#bureaucracy

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

Pretty sure "managers" outnumber the employees considering I found over 2,000 that have no direct reports. Is Wells running a laundry??

If they are doing layoffs DBO needs to go. A complete bureaucratic nightmare TN has created.

The company has been successfully programmed. Why do we need the thousand plus people employed in this group now?

This group is closer to penny wize, dollar foolish than most. Here's why. Remember all the times BH mentioned de-layering and reducing decision making authority? The exact opposite is true. I know this as I look at the list of job grades of those recently axed. Nothing higher than manager and overall average job grade let go is 9. At the same time we (they) mint more VP's. The consistent and frequent additions to the "C" suite ONLY increases beaurocrocy, time and effort to approve low $, low risk investments. Lastly, the severance for these folks was drastically REDUCED compared to previous January layoff. The thing about boiling frogs is, they all end up cooked. Demand leaders with integrity, not these imposters.

What’s the point of having all of them? If we really need to reduce costs, why aren’t we cutting some of those positions instead of the people actually doing the work?

Half the company could disappear tomorrow if we just removed everyone who only goes to meetings and relays updates. Let the ones who actually do the work run things for a change.

If you are full of ideas and energy, this might not be the place for you. The system here slows everything down with endless layers of approval. Unless you have friends in high spots, your voice will never reach the right people. You are better off taking that drive somewhere that lets you actually build something. Exxon is not it.

We're drowning in management layers. Every issue gets passed up the chain until nothing actually gets done. They talk about being efficient, but you have a dozen people giving orders and no one helping. The pay structure is all over the place and new hires are completely lost. How did we even reach this point?

So GK sends an email outlining all the super ideas garnered from surveying 1800 leaders to discuss efficiencies, communication improvements, etc. Is she completely unaware that she is talking to the people that are the problem? Why not take a page out of Jane Fraser's book at Citibank and get rid of the layer upon layer of redundant middle managers that clog up the system here. I mean really, "Bureaucracy Busters," c'mon now. These people you're talking to are the bureaucracy. Get a clue.

Just look at the sheer volume of IT GR10s + with their report or dashboard’s broken with bad data asking some poor Engineer about their wrong data. What a waste of time. Why are these people employed? LBT fixed nothing

they use big words for anything, but when it comes to actually do something which would help like using right tools for the job -- nope, not northstar or you have to fill 10 different forms each with 5+ folks to approve and 10+ questions with links more links and ... you just give up.

Seriously it feels like its some sitcom about state owned company where you have to "know" somebody or pay someone to actually be able to work.

My daily work is constant fight with people who bring 0 value and just create problems causing anyone with good will to quit ASAP..

Sadly 90% of devs does not have clue how real tools look like, 9% probably know, but they give up and sooner or later they quit.

1% is stupid enough like me are trying to work normally, but its just too frustrating... so I either turn into 9% zombies or quit when I can get same money elsewhere.

With all the new VPs, SVPs, AVPs, etc., we are so top heavy. No wonder we have a partnership with Dollywood!

Create unnecessary bureaucracy, hamper innovation and significantly slow down decision making.

You start excited and five years later you’re wondering what even happened. It’s all meetings and bureaucracy, zero growth, and no one seems to notice whether you’re actually good at your job. Definitely not what I signed up for.

Every time a new manager shows up, they seem to invent a new layer of bureaucracy to prove they’re adding value. What it means in reality is endless forms, meetings, and progress reports that make the actual work harder to do. Simplicity is a foreign word to all of them.

Every decision needs ten approvals, processes are unnecessarily complicated, and I spend half my day putting out fires I didn’t create. I was hired to innovate, not babysit broken systems. I'm shocked Visa ever needs layoffs considering how many are walking away from this mess voluntarily.

When I worked at Fannie 10+ years ago, there was the Manager->Director->VP hierarchy. Now when I check LinkedIn, there's Manager, Senior Manager, Director, Senior Director. And a lot more people appear to have those titles. Why did they make that change? Seems like too many managers and directors.

This isn't meant to jab at anyone...honestly, just want opinions on the CM3s MLs etc.
Has this extra level of management made working in the stores, getting books and things done easier or more complicated?

Everyone is just obsessed with opening JIRA stories and tracking useless metrics all the time; there is no real work being done and just paper being pushed to show that something is being done

Business and stakeholders treat PMs like their servants ("you work for us, stop thinking and follow what we tell you to do"). Work on meaningless projects that leads to absolutely zero outcomes.

No wonder there are no good products or things coming out of here and the stock will trend to zero over time

JF talked abt RTO to counter China's 996 culture... 9am to 9pm; 6 days/ week. Meanwhile, Ford land's facilities people are busy harrasing employees by pasting "clean this space" notes on non-assigned cubes. Hello ---- who is supposed to do it... space is not assigned to anyone. They seem to enjoy their new found policing authority !! Ford Land is responsible for lack of proper RTO planning. Rest rooms are mess. Garbage bins removed to reduce the workload. Cleaning personnel seen chit chatting near coffee machines most of the day. Ford Land is a mis-managed organizatioin. So much for Customer Focus and work ethics. They need to administer an employee survey dedicated for facilities related work-experience. Instead, Ford Land leaders come to townhalls Q&A, and brag about their great RTO execution.

Be honest, how many of the corporate initiatives you’ve been asked to work on are pointless? Reflecting back on the last few years, I’m embarrassed at the amount of work I’ve put into corporate initiatives that are either completely pointless, or totally ineffective. Most of these have either been quietly abandoned or performatively kept alive. For me, it’s nearly all of them. And frankly, it’s affects how I approach current initiatives. I do as I’m told, but don’t really care about the actual quality, since I know it’ll be dead in 12-18 months any way.