#collaboration

Return to office, a fresh new start,
A chance to reconnect, to share, to spark.
The hum of voices, ideas in flight,
Collisions of minds that just feel right.

No more the silence of screens alone,
But laughter and teamwork, fully grown.
Quick chats that turn into something more,
Innovation waiting behind each door.

Morning routines with purpose and pace,
Seeing determination on every face.
A shared momentum, a collective drive,
Where goals feel closer, ambitions thrive.

So here’s to the days we gather again,
Colleagues as more than names on a screen.
Together we build, create, and inspire
In the office glow, we rise even higher.

https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/technology/articles/ibm-announces-strategic-collaboration-arm-040100144.html

This is far more strategic than first appears as it gives Enterprise customers options while feeding IBM’s strategy of buying SW innovations.

1. It grows IBM’s Mainframe moat for the Fortune 500 - 1000 (expands the mainframe monopoly)
2. It opens up SW acquisition opportunities thus allowing IBM to expand its distribution model while also shrinking IBM’s legacy SW in house development model

What happened to this place? We used to collaborate, now it’s every team for itself. No one shares anything, everyone hoards information like it gives them an edge. Do people actually think that’s going to protect them or get them ahead? Is this seriously where we are now?

After riding out the usual industry cycles, one thing that keeps standing out is how the "We Lead" behaviors aren't just words on a slide deck. they actually shape how things get done day to day.

Even during last year's necessary adjustments, you could see it in action: leaders at every level stepping up with clear direction, owning outcomes, and keeping teams focused on what matters most. No panic, no mixed messages .. just steady, confident guidance that helped everyone stay aligned and move forward. It's the kind of strong leadership culture that turns tough moments into proof that the system works.
What's been especially noticeable since then is how things have sharpened and improved. The focus feels even tighter, collaboration is smoother, and there's a renewed energy around delivering results. Teams are moving faster with clearer priorities, and that consistent "We Lead" mindset: taking initiative, holding ourselves accountable, and supporting one another has really taken root in the day-to-day. It creates this quiet confidence and sense of shared purpose that makes the work feel more purposeful than ever.

Definitely one of the biggest reasons the Chevron culture feels special and worth staying for. Curious if others see the "We Lead" principles showing up the same way, especially in how the organization has come through stronger on the other side.

Rumors flying!

Get rid of teams. Back in office 4 days a week to collaborate. If I am taking / collaborating with Johnny, who is an Executive Director in Risk, Governance, Compliance, Regulatory Remediation for Credt, WIM,Corporate and Community banking who is an SME in RCSA, then my teams might be yellow for an hour. I am getting extremely valuable knowledge on how to be on calls all day long and filling out metric reports for people who look at those reports and challenge them with questions like “where do you get this data?”

You heard it here first!

Just like improving quality. Don’t hold your breath suppliers, you have heard this before.

In recent years, Ford hasn't exactly had the greatest relations with its suppliers - at least, according to the Plante Moran North American Automotive OEM - Supplier Working Relations Index (WRI) Study - as it ranked next to last among all OEMs in both 2024 and 2025. Then, last summer, The Blue Oval altered its contracts as a way to offset the impacts of tariffs - forcing suppliers to sign more stringent terms, ditch the ability to opt out of their contracts each year, and in exchange, they received new business and tariff cost relief.

Now, Ford is aiming to improve its challenged relations with suppliers, according to Crain's Detroit Business. At an annual event held late last month, Ford supply chief Liz Door reportedly told the company's suppliers that The Blue Oval intends to begin providing them with a three-year outlook for its vehicle plans, a move aimed at helping suppliers better plan for future launches, production volumes, and discontinuations.

This is a notable change given the fact that Ford suppliers have spent the last few years essentially not knowing what the automaker was planning to do, amid many powertrain strategy shifts - and it also signals that the automaker is more confident in its forthcoming plans as well. Additionally, Ford is launching what Door calls a “two-way scorecard” and a “help desk,” which are intended to “simplify and accelerate problem resolution” for suppliers.

“In response to supplier feedback, and as part of ongoing efforts to enhance transparency and strengthen trust, we plan to work closely with suppliers so they can optimize their own planning,” Door said. “This approach has the potential to simplify processes and drive improvements in overall quality, benefiting both Ford and our supplier network. Strengthening supplier relationships remains a core focus for Ford."

They keep selling us on collaboration and team work. Here’s the reality for many of us:

1. Our teams are spread out over many locations. Some of us are now forced to work alone in a small 4x4 cube surrounded by people we dont know or work with at all.

2. Being forced to sit in a small cube constantly distracted by loud employees from other orgs is not collaboration. It's distractive and annoying

3. I waste 15 hours every week driving to a building where the quality of my work is suffering

4. More sick days. I'm constantly surrounded by sick people. I never used my sick time WFH. Now I will use them to their full availability

5. I used to work more than 40 hours WFH because it was convenient and I felt obligated due to being allowed to WFH. That ended with RTO. I'm not going the extra mile any more for a company that treats me like a child and babysitting service, while lying to me about collaboration and RTO

6. I have spoken to so many employees who already have one foot out the door. As soon as the economy switches back to a more friendly employee environment, schwab is going to lose a lot of talent

Nobody likes working for this company anymore. I dont know of a single employee who happy at schwab now. Walt and now Rick have turned this place into a soulless, stale company that only cares about the stock price where the executives get fat stock options and bonuses.

Burn em up. Spend as many AI tokens as humanly possible. Analyze all your repos and generate charts and docs etc. Basically you have a free pass to burn as many tokens as possible. Collectively we all have a responsibility to spend as much AI dollars that Oracle has. So don’t be shy about your use of AI. Use it everywhere and for everything. Oracle will pay the bill in the end after all.

Weird, never seen them hire so many employees and managers, they say it's in anticipation of a huge surge in work

Can you name a team who is most difficult to work with ? Basically nothing can be done with this team.
Keeps on adding friction to others work and won’t deliver anything by themselves.

We have no cash and no money and yet we are spending money on travel and accommodation like we are high rollers even though the tools to collaborate are good. Service Delivery leaders and the Reaper do a WW tour every month (why?) Our CMO recently did a world tour including Lexington (and didn’t even present) and APAC (why?) Our Head of Global Accounts travels for 3 days for a half-day check-in with clients (why? Nothing changes and no new revenue) And our EC Chief Revenue Officer has to move to New York from Europe (why?)

This YouTube video describes Canon perfectly, as well as most large corporations.

Don’t believe the “collaboration & innovation” propaganda, it’s all about cost savings and making you miserable.

Rules for thee, not for me!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_p7W3g3UVg

RTO = More collaboration, problem solving and networking which leads to better raises, bonuses and career opportunities. All of which are raises.

I am working on a Gen ai product and I have a meeting to demo that to the HIH team and the contractors. I have worked hard on the project and looks like the team in HIH wants to takeover? Idk. What to do?

Return to office policies feel disconnected from how many teams actually work now. A lot of teams are spread across different cities and countries. Even when people sit in the same building, most of their meetings are still on video calls. The day ends up looking exactly like a remote workday, except people had to commute to do it.

It creates a strange situation... Now, peeps spend time and money getting to the office just to log into virtual meetings anyway. The actual work process does not change much. Communication tools, documents, and collaboration ALL still happn online. At that point the office becomes more symbolic than practical, and people start questioning what the real purpose of the policy is.

Companies that operate with a hub-based workforce model should align their teams geographically rather than scattering small numbers of employees across multiple states. When the majority of a department or function is concentrated in a primary hub, it makes operational, financial, and collaborative sense to place the entire team in that same location instead of maintaining one or two employees in various other states.

First, collaboration and communication improve significantly when teams are centralized. Even in remote environments, employees located within the same region or hub tend to share similar, leadership structures, and workplace culture. When teams are spread out as “one here and two there,” those individuals often become disconnected from the main group, making collaboration less efficient and creating unnecessary communication barriers.

Second, centralizing teams supports stronger leadership and accountability. Managers can more effectively support employees when their teams are structured in a clear and cohesive way. When a handful of employees are placed outside the main hub, they may receive less consistent oversight, mentorship, and integration into team processes. Bringing employees together in the dominant hub location creates clearer reporting structures and stronger team cohesion.

Third, there are cost and operational efficiencies. Supporting employees in multiple states often introduces additional administrative complexity such as payroll compliance, state-specific regulations, and HR management differences. Consolidating teams in the primary hub reduces these complexities and allows resources to be focused where the company already has the strongest infrastructure.

Finally, a hub model should actually function like a hub. The purpose of a hub is to concentrate talent, resources, and collaboration in one central location. Maintaining scattered employees across various states contradicts the very concept of a hub structure and weakens the benefits that such a model is intended to provide.

For these reasons, companies that promote a hub-based workforce strategy should ensure that teams are largely located within the same primary hub rather than distributing small numbers of employees across multiple states where they operate in isolation from the core teams.

Dont let anyone help you or steal your work; you might be next. Hide, squirrel those files away! Yes mangers are doing this too.

GL to anyone tagged to transformation / CO work in a HCOL

Get back in the office for collaboration better results. Head of US business segment, ELT member that doesn’t apply to you. You can live in a different country.

Us together is better. We must return to the office to increase collaboration. Whoever created the new seating assignments didn't make any effort to keep teams together. Collaboration with anyone BUT your own team. What a joke and an embarrassment for leadership. Rather than fixing it, they doubled down! Who's in charge of the CF $hit$how?!

Yes, I know it's been a year and change but it's pointless for some of us. I get the RTO for certain teams I suppose but for those who are on teams/orgs that are literally GLOBAL it makes zero sense.

I drive an hour to work daily only to "collaborate" IN PERSON, with ONE person whom lives 15 mins from the office. What do we collaborate on, you ask? Absolutely fkn nothing! Unless you count gossip, and bi--hing about Dell as collaborating, anyways...

Oh but then, we have to join VIRTUAL meetings because 99% of the team is... remote or in fkn Europe, or other parts of the USA!

I just love driving 320 miles/week and tolls to go sit next to a coworker for 10 hours/week, though. If I know he's not going in or is on PTO, I don't go in. At the very minimum I make the drive and coffee badge because f that bs. I get every bit as much work done at home while playing video games all day than I do sitting in the office watching netflix on my phone.

I have seen team after team's work get stolen by ireland or India, and then those teams dismantled.

US employees, when your team starts interacting with ireland or india in anyway way, know that their goal is to acquire your work so that your job can be eliminated.

I saw 2 teams in rx last week that developed a system, and slowly brought in the Irish, those entire us teams were eliminated on Friday.

Do NOT cooperate with ireland at any cost. Don't respond to their emails, don't assist them, etc...

I'm a LL6 in a very tech-heavy area of Ford. Often times, I feel like there are cultural issues where India coworkers don't listen to anybody who isn't above them on a pay grade (i.e. a LL6 won't listen unless instructed by a LL5 or higher). They also feel like it's okay to get in your face and try to micromanage you even if they're not your boss, not to mention their accents are very difficult for the average American to understand. I've seen many conflicts between American and Indian colleagues on the same projects, likely stemming from differences in cultural norms on work collaboration.

Anybody else feel this way?

Executives are coming for our jobs and we have to come together to stop it. We need a white collar union!

In high-trust societies, people assume good intent. Information flows freely. Collaboration feels natural. In low-trust systems, the opposite happens: people protect themselves first. Energy shifts from building to guarding.

Consider modern Russia. Decades of opacity and centralized control have cultivated widespread skepticism toward institutions. Citizens often rely on private networks rather than public systems. Information is filtered. Incentives are distorted. When trust erodes, talent adapts by becoming cautious, political, and self-protective.

Our corporate environment shows similar warning signs. Competitive ranking systems pit colleagues against each other. Information becomes currency. Feedback is filtered for safety rather than truth. Instead of asking, “How do we win together?” people ask, “How do I avoid losing?” Innovation slows because risk feels dangerous. Collaboration weakens because vulnerability feels unsafe.

Over time, this trajectory leads to silos, quiet disengagement, and eventually mediocrity. High performers optimize for optics. Emerging leaders learn to manage perception instead of outcomes. Trust, once depleted, is expensive to rebuild.

If we continue reinforcing internal competition over shared success, we shouldn’t be surprised when initiative declines and politics rise (and one may say that we are already there). But the reverse is also true: when trust increases, performance compounds.

The future of our company will not be determined by strategy alone, but by whether we choose fear-based competition or trust-based collaboration. We sit in a moment when the system to identify future Management is hindering the ability to run the organization. Perhaps its time to not burden the majority of the organization with PDS classifications and let them operate with a stable performance reward system. No system is great but we sit in a time of history where a credible change is necessary.

The official currency of “collaboration”

Backed by real assets:
• Badge swipes
• Commute exhaustion
• And that one empty desk you finally found at 9:17am

Consensus mechanism: Proof of Presence.
Work done from laptop at home = imaginary.
Same work done from laptop in a loud, freezing open floor plan on a Teams call = shareholder value.

Utility features include:
• 100-mile daily commute burn rate
• No assigned seating battle royale
• “Collaboration” with a team scattered across three time zones
• Logging into virtual meetings… from the office
• Productivity throttled by noise and fluorescent lighting

Tokenomics:
• 5-day mandatory lockup (upgraded from 3 after “listening to feedback”)
• Top talent automatically migrates to competitors
• Remaining supply consists of people too tired to update LinkedIn
• Missing McKinsey culture survey results exist on the chain

Whitepaper highlights:
“Culture through compliance”
“Trustless architecture”
“Results secondary to attendance”
“Loyalty is dead-dead”
“Macro conditions responsible for everything”
“Market-based Mayhem”

Mining rewards:
• Pizza slices
• Wellness webinars
• Inspirational emails about resilience

Quarterly earnings integration:
Solid metrics = proof the model works
Stock down double digits since mandate = totally unrelated
Buybacks at higher prices = visionary capital allocation

Roadmap:
Phase 1 – Announce bold future
Phase 2 – Double down
Phase 3 – Talent drain labeled ‘normal attrition’
Phase 4 – Strategic reset

Final Act:
🚨 Executive liquidity event 🚨
Golden parachutes unlock and Rug-Pull.
$COLLAB insiders exit at peak compensation.
Employees left holding five-day lockups, commuting bills, and coffee machine credits.

$COLLAB Coin — because if we can’t measure value creation, we’ll just monetize misery.

Diamond hands required. Remote wallets permanently banned.

“This February, something big is coming. A moment that reminds us why coming together matters, and why our work has meaning far beyond the walls we walk through each day.

On Feb. 25 at 9:00 a.m. CT, we gather for our first Optum Insight Town Hall of 2026. Picture the feeling right before the opening ceremony of the Olympics. The lights lower. The music builds. Teams from around the world step forward with one mission, one goal and one shared purpose.

That’s us.

As one global team, we will come together to celebrate who we are and what we stand for. Trust. Discipline. Teamwork. The power of many moving with one shared purpose.

This year will demand focus, courage, and collaboration. This Town Hall is our rallying point. Our chance to reconnect. To look ahead. To feel the energy of what we can accomplish together.

Get ready. The spotlight is warming. The music is rising. And our story for 2026 is about to begin.”

The writing’s on the wall. That’s all, folks.

After all the talk of AI, re-orgs, non performant BUs the time for talking will end next week.
Hearing Collab is heading for a 20% haircut which is long overdue. Will be targeted mostly at high cost locations.

https://apple.news/AB3GL7V95R7qXMGPLPTdnqw

I forgot my laptop at home and didn’t realize it until I got to the office. It’s kind of hilarious how there’s literally no work to do without it. No systems. No tools. Nothing.

Which exposes the flaw in the whole RTO and “collaboration” argument. If presence alone created value, being here would still matter without a laptop. But it doesn’t. All the actual work still happens digitally, exactly the same way it does at home.

If the office adds no functional capability beyond what a laptop provides, then forcing people to commute just to open the same apps on a different desk defeats the entire purpose.

Quantum is coming, just keep waiting. . .

https://www.barrons.com/articles/ibm-quantum-computing-research-nvidia-amd-0dd74344

By: Mackenzie Tatananni
Updated Jan 29, 2026, 12:26 pm EST / Original Jan 29, 2026, 12:01 am EST

It might seem natural to pit the capabilities of quantum computers—often touted as the next big technology—against today’s supercomputers. But scientists have a different, more collaborative vision for the future.

Rather than outright replacing classical machines, quantum systems will likely be built on top of existing architecture to enable more powerful computations.

This perspective was captured in new research from International Business Machines, which showed how classical graphics processing units, or GPUs, from leading chip makers could work alongside quantum processors to execute problems faster.

“It’s important for the world to see that quantum computers aren’t just these things that [will] replace your computers,” Jerry Chow, IBM’s chief technology officer of quantum-centric supercomputing, said in an interview with Barron’s. “They’re really part of the entire computing infrastructure.”

Two papers co-authored by IBM researchers detailing the results were posted to Cornell University’s arXiv, a research-sharing platform for papers that have yet to be peer-reviewed.

The first paper showed how GPUs from Advanced Micro Devices, contained within the Frontier supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, could be combined with IBM’s Heron processor to model complex chemical systems and provide a 100-time speedup over central processing units, or CPUs.

“It’s a notoriously difficult problem for classical computers,” Chow explained. “But we know now, there’s a part of these chemistry problems which are best handled on the quantum computer.”

Follow-up work with Riken, a Japanese research institute, was showcased in the second paper. The study showed how the same chemical systems could be modeled on IBM quantum computers for an additional 20% increase in performance when using a new algorithmic approach on Nvidia chips.

“Overall, they’re all supporting the same narrative, that the future of computing is quantum-centric,” Chow said. As he sees it, it’s the next logical step in a continuous evolution of technology.

Classical GPUs have already proven their prowess at one type of math. The chips perform calculations by breaking large problems into thousands of simpler tasks that are processed simultaneously, through a method called parallel processing.

Meanwhile, quantum processors harness the properties of quantum mechanics, which makes them best suited for complex modeling tasks. This explains why most quantum research consists of some kind of modeling problem—and why quantum is expected to have an outsize impact in the areas of dr-g discovery and materials science.

Classical processors are “the technology behind everything that we see today with language models and training and inference and so forth,” according to Chow.

It’s impossible to rule out a distant future “where everything is all based off the same kind of technology,” he added. “But at least from what we’ve seen with how supercomputing has evolved in the last 10 to 15 years, it’s all about composable pieces.”

Jay Gambetta, who oversees IBM’s research effort, shared a similar view in an earlier interview with Barron’s. “We’re imagining a heterogeneous accelerating framework that connects quantum and classical compute,” Gambetta explained during a tour of IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center in October.

Much of IBM’s past research has incorporated hybrids of quantum and classical computing. In September, computers running on IBM’s Heron processor worked alongside bit-based machines to perform a bond trading problem.

One month earlier, IBM and AMD unveiled a formal collaboration to develop quantum-centric supercomputers. The partners indicated they were exploring ways for AMD chips to control errors on IBM’s quantum processors, which could advance IBM’s efforts to develop fault-tolerant quantum computers by the end of the decade.

Crucially, the latest results demonstrate that real-world applications of quantum computers are just a step away.

“We have a number of partners who already have clusters of supercomputers that they know how to access,” Chow said. “To them, it’s like, ‘Now I have the keys to a brand-new car, let me see what I can do with it and how I can work it in with what I’ve been doing.’”

IBM shares climbed 6.8% on Thursday, bolstered by strong quarterly earnings. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell 1.9%. So far this year, IBM has gained 6.1%, outstripping a 0.7% gain for the index.

Last week’s snow related remote work has shown what flexibility actually delivers. Without long commutes and constant office disruption, productivity increases, work gets completed faster, and people are willing to put in more time because they have the capacity to do so. That does not happen under a rigid five day office mandate.

Five days in the office adds cost and friction without measurable gains. Real collaboration can happen in two to three days when needed, which is already the market standard. For distributed teams, forced presence changes nothing except morale.

Talent has already responded. High performers with options have left. Those who remain are disengaging. The employee survey made this clear.

As a communications company, forcing presence while selling “work from anywhere” is a strategic contradiction. Remote work for office roles is inevitable. The only question is whether we lead or fall behind.

So i told my manager I went home because there was no place to sit. The answer is to look at different days where not as many people are there. So we are supposed to go in to the office to collaborate with people but we are supposed to pick days when people aren’t there. Make it make sense.

Wednesday marks the 3rd straight day of WFH for Dallas. How, oh how have I been able to get my job done the last two days without all this inspired collaboration Stankey envokes?

This leadership team is failed. From L3 up to the highest level, including that joke of a BoD. Many of the “leaders”, if they are honest with you or themselves, don’t believe in this direction. They’re just hoping there’s enough cash to not bounce payroll.

I better see MW and MN in the office tomorrow regardless of the weather because we’re all BETTER TOGETHER!!

With this historic storm in Pittsburgh - I wonder if he and his minions are going to be in office tomorrow?? He said he hasn’t missed a day and the parking garages will be empty :((

We shouldn’t risk one day of no collaboration! Work from home is bad!!!!!

After years of productive remote work, I was dragged back to the dog bone farm, and let me tell you, it’s been a total letdown.
All I see are groups of people clustering together, chatting away in their own language, and yapping on their phones right in the middle of work hours. Meanwhile, the rest of us are trying to focus and get stuff done, but the constant noise and exclusionary vibe is overwhelming.
It’s disappointing and downright discouraging. How are we supposed to collaborate or feel like a team when it’s all cliques and distractions? Anyone else dealing with this?