go back to the original titles

There should not be AD and D or SD, they are just doing the mgr or sr mgr jobs, or only passing and shuffling the KPI numbers and ops reviews talks, what are the waste of life

AD here — titles aren’t simply about how many direct reports you have. They’re about scope, complexity, accountability, and business impact.

An AD managing three people while setting strategy, leading major initiatives, influencing senior leaders, and driving cross-functional outcomes can absolutely have greater scope than a supervisor managing 12 people doing primarily transactional or operational work.

People sometimes confuse headcount with seniority. Managing more people doesn’t automatically mean you’re operating at a higher level. The real question is: What decisions do you own, how complex is the work, and how much of the business moves because of it?

It’s about time. Our Senior Manager has 2 Supervisors reporting to her. Why do you need that? One of the Supervisors is out on leave so technically it was 3 but really? Hire more workers
to get work done!

Many of the ADs I know should have a title and payscale of manager or senior manager. They are not "associate directing" with a team of between 8 and 12 people. Though the number range is a little arbitrary. Anyways, they'e just managing. Title inflation right there.

@as Both. And they claim to be multifaceted and able to do the work of two.

do people with downgraded titles put the new or old one on their resume?

i've seen that where they were AD, lost headcount and then became senior manager again. Dan is getting rid of AD w/ no headcount

@OP seen AD becoming distinguished eng......which is basically same pay rate...different titles

Are they in a different dept? The could have been riffed and taken a new position that's a downgrade

What grouo are you seeing this? N&T?