#communication

There’s a strange tendency online and in workplaces for people to build entire narratives about others from very little actual information.

Not everyone who’s quiet is antisocial. Not every awkward interaction means something sinister. And not every rumor deserves to grow into a story people repeat as fact.

At some point, common sense and basic fairness should matter more than assumptions.

I’ve had a difficult year personally and professionally, and one thing I’ve learned is how damaging speculation can become when people stop communicating directly and start projecting motives onto others.

I’m not interested in drama, conflict, or relitigating anything publicly. I just think people should be more careful about assigning labels to others they don’t actually know, have never come into contact with and never met or spoken. Freaking ridiculous and inhumane.

If Iran severs the internet cables in the deep water as they have threatened, what does that mean for companies in the US. Would India be cut off from US. I can't imagine the chaos that would create for companies. Most of our servers hosting GIT and other development applications are here in the US. That would pretty much cut them off, as well as others, from really being productive and who knows for how long that would last for. Is this our achilles heal. Are we foolishly offshoring work.

I love how my project team is in Houston India Manila and BA. How the F are we supposed to accomplish anything.

Nike is in the middle of Founder’s Week and JDI Day is right around the corner. Now leadership wants to talk about inflection points, comebacks, legacy, courage, effort, and getting back to what made Nike great. I get the history. I get the speech. I get what they are trying to do. But from the floor, it hits different.

It is hard to hear “we are going to be fine” when the people making the biggest decisions still have titles, stock, bonuses, protection, and seats at the table. Regular teammates are the ones wondering what is next. We are wondering if raises are coming, what PSP will look like, and if we are really safe or just still here for now.

People keep saying, “At least you didn’t get laid off.” I understand what they mean, and I am not trying to minimize what teammates who were laid off are going through. Losing a job is serious. It affects families, bills, insurance, and peace of mind. But at the same time, it is hard to act like everything is okay for the people who remain.

From what I understand, some teammates who were laid off were kept on the books for a while, some received severance, and in many cases there was COBRA or some kind of transition support. That still does not make being laid off easy, but at least there was a next step. For the people still here, there has not been much clear communication. No real talk about PSP. No clear talk about raises. No clear talk about long-term stability. We are just expected to keep showing up, keep producing, keep adjusting, and be grateful because we were not cut. That does not feel like security. It feels like being minimized.

The floor has been doing the work. Teammates across all shifts have been doing the work. Production teams, support teams, trainers, technicians, leads, and everybody keeping things moving have been doing the work. People are running lines, hitting numbers, solving problems, training others, covering gaps, answering questions, fixing issues, and keeping product moving while trying to understand decisions we had no voice in.

So when leadership talks about fixing what needs fixing, I agree. But accountability should not stop at the floor. The people closest to the work should not always be the ones left carrying the weight from decisions made above us.

The timing of all this feels strange. Founder’s Week is happening. JDI Day is coming. Big speeches. Big messages. Big legacy talk. Meanwhile, a lot of regular teammates are sitting with uncertainty. People show up to these events because they want to belong. They want to believe in the company. They want to be part of something bigger. I respect that. But I also think some people do not fully see how much weight is being carried by the people with the least power.

I do not need more inspiration right now. I need real communication. I need transparency. I need leadership to explain what is actually being fixed and show that they understand the weight this puts on everyday teammates, not just the brand, the stock price, or the comeback story.

Nike talks about doing the work. The floor has been doing the work. All shifts have been doing the work. Now leadership needs to do the harder work too. Be transparent. Be accountable. Explain the plan. Stop acting like people should be quiet just because they survived the last round.

The comeback cannot just be a message from the top. It has to show up in how people are treated.

Will anyone tell us please how long this job restructuring will affect this loss of jobs? Its like the company frozen? I am stuck in job reassignment for being burned out by the call center. No one has said anything. Im tired of the lapse of communication between upper management and us. If someone can anonymously say something here about when this job restructuring will end, please do. I cant take waiting anymore. Its like they want us to quitml.

Well? Were they told?

What was the Trust in Leadership score this time? I didn't see it in Gina's email. Did it go up or down?

It felt completely stripped of any clear message or real leadership. It looked like it was generated completely with AI or rewritten so many times by HR that there was absolutely no purpose to it. No numbers, no changes, no future. How did NetApp lose so many important people while the entire leadership team stays onboard?

Glad that George also got a $15M raise yesterday for all his hard work: https://www.stocktitan.net/sec-filings/NTAP/form-4-net-app-inc-insider-trading-activity-d08f092e431a.html

Our staff meetings are a joke. A lot of words, no substance and acting like everything is great. How are your “leaders” handling your teams staff meetings, given nobody knows Dan’s master plan?

At least 22 teachers were laid off from ChiArts. This happened during its transition to Chicago Public Schools management. Affected teachers had to reapply for their jobs. Staff members report poor communication from new leadership. The school's unique model and remaining positions face an uncertain future.

Chicago, Illinois

https://blockclubchicago.org/2026/05/20/chiarts-teachers-parents-sound-alarm-on-layoffs-as-cps-takes-over/

What should I expect?

All hands ? What is that deal with that

Writing was on the wall.
Was waiting for the failures to stack as I remember being on the VAR side and not even being able to communicate with anyone at Atlassian unless I provided them with what seemed like a Wikipedia full of details to just receive a call back (I'm not d-mb...they want all the info to take lead and minimize leverage for the VAR contact)
Well...in a fast moving environment like tech/software/security...there are alternatives/competitors who make it easier to partner and deal with.
I could only imagine what support is like for customers once they are trapped.
The 800 # and those 3 layers deep...horrendous (I got better outcomes calling fast food places with questions).

funny how hard they would push them and now they've been quiet about it for almost a full year

When, where, and number of affected workers would go a long way to allying fears and improving mental health as well.

It would also dispel rumors of large layoffs and improve optics with the media.

https://howtocenterdiv.com/beyond-the-div/nobody-pushed-back

Every major architectural disaster has the same structure underneath: there's a technical, visible problem, someone — usually more than one person — can see it, but pushing back costs something, so the decision passes under the name of "alignment" and eventually the system breaks.

TLDR: Most architectural disasters aren't a knowledge problem. The engineers knew. Speaking up just wasn't worth it.

Were all the teams notified of the 10% cuts?? Or are there still notifications to hit this week?

It's always amusing seeing Fran suddenly go quiet on LinkedIn when layoffs are announced, laying low, before she can return to posting about how people driven her company is

Were there calls held with various teams about the upcoming layoffs? Was it only a Directors call only, AD call, or were the calls held with the teams potentially affected. I am in an affected group per these post but was not invited to any call Friday.

It's been so helpful when managers explain processes in this debacle. It's a risk for them to do so, but it is much appreciated. The struggle here is real, your perspective is invaluable.

Somebody posted under the Gas Prices thread that a memo went out regarding a change in the WFH schedule for Burlington due to insufficient parking for CFS employees. I did not get this message. Can anybody confirm this? What is the change and when does it start?

Did everyone get the meeting to discuss the state of the business on June 4th

Manager here - I have not heard one bit about PEGA. Was this rolled out only to certain states/plans or roles? I'd assume if it was implemented in my area I would have heard at least rumblings from others in management or something formal but also who knows...

It makes HCSC look stupid. Just wow.
A healthcare company that doesn't sweat the details when communicating with 30 million people.
Stupid.

Economic opportunity is one of the societal issues of our time, and Linkedin has been and will continue to be the platform that professionals and companies turn to as they navigate the changing world of work. For us to meet this moment, we must ready ourselves to deliver a step change in impact across our products, businesses, and platforms, while continuing to operate more profitably. We need to reinvent how we work, with agile teams focused on our highest priorities, and by shifting investments toward areas such as infrastructure to fulfill our mission and vision over the long term. This requires hard prioritization and tradeoffs.

Today I'm sharing the difficult decision that I, along with our leadership team, have made to reduce roles across GBO, Marketing, Engineering and Product. If you are impacted, or proposed to be impacted in EMEA & APAC, by these changes, you will receive a calendar invite to a notification meeting within the next hour. For impacted teams, you'll learn more about your org-specific information from your leaders shortly, and updates will be added to go/CompanyExchange throughout today.

In addition to role reductions, we are scaling back investments in some areas including marketing campaigns, vendor spend, customer events, and underutilized office space, so we can focus teams on priorities that have the broadest impact with the highest ROl. You will receive details about these changes from respective functional leaders.

I want to acknowledge and thank those who will be leaving Linkedin. You have helped build LinkedIn's culture and platform into what it is today, and I hope you are proud of the lasting impact your work will continue to have on our members, customers, and colleagues.
For those staying, first and foremost, I would like to invite you to support our impacted colleagues. We will move forward together with focus and clear priorities to reach our potential as the platform that the world's professionals and companies increasingly turn to.

Thank you, again, to our teammates who are departing, and to everyone across LinkedIn who continues to show up and support each other.

Dan

BCC: All Global Employees

Cengage (and all textbook companies) have a major culture problem. These aren’t serious people. Everyone outside the companies talks about it.

What they deem as productivity measurements are distractions disguised as productivity. Constant Slack check ins by managers with emojis like a parent checking in on their children, the million Slack channels that are created, the utter useless salesforce boxes that have to be checked- and they wonder why they have stagnant growth. Teams Meetings that could be emails where everyone is in the chat sending gifs, getting asked immature d-mb questions and they want you to put your answer in the chat. Absolutely NONE of these items drive growth or productivity. It’s a culture of immaturity that are checking boxes that make them look like they are working and contributing. The hours wasted are immeasurable.

Everyone knew Slack was a massive distraction and doesn’t drive growth or sales 10 years ago. It should be used for acute things, not on the daily. Always behind the curve.

Every week: new awareness mail, new policy, new mandatory training, new dashboard screenshot. Engineers asked for AI acceleration - instead they got Outlook copilots managing Copilot.

Has anyone got any clarity on this?
Like from FTS HR?

My contract states hybrid, but there's legal ease in there... I really can't go in full-time and would not have taken or applied for a full-time in-office role since it is not feasible for me. Worst case, I could ask my FTS and let folks on here know what I hear...

But FTS is most of the time beyond useless and just gives you a vagus runaround on things.

Any word on this being reverted? Do they actually care about our attendance? What the heck is going on and why wont they talk to us.

So what are the core hours you are supposed to be in the office? Execs have a tantrum if it just so happens people are in a meeting in another room or they are walking in at 8:30 and no one is in yet. What is the expectation?

Is it a bad sign when the Man you work for does not want you to communicate with your teammates on M.S. teams?

Is it really tracked by badge swipes?????

Looks like nothing is happening. We live to stress another day.

Watched the SAP Sapphire keynote. Embarrassing.

Speaker after speaker, palpable stage fright. Forced enthusiasm, unnatural pauses, reading slides like middle school presentations. You'd think a $30B+ company would invest in actual public speaking coaches, not just PowerPoint designers.

How you say it matters more than what you say. Every awkward "game-changing!" inflection ki-ls credibility faster than a missed quarterly target. Audiences aren't stupid. We see the anxiety. We feel the disconnect.
This wasn't visionary leadership. It was a $500k production budget wasted on executives who can't connect human-to-human.

Fire the presentation trainers. Hire actual speech coaches.
SAP sells trust at enterprise scale. Start with your keynotes.

Pretty much sums up corporate planning and ideas. Maybe people would forgive our mistakes, if we offer 40 channels on the CB ?

Yeah ….Right good Buddy …

At Western Union, the vibe has changed completely over the past few months. Teams are thinner, expectations are higher, and there’s a lot of silence from management after recent internal emails.

...or any information on how the requirements even work with VDIs. Does connecting to the VDI on a personal machine from USB wifi so we can use conference rooms count? Or only the thin-client through the Ethernet from the desk? Are we supposed to claim a desk when we're at the office even if we don't use it for tracking purposes? Who knows.

How is the world can we be held to these numbers when they won't even communicate to us how it works. This is basic leadership 101 stuff. Unprofessional and unethical.

Why is it so difficult engage with the executive during the town hall? So much skirting around. Just get straight to the point.

I've been here long enough that I've lost count of how many times I've raised the same concerns. Bad communication, broken processes, terrible leadership decisions. Every time, I think maybe this time they'll listen. Every time, nothing changes. And somehow, the act of complaining never gets old. Maybe it's because the problems are still there, or maybe it's because complaining is the only thing that reminds me I'm not crazy for being frustrated.