#bureaucracy

The bureaucracy is insane. You can't get anything done without jumping through fifteen pointless hoops. Pay is below average, which is insulting given what they put us through. Job security is a complete joke now. I'm spending most my free time applying to be able to get away.

error codes on every link, using multiple browsers to load things, password change failure, support tickets unanswered, HR unresponsive, expenses rejected / declined. what the fu-k is going on here. the monday morning bog down is so brutal EVERY week

with most of the layers doing nothing but making reports celebrating that the chocolate rations have been increased from 2.4% to 2.7% this quarter. Meanwhile back in the garages and CO's it's now BYOTP (toilet paper) time.

Verizon’s side of the house seriously needs to adapt some of the ways Frontier operates because, frankly, Frontier has always done certain things better. Faster execution, scrappier teams, less bureaucracy, and way less unnecessary process wrapped around every tiny initiative.

If I get added to one more Slack channel for something that could’ve been a two-sentence message, I’m going to scream. The amount of overcomplication is exactly why work slows down.

And leadership needs to be realistic about the culture issue. There are people on both sides who clearly don’t even want to be here anymore. Fine — give those people strong packages and let them move on. But keep the people who actually care, execute, innovate, and know how to get things done without turning every task into a 40-slide deck and six approvals.

Not everything has to be “the Verizon way.” Sometimes the better answer is already sitting right in front of you.

Any offer must be approved personally by Paul Gallagher, I thought he was meant to remove layers of approval...?

I'm leaving, and I can tell you right away I won't miss the endless approvals, the ancient systems that break daily, or watching my coworkers lose their minds. I was hired to build new things and spent four years keeping old junk running. This place broke me.

Oracle is still buried under layers of bureaucracy...............

The joke is we reach for Java even when a simple Bash script would do the job.
We build heavy frameworks for what should be lightweight data pipelines.
We take open-source software, wrap it, rename it, and present it as innovation
(Preact → OJet, Apache HTTP Server → OHS, and the pattern continues).
We talk about Java 26 to the outside world, while internally we’re still anchored to Java 8, maybe Java 17 at best.
We have 10 people maintaining a basic Makefile or CI/CD pipeline, but only 2 actually writing the code that matters.
We accepted JIRA but never promoted BugDB to external world. I remember BugDB team was sleeping without even REST API or changes for years.
We write thousands of test cases, yet the final validation still depends on manual checks. I remember same testcases ran every day in pipeline for 3-5 years continuously always passing.
We spend 1000's of lines writing CICD code, QA code for a Product code of just 10 lines. ( I remember for auditing a SQL file, we had 2 teams writing a new microservice)
We value people who gossip and go as a team rather than a game changer.

Jokes apart. when was the last time an executive actually sat with the team to rethink technology direction or for a futuristic directions. All they ask is document your ideas to Confluence and we will review. They take their favorites to meetings and show their faces.
The Outside world is changing a lot. The Talents are simply wasted without proper directions. There is a need of heavy change in top management layers specially reducing VP, Senior VP's and Directors who are not providing clear directions below and simply playing games.

For me, it's the procurement team. A $1000 payment can go over 6 months without any update. And they always direct me to another team A, and team a pointed me to team B and C. And finally it’s all of these 3 teams. Then they told me the payment is controlled by SHI. When I called SHI, they told me the vendor should have access to the link they provided.
Vendor provided invoice, then PO went to procurement again, one week before the deadline.

I escalated to VP, then they started to chase me down with PO.

What ridiculous

that started with JD about 3 years ago.

EH is just overrated Nike bureaucrat that people that he had talent.

bruhhhh EH if you still didn't get to spot what exactly the cancer here, you are not fit to lead - both intel and nike undergone bloodbaths at the same time and were done and dusted... the turn around you keeps on saying - bruhhh intel achieved it by rallying from 17$ a share to 50$ a share, his first decision was engineering first , he changed the entire culture of the company by going ruthless over rotten & bloated bureaucracy, one of my friend told what exactly the contents of the email - "at present we are the company of managers managing managers and you don't write code / design chips / sell the end product then your job is under review"... innovation blended with engineering is the silver bullet, i swear if the 1400 lay offs you are doing right now doesn't weigh in the lionshare of bureaucracy, then this layoffs are putting lipstick on a pig, where each year that pig is bloating exponentially

it is too big. Too bloated. Too bureaucratic.

I don't think EH can turn this big ship without grounding it.
Not even his Grandma can turn Nike around.

MP just rode the ride and let it get big.
JD drove this 18 wheeler to the ditch.
EH cannot pull it out the ditch nor has ability to pull it out.

Since you cannot turn around HMS Titanic in this harbor, the only solution is to cut the company into different pieces and run it separately and make it more aggressive.

The E&Y people are well trained to implant bureautic procedures and redundant controls so they can bill Citi for over-time meetings

Getting anything approved these days requires jumping through five layers of management. By the time someone finally signs off, the situation has already changed. Progress moves at a snail's pace because of all this red tape. When did we go from efficient to a red tape nightmare?

A simple policy clarification and ended up in a 6-week loop of "alignment calls" and "deep dives" with multiple teams. It felt like explaining basic math to people determined to make it calculus. After 45 days of overcomplicating the simplest request, they finally came back and said it’s "trivial and not applicable."

The level of incompetence and the obsession with making everything a project is exhausting. We’re not innovating; we’re just spinning tires and calling it progress.

I was hired out of college in 2019 as an Account Manager. It was a great job up until 2023 when the red tape and processes put in place made it too hard to sell solutions our customers were requesting. Imagine having a customer asking for something and not delivering when you’re a technology reseller? Bad look. So much bureaucracy and middle managers making 6 figures to slow processes down. All in the name of “risk aversion”. I’m excited to announce I’m selling all of my CDW stock and I’ve enjoyed the fact that i jumped ship while watching it burn and sink. My brothers and sisters still working there, you gotta save yourself they aren’t gonna save you!

It's all meetings about meetings and reports about reports. It slows everything down. Not that anybody among leadership cares, mind you. It's just the new way of doing things.

I've noticed a significant shift lately. There's a huge focus on tracking work instead of doing it. We spend hours building decks to show productivity while actual tasks sit waiting. Meanwhile, there's a push to reduce small benefits that made the place at least tolerable. Sadly, the people who suffer most are the newer hires. They're thrown into projects without any real guidance because the seasoned leaders are too buried in administrative work to mentor anyone. It's a frustrating way to run things.

Fire the tech mod and other creatures that only increase bureaucracy and create the appearance of savings.

Is anyone else watching the administrative bloat at UCR and wondering how these people survive budget cuts? It’s a profound medical mystery: a senior director making six figures to navigate complex university politics suddenly loses all cognitive function the moment they are asked to process a routine purchase order.

They stare at the campus website like it’s a glowing alien artifact, sighing, “I’m just not a systems person.” It’s pure psychological torture to read their LinkedIn profiles boasting about "agile operational leadership" while watching them lose a battle of wits against a standard PDF.

Let’s be honest—this isn’t a lack of training. It’s a highly evolved corporate survival tactic. It is we-ponized incompetence, masterfully executed to ensure their job duties slide off their mahogany desks onto the plates of the underpaid staff actually keeping the lights on.

The Three Pillars of the "I Don't Know How" Defense:

Software Paralysis:
Feigning total technological illiteracy when confronted with any system updated after 2014. The unspoken message: My brain is reserved for high-level strategy; do not pollute it with your dropdown menus.

Delegation by Confusion:
"I tried to fill out that compliance form, but it's just so confusing. Could you take care of it?" Translation: I didn't even open the email, and my refusal to read is now your problem.

The Forwarding Reflex:
The superhuman ability to immediately forward actionable tasks to a subordinate with the devastating message: "Please handle. I don't know the process."

If you play the helpless, bumbling executive long enough, the university ecosystem simply adapts and punishes the competent with your work. Whatever you do, never let them see you successfully format an Excel spreadsheet, or you'll be doing theirs until you get laid off.

People are just maintaining status quo. No one willing to contribute out of box in fear of No recognition, No salary hikes or promotions.

1. Skilled people were exploited until they stopped innovating. No one is motivated to contribute extra.
2. Management is begging Developers and leaders to bring change with AI , hackathons, and study more on AI concepts. Even if I learn AI, why should I contribute if no recognition ? I will use my learning to jump for more salary.
3. Oracle is the low payer , even less than Asian service / body shopping companies.
4. Lots of bureaucracy in Oracle.
   Throw out all Directors, Senior Directors and VP's who doesn't add value and improve salary structure for real working employees. Things might change.

Are they only on meeting surveillance and maybe PowerPoint deck duty? I've never seen them do anything more than be surveillance on Teams meetings, and fly into other offices to be surveillance in person. Why do we need so many levels of surveillance? Can someone observe their teams and find out if they are doing something more than just sitting there?

Verizon is in the thick of reorganization, trying to claw back ground from T-Mobile and AT&T. The layoffs and cost programs are getting headlines, but the company is still slowed by internal issues that are structural rather than strategic.

Every major part of the business (Consumer Group, Business Group, Consumer Sales, and Network) runs like its own little kingdom. Each one has its own infrastructure team, its own asset management approach, its own platforms, and its own favorite vendors. That setup guarantees duplication: similar work gets done multiple times with slightly different tools, standards, and contracts. Then layer on several consulting firms and managed service providers tackling overlapping scopes across those same areas, plus internal supervisors whose primary role is to oversee the vendors. The result is expensive redundancy that drags down speed and inflates costs without improving outcomes.

Many of those supervisor positions actively push back against meaningful offshoring or clean outsourcing, often raising security or control objections. Yet T-Mobile and AT&T have been offshoring large pieces of retail support, IT, and back office functions for years by using proven safeguards and achieving real savings. Keeping these roles protects headcount in the short term, but it also protects bureaucracy and, in too many cases, creates space for favoritism where vendor selection has more to do with relationships than performance.

Competitors who centralize infrastructure, limit vendors, and draw clear lines between internal and outsourced work simply move faster and spend smarter.

Verizon needs to follow suit.

A Four Step Plan to Remove Internal Drag
1)Unify infrastructure under one team
Combine network, IT, cloud, security, and asset management into a single group that serves every line of business.
End the “my division, my solution” mindset. This single shift could eliminate 20% to 30% of redundant effort and sharply accelerate delivery.

2) Tighten vendor control
Move to one or two preferred vendors maximum per major category. Require open competitive bidding, publish performance scorecards, and conduct regular audits to block favoritism or kickback risks. Stop letting every group pick its own suppliers.

3) Set firm make versus buy rules
Decide once which capabilities stay fully in house, which go fully to managed services, and which are clean hybrids.

Replace layers of supervisor oversight with automated monitoring tools and exception based reporting. Phase out roles whose main purpose is to babysit outsourcing.

4) Reward company wide efficiency over silos
Change bonus structures so managers and executives are judged on cross business metrics: lower duplication, reduced vendor spend per unit, and faster project cycles, not just their own division numbers.
Support union discussions with fair retraining and severance packages so routine work can be offshored the way competitors already do successfully.

These steps are not complicated or untested; they mirror exactly what T-Mobile and AT&T execute to stay lean and quick. Putting them in place would cut the waste that quietly erodes our edge, free up capital for customer innovation and network leadership, and show the market we are finally operating like one unified and competitive company instead of a collection of mini empires.

The reorganization is the perfect window. Fix the structure now, and the turnaround stops being incremental; it becomes real.

The only way to cut down on bureaucracy and be cost responsible at the same time is to actually thin the leadership layers.

Stop approving vp-reports-to-vp nonsense, systematically thin the senior director level and give their authority back to people actually close to IC's.

Anything beyond this is lip service to excuse layoffs of people who actually do the work.

The only tech trend that SAP will ever be on top or in front of is "SAP." We hold ourselves back in regard to real progress, implementation, innovation because we can't do a damn thing without stopping to talk about it. We are rewarded not for our tangible contributions but for our ability to blend in with broader tech culture. We work for children who have a pretend business. Not a company of responsible businessmen with ideas and proper ambition.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/cisco-ceo-explains-why-thinks-094401737.html

I mean it sounds good at Chucks level. Has he actually seen the layers upon layers of pointless management?

About 90,000 layoffs over the last 4 years -- both regular and silent irregular layoffs (Focus/PIP, RTT/RTH/RTO, voluntary buyouts, immediate termination w/o cause, etc.). And regretted attrition (around 40,000-50,000).

Is that going to reduce bureaucracy or does it simply increase the chance of outages? Why not just prune "management" layers instead of junior employees?

For a large corporation exxon is the run worst. I truly hate the place and people at exxon. The toxicity, gossip, underhanded backstabbing, favoritism,neopotism and extreme bureaucracy are impossible to tolerate. Promotions are based on who you are and how much the supers and managers like you. If you are a snitch also helps with promotion as well. Employees who move up on the backs of others. I have never worked at such a vile, disgusting and evil place in my life. I am on the way out as my ranking is dropping but I don't care. I was constantly told I needed to work harder or longer hours so I did sometimes 60 hours per week. It was never enough though. Meanwhile other employees only worked 35 to 40 hours per week. These others were protected individuals. I was given a good rating while the protected got excellent. It is a totally unfair and rigged system that I am sick of. I am leaving to join a smaller company at 2/3 the pay off exxon. The insurance is better and I get the same amount of vacation. The working environment is not toxic and the employees are happy. There is no forced ranking or pds system. I tolerated 8 years at this he-l hole and cannot take one more day at it.

You can’t say anything or do anything out of step. Theyre all rule following goody two shoes

In townhalls, people keep complaining about GPDS. Leadreship talks about GPDS replacement. But GPDS keep getting fatter and keeps adding more non-value work on engineers.

Getting anything done here is a nightmare. You need ten approvals for the simplest task. It's not structure, it's a cage that stops you from actually working. I spend more time fighting the system than doing my job.

Amazon announced its plan to trim management layers to address bureaucracy. It makes you wonder when will we take a similar look, so the people delivering the real work here, aren’t always the first on the chopping block. Something about the current approach just doesn’t add up

This place is so incredibly top-heavy with managers who have fancy titles but deliver nothing. Of course, all of them protect each other, which is why they survive every reorg. Imagine a world in which they are the ones getting cut and the people who actually contribute are left alone. I know, never gonna happen here.

Laser focused on customers vs laser focused on spreadsheet metrics:

Sorry Mr. Customer, I have to take a break on your install you've been waiting months for, to complete out my install dispatch, and open another install dispatch so my managers numbers look good.

Why can't we just do the install on a real-time dispatch you ask? That is a great question, Mr. Customer. It's because we will be scrutinized and questioned as to why it took more time than what the useless, non-experienced bean counters say this job should take. Yes, I know thats ridiculous. Everyone knows its ridiculous, but no one can SAY its ridiculous.

This company can't lay off these levels of waste fast enough.

Purge it.

This used to be a company people admired, but now it feels like it’s devouring itself. There’s so much red tape and not enough room for people to be creative or take initiative. I don't see things can turn around anytime soon.

I thought Jassy wanted to get rid of bureaucracy? Guess not.

WHY? WHY?

They are bloated and bureaucratic and then filled with bunch of a-s kissers who is being managed by even bigger incompetent a-s kisser.
If you don't believe me then explain to me why Nike cannot come out with anything new like they used 10 years and before that.
What Nike needs is break up the company and be run as separate units. Common stock holders will make more money.
Nike employees will have more opportunity to work since each companies needs position filled.
As long as Nike remains same path expecting different results then Nike is INSANE.

JDI will stand for Just Die Id--t!!

The restructuring this week forced on PEP by Elliot was a long time coming. I was in the market today and Lay's PC was 42 cents per ounce and the HEB label was 28 cents. PEP is charging almost a 50% premium for a product that is no better than HEB. What does the consumer get for paying that premium ?.... nothing. HEB chips are just as good as Lays. It seems that fat premium PEP charges is just used to maintain an expensive bloated, top heavy, inefficient, complacent bureaucracy which isn't focused on either the consumer or the shareholders. Management not only let this happen, but allowed it to continue year after year as they just cruised along on auto-pilot with their "business as usual" strategy of just shrinking the bag and raising the price oblivious to any consequences. One consequence is that they attracted the "Activist Investor" sharks. The sharks detected a big fat ineffective bureaucracy floundering in the market place, they circled it, and are now starting to tear it apart.

Projects have been cut as part of funding for 2026. But the RIF did not remove those team members. Dan did not announce any new initiatives so now the SDs with no projects are lurking and stealing projects as part of so called reorgs.
The VZ bureaucracy was always bad and now its getting toxic

I am not saying this to speak poorly of the wireline business. I come from the wireless side, and the culture at Verizon Wireless was a good one. After the "merge" everything got worse. The culture changed. The things Dan mentioned about doing the right thing for the customer resonates with me because it used to be that way. "Process" took a back seat to customers. We did what was right. After the "merge" we became so caught up in red tape. I miss Verizon Wireless.

SAS Cloud seems to run entirely on project managers.

No actual SAS experience in sight, yet somehow they manage to present themselves as experts on absolutely everything.

No wonder the whole place looks like it’s permanently waiting on a meeting about a meeting.

#bootstrappers