#attrition

A ton of folks were fired today……all about the quota. We lost some really good people. As usual, the compliant cheap useless folks survive.

My team is half of what it's been when I joined seven years ago. Others who are still with the same team, is it the same for you? I'm genuinely curious if this is a common thing.

Foskett - Who might be the laziest CRO on the planet. Here is 25% off and a couple of tickets to the Super Bowl. Isn't a strategy. His rolodex is ancient and hardly relevant. And we keep him around to ride around in the jet. The level of favoritism and nepo babies he has in his org is nuts! Ineffective!!!!! The other guy working for him in FIG sales. He keeps losing more people because the smart ones won't work for him - utterly ineffective and we continue to not address. It's a mess and that is why people are leaving! They do not want to make changes and will continue to bleed clients and talent. It is that simple.

All time low. I’d say I hope senior leaders see this. But I also suspect it’s by design. Low morale = high attrition

You know, the people who actually know how things work. Meanwhile, the leadership ranks just keep getting bigger. I wonder how long this can continue before something breaks.

The university cut 14 staff positions and 21 faculty positions.

I just perused my LinkedIn and noticed yet another Chevron contact is moving on to Exxon. This has to be the third person in a month and I don't have a ton of contacts. I don't think I've seen anyone make the move to Exxon before from Chevron (I'm sure it happens), but we definitely had talent coming the other direction in the past. I guess our loss is their gain.

Anyone know what’s going on at 668 meridian? Supposedly everyone has quit or is fixing to quit including the store manager has quit already . It’s real bad ya’ll!😳😳😳

That's all. The question is whether the number of people pushed out will justify the costs. In this job market, people will try to hold on to their jobs and sacrifice a lot to do it. If it's even remotely viable to commute, relocate, or make other sacrifices, people will do it. Even the craziest requirements will be met, if objectively possible.

Heard from the grapevine that several forced retirements have started starting from Oct and taking effect in January.

Imagine it’s 2030.

The wealth management industry has gone fully digital, fully personalized, and somehow still feels… human. Clients rebalance portfolios with a voice command. RIAs fully own the client experience, and their book of business. Account opening takes 90 seconds and a selfie.

At Edward Jones, a meeting is being scheduled to discuss forming a segment to accelerate the path to industry parity.

Allowing FAs to own their book is briefly considered as a way to slow attrition, until the ELT realizes that might require sharing economics. The idea is politely declined.

Edward Jones advisors are still praised for playing it safe, putting client goals at risk, but protecting GP deep pockets.

Associate pay has barely improved. Compensation decks are refreshed, grades are “recalibrated to the market,” and leadership celebrates low-single-digit increases as “competitive”. Associates who once believed their entire careers could be built at Edward Jones discover those careers aren’t being filled with opportunity, but with quiet, compounding regret.

The systems barely work, largely because leadership changed strategic direction five times in the last decade, then decided to pursue everything at once.

By 2030, competitors have built fully remote, national teams, pulling top talent from anywhere. Productivity is measured by outcomes, innovation, and client impact. Associates aren’t babysat. They thrive as a result.

At Edward Jones, all associates are required to be at their desk five days a week. Badge swipes are tracked. Keystrokes are counted. Reports are run. Leaders celebrate home-office presence as culture. A top candidate declines an offer because relocating to St. Louis or Tempe makes no sense for their family.

The industry talks about scale, speed, and optionality.
Edward Jones talks about how great things will be once…

The competition is building for where clients are going.
Edward Jones is optimizing for where employees are sitting.

Imagine it’s 2030. Edward Jones introduces “Imagine it’s 2040”, a new campaign to reach market parity.

DC is at the helm and promises to outsource everything, generating record short term profits for GPs. “A penny saved is a penny earned”. Penny agrees.

They can throw any attrition combo at me, but I’m not leaving on my own. Let them sweat trying to get rid of me, or anyone else for that matter, and when it’s over, I’ll take my severance and all benefits. I haven’t busted my back here for years to walk away empty-handed. If the company hasn’t appreciated us, we can damn well appreciate ourselves.

What is the point of putting so much pressure on us with unrealistic expectations, passive-aggressive management, cultivated toxicity, and highly flexible performance grading unless they are trying to force us out? It seems like far too much effort just to keep us “in line.” If attrition is the goal, why not just move forward with it instead of making the workplace miserable?

Regarding the current leadership structure and task delegation within CRT.

At present, many (though not all) Team Leads appear to spend the majority of their time performing minimal administrative tasks, such as returning scorecards, while routinely delegating their more complex and time-consuming responsibilities to senior reviewers. These senior reviewers are expected to take on duties that align more closely with Team Lead responsibilities, yet they receive no increase in compensation, for this additional workload.

This practice has created an imbalance where experienced reviewers are effectively performing leadership-level tasks while being paid significantly less. It has also contributed to frustration and decreased morale among those who are consistently relied upon to carry the workload without support or acknowledgment.

Additionally, CRT appears to be significantly overstaffed with both Team Leads and reviewers. As a result, meaningful work has diminished, and employees are increasingly being assigned tasks that offer little value to production goals. This inefficiency not only wastes company resources but also undermines productivity and engagement.

These issues suggest a need to reevaluate staffing levels, role expectations, and compensation alignment within CRT. Addressing these concerns would help restore fairness, accountability, and operational effectiveness.

It’s crazy to see that someone who knows the company inside and out and has years of experience can be let go just like a newbie. How did we get to a place where tenure and expertise don’t matter at all?

Phillips 66 is in serious trouble, and it’s no longer honest to pretend otherwise. Over the past four years, not a single major initiative has produced a durable, repeatable positive outcome. Some have shown short-term gains on paper, but none have proven sustainable.

The acquisition of DCP Midstream itself was not inherently the problem. The mistake was allowing leadership and operating philosophies from a joint-venture culture where compromises, exceptions, and optics were often tolerated to take control of a legacy enterprise built on accountability, discipline, and execution.

The result has been a leadership model that prioritizes messaging over outcomes and reaction over strategy. Propaganda and internal campaigns may shape narratives, but markets, performance, and attrition do not lie. A company with world-class people and assets is being managed like a short-term experiment rather than a long-term enterprise.

What makes this especially concerning is the pattern: frequent pivots, walk-backs, and directional changes that signal a lack of conviction and operational understanding. This is not innovation, it is instability. Accountability is routinely deferred, while experienced people and institutional knowledge leave at a startling pace.

At some point, shareholders and long-tenured employees alike have to confront reality. Talent loss, cultural erosion, and repeated course corrections are not coincidences; they are symptoms. Cynicism is not the problem here, it is a rational response to sustained underperformance.

Phillips 66 does not have a people problem or an asset problem. It has a leadership problem. Until that is acknowledged, the unraveling will continue, regardless of how polished the messaging becomes.

“When the story feels good enough, evidence becomes optional.”

If ever. I’m not looking forward to my severely crippled team scrambling to cover the roles that are now gone, along with all the overtime and stress that will come with it. Our manager is likely to put even less effort into organizing the workload in a way that actually considers our limited time, how our skills are distributed, and the real weight of the tasks.

How’s it looking on your team lately? On mine, people keep quietly disappearing and backfills aren’t happening, so the rest of us just absorb the work and move on like it’s normal.

Oil price is declining. R&D being trimmed down to help achieve structural cost savings on target. Poor value delivery observed in emtech and IP walking out the door.

Attrition is not winding it down fast enough as hoped. Some hipos will be sent to business over next few months in prep.

Recommend requesting a move out of emtech if possible

I’m definitely betting on more PIPs, setting up for it by completely unrealistic expectations, and most likely RTO as the now well-tested way to push people out.

It almost feels intentional, as if my team is being set up to fail. It seems more like attrition by design than anything else. People are so demoralized that no one has the energy to push back. Being laid off with severance is beginning to feel like a win, given Nike's trajectory and compared to being worn down by tactics meant to make you quit or give a reason to fire you.

We're already covering two or three jobs each. What's the plan? Do they expect the remaining few to do four or five people's work until everyone burns out? What happens then?

In the last couple of weeks, two senior managers on my floor have left voluntarily. Their departures weren't part of any announced layoff, and they both gave standard notice. The fact that senior-level people are choosing to leave so closely together has sent a wave of concern through our team. It makes you wonder what they might know about the company's future plans that hasn't been shared with the rest of us. Is this a sign of things to come?

We were explicitly told when someone quits they will not be replaced. I’m a hometown store.

my point has gone so far down hill.we have half the carmen we're slotted for.senior guys have decided to resign rather than put up with the neverending piles of b.s.younger folks have quit because they see no future hear.most days yard repairs are down because we have a conscious and don't want guff for trains going out late.it seems like an injury is bound happen.but for now the trains aren't going out late so whats the issue?

I worked at National Oilwell Varco for nearly three years and gave far more than was ever asked of me. I consistently worked overtime, stepped up whenever needed, and sacrificed my own time to support the company. That dedication meant absolutely nothing in the end. There is no real path for growth here—no clear outline for advancement, no meaningful raises, and no incentive to actually perform at a higher level. Unless you are part of the “good ol’ boy” club, you will remain stuck in the same position indefinitely while promotions are handed out based on favoritism instead of merit.

I was passed up for a promotion in favor of someone who left the company for an extended period of time and was simply allowed to come back and leapfrog others who had stayed loyal and continued to carry the workload. When layoffs came, the decision was not based on skill, value, or contribution, but on a so-called “totem pole” system. This is especially insulting considering I was part of a very small team and knew how to do everyone’s job, making me far more valuable than others who were retained.

To make matters worse, the company chose to lay off someone who showed up every single day, never abused time off, and consistently did the work, while keeping employees who regularly burned through PTO, had attendance problems, and had even been written up for not showing up. That decision alone speaks volumes about how NOV truly operates.

National Oilwell Varco does not live up to the values it proudly claims to stand for. Loyalty, hard work, and accountability are clearly not rewarded here. Instead, favoritism and internal politics determine who moves forward and who gets pushed out. I genuinely hope the company collapses or is completely sold off to another organization that actually values its employees and operates with integrity—because in its current state, NOV does not deserve the people who give their time and effort to it.

Turnover’s exploding everywhere else, but here things feel oddly frozen. I’m still looking for something better, but most of my team seems content to stay put. Makes me wonder whether they know something I don’t or if people are just exhausted.

im loosing lots of associates. and they are not being replaced.
some days its just two associates on entire sales floor, especially in the mornings. it's worse now that after covid, way worse. i dont think i can take this much longer either.

The pay used to make the tradeoffs worth it, but weak raises ki-led that, advancement paths are basically closed, and attrition keeps accelerating, which just means more work dumped on fewer people. At this point, believing there’s a bright future here feels less like optimism and more like choosing not to see what’s right in front of us.

The older workers pdf clearly showed a bias in laying off the older population of RFEs. A couple of very recent RFE hires were included in with the riffed group (to mask the age discrimination?). Were RFEs in other regions affected similarly?

Also, the CARTN RFE team already has approx. 20 contractors (not touched) supporting the build plan (entering data in the tools per the RFEs' directions, plus running plots for review by the RFEs). ALL of the 20 or so contractors appear to be from India (Amdocs, with the contractors in TX?). Are the contractors now going to planning the designs of the cell sites? How is the quality of the designs (new builds and modification projects) going to be affected given the relatively short time span contractors are working for VZ (through Amdocs)? Contractors do not have as much skin in the game as fulltime VZ employees, and it may take 6 months to a year and a half for poor quality work to show up in the network.

Really short sighted on the part of management.

Along with demoralizing remotes and all the other well-known, obvious or sneaky ways to wear people down until they leave on their own, or give leadership an excuse to kick them to the curb. If even a fraction of the time and energy spent on these cheap, convenient push-out tactics were redirected toward actually building the business and caring about employees, this could be a great company.

Then I’ll just put in less effort. I’ve always been responsible and usually gone the extra mile, including being available well beyond official hours. I’ve helped resolve plenty of crises and messy situations. But if this is how it’s going to be, I’ll simply stop being available after hours. I’ll coast until they lay me off. That’s probably coming anyway, for all of us, so why bother anymore?

Don’t teams need a minimum of six? On my site many are down to four and many of the ones that aren’t they are having managers plan to cut down to that. This is in research. When will managers get cut? Didn’t see any in last round get cut and none through PIP either

It feels like every other week, someone else is announcing their early retirement. While I understand the desire to move on from Honeywell, the timing and number of people leaving has me puzzled. The typical workplace frustrations don't seem to fully explain this sudden exodus. I wonder if there's a common, unspoken reason that's prompting so many to make this decision right now.

It's getting pretty empty around here lately. Several of the sharpest people on my team just left for much better offers. And if they managed to get better offers in this job market, you know they're good. It's frustrating because a simple, competitive raise probably would have kept them. But I guess that kind of forward thinking is asking too much from this place.

Our team's lost four people since the fall, and they aren't being replaced. All this extra work is probably just going to push more of us out the door. I don't see how this helps the company in the long run, but here we are.

Another week of high profile corporate exits. Head of channel (VP) out after just 5-6 months in the job. 5th channel leader in 18 months. Replaced by 2 senior directors.

Marketing leader leaving Dec 31.

When I started here, most of my mentors told me this was a great place—pensions, growth potential, the works. Now, everyone who's still left is straight-up telling me to GTFO. The plan seems to be constant reductions. What used to happen every few years is now hitting 2-3 times every 12-18 months."

Oof, that sounds like a classic case of the ship slowly sinking while the band plays on. If the veterans are all yelling "run," it's probably time to listen. Update that resume quietly!

I find it almost comical that companies still wrap RTO in “collaboration and efficiency” fluff, when we all know it’s really about pushing people out cheaply. Add in micromanagement and a pathological need for total control, and it becomes truly demeaning and ridiculous. Utterly unnecessary for efficiency, performance, or teamwork. But then again, the substance has clearly never been the priority.

My team got hit, and we ended up losing two of our strongest people. In all honesty, if I was laid off instead of them, I'd understand. They've been here longer, they know their jobs, and they have so much institutional knowledge, and yet they're gone. We also have some low performers, and all of them are still here. Can somebody please explain the logic behind this?