#culture

The last Reorg is a massive failure, very poorly planned and executed, they will pay the price soon. Layoffs are being done in the wrong places. Instead of constant reorgs that don't work why don't you layoff all the sycophant leadership who created these strategic blunders to occur and leave the alone the IC, you will need them to rescue your org. Once you have done that look into the current ICs for talent who have vision and creativity that can lead to true innovation and not just sychophants who will do as they are told. Nah instead you will make one or two changes, shuffle around some people, but keep the same id--ts in place. Congratulations you have not changed.

There is a real disconnect between what leadership believes is happening. What is being reported to leadership is happening. What is really happening.

Seems like an exodus is still occurring. Never will be the company it used to be.

I’m a manager in an area that had layoffs this year. Now when you bring up issues, our leaders say we should be quiet and thankful we have a job. Leading through threats is now normal? This place is toxic.

Billionaire Michael Dell's "generous" donation to children's investment accounts is just another front in the deep state's war on self-reliance, and I have the conspiracy theories to prove it.
In a shocking turn of events that has absolutely nothing to do with the deep state’s insidious plot to indoctrinate our youth, billionaire Michael Dell has announced a $6.25 billion “donation” to fund so-called “Trump Accounts” for children. Coincidence? I think not. Let’s break this down, folks—because if you’re not questioning this, you’re already asleep at the wheel.

First off, “Trump Accounts”? Really? That’s what they’re calling them now? I’m sure the name is just a happy accident and not at all a calculated move to make conservatives warm up to what is clearly a socialist wealth redistribution scheme. $250 per kid? That’s barely enough to buy a single share of GameStop, and we all know the elites don’t want your kids learning about the free market. They’d rather they grow up dependent on government handouts—or in this case, billionaire handouts.

And let’s talk about the income cutoff: $150,000. That’s suspiciously specific. Why not $149,999? Because they needed a round number to hide the fact that this is really about tracking families. Mark my words, this is just another way for the globalists to catalog who’s “middle class” and who’s not. Next thing you know, they’ll be implanting microchips in these accounts—wait, actually, that’s probably already in the fine print.

But here’s the real kicker: 80% of Texas ZIP codes qualify. EIGHTY PERCENT. Folks, that’s not generosity—that’s an admission that the economy is rigged. If 80% of families are making under $150,000, then who’s hoarding all the money? Oh right, the same people “donating” it back to us like some kind of twisted charity tax write-off. Wake up, sheeple!

And of course, the urban elites in Austin, Dallas, and Houston are mostly excluded. Convenient, isn’t it? The very cities where the tech overlords and government puppets live get to opt out of their own socialist experiment. Meanwhile, the rest of Texas gets a measly $250 per kid—probably in digital currency so they can phase out cash and control your spending.

This isn’t philanthropy. This is conditioning. They’re training the next generation to rely on handouts instead of hard work. And by the time these kids grow up, they’ll be so used to government (or billionaire) intervention that they won’t even question it. Well, I’m questioning it. And you should too. Because if there’s one thing the elites hate, it’s people who can still think for themselves. Stay vigilant, patriots. The tofu-pushing deep state is always watching.

Source: By Kevin Crowley, Bloomberg

The 140-year-old oil company is making more money than ever. Yet the pandemic exposed deep cultural problems—and talent is fleeing.

Shortly after Exxon Mobil Corp. lost its battle with an activist investor last year, an executive named Bill Keillor decided to give his department a morale boost. It had been a difficult year and a half for Exxon employees. Covid-19 and plunging crude prices had led to halted salary increases, reduced benefits, and, for the first time in decades, thousands of layoffs. Anxiety was coursing through the organization.

So Keillor, whose title is global IT vice president, and his leadership team organized an awards ceremony to take place at Exxon’s Houston campus. They posted an invite on Yammer, an internal social network, with Keillor’s face cropped onto a tuxedo. With many employees still working remotely, most tuned in via Zoom.

Keillor started by thanking everyone for their hard work over the past year, presented awards to three top-performing teams, and then opened the floor to questions. It was at this point things started to unravel, according to four people present who spoke on condition of anonymity. The software developers, data analysts, and technicians who run Exxon’s vast computing network, which helps the company manage everything from drilling wells to pipeline flows, were in no mood to celebrate. Emboldened by the virtual format, they began firing off tough questions. They wanted to know if there would be more layoffs, whether remote working would continue after the pandemic, and whether Exxon was willing to raise pay to the level of major tech companies.

To an outside observer, the scene might have appeared like a slightly tense version of your average corporate town hall. But within Exxon, famous for its top-down, buttoned-up, authoritarian culture, where employees rarely challenge their superiors, and certainly not in an open forum, the moment had the strong whiff of rebellion. As Keillor bristled, other managers stepped in to take some questions, deflecting attention from the boss. But eventually, Keillor had had enough and snapped.

If you want to be a “hotshot” and triple your pay working for Amazon, then go right ahead, the people recall him saying. “Good luck to you.”

Rather than be humbled by the scolding, staffers began circulating memes mocking the event in private chat groups, which rapidly spread across the company. One depicted a long-term career at Exxon as a car hurtling off a highway. Another compared the awards ceremony to a piece of tape used to patch a leaking barrel of water. Others suggested it was about time employees take Keillor up on his advice and quit.

A year and a half later, even as its stock surges again and Exxon makes more money than it has in its 140-year history, the company has experienced the highest attrition since its merger with Mobil in 1999. Of the 12,000 departures globally in the past two years, less than half were from layoffs. “Like nearly every company, attrition increased in the last two years, but we don’t see that as a long-term trend,” Exxon said in a statement. “Importantly, we are seeing good results when hiring top talent for roles throughout the company, at entry-level and for senior executive positions.”

But a Bloomberg Businessweek investigation involving interviews with more than 40 current and former employees (many of whom requested anonymity because Exxon hasn’t authorized them to speak publicly), as well as reviews of dozens of internal documents, reveals one overriding reason talent is fleeing: a culture that’s increasingly out of step with the world around it. Those interviewed describe an organization trapped in amber, whose insular and fear-based culture—once a beacon of corporate America—has become a drag on innovation, risk taking, and career satisfaction. Although many expressed pride at working for an industry leader, they were also frustrated by how slow it was to invest in some of the energy industry’s biggest breakthroughs over the past decade, including shale oil and low-carbon technologies, making it a place where the best and brightest no longer want to spend their best years. “I was bored at my job,” says Avery Smith, who earned more than $100,000 a year as a data scientist right after graduating from college and quit last year, echoing what many other former employees told Businessweek. “I was pretty fed up with not innovating.”

Exxon’s performance ranking system, which pits employees against each other, dominates the day to day. Subordinates are told not to speak out against their bosses in meetings for fear of being placed at the bottom of the rank and pushed out. Employees are reluctant to raise problems or speak freely about environmental issues. Senior managers too often promote people who look and sound like themselves at the expense of technical experts willing to deliver hard messages, and some employees of color say they’ve been marginalized. “Agreeability to senior leadership has become more important than capability,” says one executive who left the company last year after two decades. “Unfortunately this accelerated during the pandemic.”

Exxon spokesperson Amy von Walter rejects those characterizations. “The idea that ExxonMobil’s culture is what these employees say it is doesn’t hold water for two reasons: how many people join this company each year and how long people stay,” she wrote in an email. “No culture is perfect and it’s far too easy to take a few data points and paint with a broad brush, but that doesn’t produce an accurate portrait.” (In response to the Keillor episode, von Walter says Exxon encourages candid workplace conversations, “although we may not get it right every time.”)

But CultureX, an organization out of MIT that evaluates corporate culture based on Glassdoor reviews, says these problems run so deep that Exxon now ranks below industry benchmarks for 143 of the 196 cultural issues it measures. According to CultureX co-founder Charlie Sull, innovation, collaboration, and psychological safety fell far below those of oil industry competitors, whereas pay and benefits ranked above average. Exxon, he says, appears to be using remuneration and perks “to compensate for a culture that faces significant challenges with toxicity.”

Exxon, which traces its roots to John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, is used to being public enemy No. 1. It’s incurred the wrath of politicians and civil society for being too powerful, too profitable, and too polluting. But rarely has it suffered such discontent within its own ranks. “Upper management doesn’t like to hear bad news, so to stay at Exxon long term, you have to drink the Kool-Aid,” says Dar-Lon Chang, a mechanical engineer who left the company in 2019 after more than a decade. “This doesn’t sit well with younger people and especially those concerned about the climate crisis.”

Since losing the campaign to Engine No. 1, a tiny activist investor firm, Exxon has reformed its climate strategy. Under Chief Executive Officer Darren Woods, it’s pledged more ambitious emissions reduction targets, increased spending on clean energy, and elevated its low-carbon division to the top of the corporation. It’s even made a series of rare external hires including Chief Financial Officer Kathy Mikells from Diageo Plc and low-carbon head Dan Ammann, who previously ran General Motors Co.’s autonomous vehicle startup. It’s condensed 11 businesses into three and is on track to cut costs by $9 billion by 2023.

By financial standards, Woods’s plan is working. The stock is up 60% this year, ahead of its major peers, and closing in on a record high. But if Exxon has any shot at dominating the volatile energy transition over the next century, it will need to attract and hold on to the next generation of scientists, engineers, and technologists. “We can talk all day about low carbon,” says one recently departed Exxon executive. “But first we’ve got to decarbonize the culture.”

https://governorswindenergycoalition.org/exxons-exodus-employees-have-finally-had-enough-of-its-toxic-culture/

Dozens of new goto’s/, unclear what the policies are, no one to reach out to, missing money, stubs, no emails for paychecks, WHAT IS HAPPENING?

How many are actually giving the bad feedback in your pulse surveys? Are you giving the real, or just leaving the boxes open?

Laptops in the company still have attuids assigned to their computer name. Use ADUC or the PowerShell activedirectory module to search for computers belonging to anyone in your leadership chain. Once you find their computer, you'll want to perform a ping on their computer name, followed by nslookup to see which domain controller they are connected to. It will tell you if they are connected to VPN and are therefore not in the office.

Subsequently, make a PowerShell script that automates this whole process, and now you have a way to track RTO compliance of executives. You can run it every 20 minutes to track who is doing less than 8 hours in the office.

Once you find someone, lodge a complaint with HR indicating that you believe they are violating RTO policy.

I’ve worked at a lot of places, and I’ve never seen so many highly educated, talented people counting down the years until they can leave.

Spring Campus looks amazing from the outside. Free coffee, modern buildings, walking trails, cafeterias, gyms, collaboration spaces. On paper it feels like a dream workplace.

But sometimes it feels like a white-collar day prison.

You badge in, sit through meetings, update trackers, attend alignment calls, respond to emails, complete training modules, worry about rankings, worry about reorganizations, worry about whether your work will even matter next year, then badge out and repeat the process tomorrow.

The compensation is good, but many people seem exhausted rather than motivated.

The irony is that the campus was built to attract and retain talent, yet some of the most common conversations I hear are:

• “How many years until retirement?”
• “I’m looking externally.”
• “I’m just trying to survive another ranking cycle.”
• “I used to enjoy this job.”

Maybe it’s not just Exxon. Maybe it’s the reality of large corporate America in 2026.

Curious if others feel the same:
Has the modern corporate office become a place where people build careers, or a place where people quietly wait for the next paycheck and eventually their exit?

Our VP stated that RIFs are "rare" during our town hall. We have had 9 (!!!) employees on our team RIFed in the past 24 months plus a Sr. Director disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

They fired two US employees this May and then immediately posted the roles in Colombia. A key talking point from one of the Sr Directors was about how amazing it was that we were hiring! Be sure to recommend your friends!

Not sure how the VP thinks RIFs are rare at Medtronic given that I have never worked anywhere in my career that has had this rate of RIFs. The level of lying and gaslighting from execs is unbelievable.

Also we were told that we are now expected to demonstrate "Joy" going forward.

The ExxonMobil Operations Integrity Management System (OIMS) is a comprehensive framework designed to manage safety, security, health, and environmental risks across the organization, ensuring operational excellence and continuous improvement.

Purpose and Importance
The OIMS framework establishes common expectations for managing the inherent risks associated with ExxonMobil's operations. It emphasizes the importance of Operations Integrity (OI), which encompasses all aspects of the business that can impact personnel safety, process safety, security, health, and environmental performance. The system is integral to ExxonMobil's commitment to conducting business responsibly and sustainably, ensuring that safety and environmental considerations are prioritized in all operations.

Key Components of OIMS
11 Elements of OIMS: The framework consists of 11 key elements that guide the implementation of effective management systems. These elements include:

(1) Management Leadership, Commitment, and Accountability
(2) Risk Assessment and Management
(3) Facilities Design and Construction
(4) Information/Documentation
(5) Personnel and Training
(6) Operations and Maintenance
(7) Management of Change
(8) Third-Party Services
(9) Incident Investigation and Analysis
(10) Community Awareness and Emergency Preparedness
(11) Operations Integrity Assessment and Improvement

Continuous Improvement: OIMS is designed to be a dynamic framework that is periodically updated to reflect new insights and best practices. This includes strengthening expectations related to leadership, environmental performance, and behavior-based safety

Commitment to Safety: ExxonMobil promotes a culture where all employees and contractors are responsible for managing risks and ensuring safety. The framework encourages personal accountability and proactive intervention to prevent incidents, aligning with the company's vision of a workplace where "Nobody Gets Hurt"

Implementation and Evaluation
The application of the OIMS framework is mandatory across all ExxonMobil operations, with a focus on design, construction, and operational phases. Management is responsible for ensuring that systems are in place and effective, with ongoing evaluations to assess compliance with the framework's expectations. This includes internal and external assessments to gauge the effectiveness of the OIMS implementation .

In summary, ExxonMobil's OIMS is a critical component of its operational strategy, aimed at enhancing safety, environmental stewardship, and overall operational integrity through structured management practices and continuous improvement efforts.

This is all public information.

With the exception of Bob Hopkins, our execs effectively get their RSUs or performance rewards, then sell that sh*t as soon as it vests.

Forms indicating an (A) are the acquisition of shares, and in this small sample, the details in the forms shows you it's only ever receiving RSUs, or performance rewards.

The rest and vast majority of the forms are (D) disposal of these shares, and if you read the detail, they are dumping that sh_t as soon as they possibly can. All of the people below are regularly dumping their sh_t. These are not the actions of execs confident in this company. They know this ship is sinking and they're in on the grift.

Skip
https://www.sec.gov/edgar/browse/?CIK=0001708062

Goff:
https://www.sec.gov/edgar/browse/?CIK=0001560409

Bob H:
https://www.sec.gov/edgar/browse/?CIK=25200002114165

Marinaro:
https://www.sec.gov/edgar/browse/?CIK=0001984186

Matt Walter:
https://www.sec.gov/edgar/browse/?CIK=0002028475

Do your own research at SEC's Edgar site.

Fun bonus fact: they all have important ownership stakes in MiniMed. Funny that.

How often does headquarters in BP do layoffs? Looking to join company but would like to gauge job security there. And out of curiosity, do you really need to be "highly extroverted" per the culture. Thx in advance.

This company is so behind its time, pushing against goals and KPIs, working with bespoke systems and thinking they are superior.
Exec management tries to make the workforce more efficient while the common Associate has very limited MSFT Office skills (don’t get me started on AI…).
There’s significant pushback against any organizational changes or growth goals while there is a fatalistic approach that we’re all gonna loose our jobs.
Can’t wait to get the f*ck out of this he-l hole

Way to keep us at peak anxiety all the time.

What is the purpose of RTO - just to burn gas, tires, increase car insurance, increase carbon emissions, stuck in traffic - and again on Teams call...

The slavery mind set of the CXO suite is mind blowing

Gas at $5.50/Gallon + Doubled Car Insurance Rate + Kids, Family and the 2+ hours traffic, but a bare minimum salary..this is majority of us 60,000 employees vs. Gunjan and CXO suite making Millions a year,Luxury travel to and fro paid and expesned to the company. They are the to set the RTO policy but do not have to worry or comply it, its the 90% of us who have to bear the brunt.

OUR (60,000 employees) Necessity is the mother of this invention (leave powered locked laptops at work in secret places), given no other company demands or measures Talent and Performance by the Timestamps and not actual delivery or management of aspects. STUPID and DuB GOONjan and CXO suite

I’ve never seen a CEO so completely disconnected and miss the message employees were trying to send.

Thousands of employees were saying the same thing- morale is declining, flexibility matters, talent is leaving, and five-day RTO is making a bad situation worse.

His response? Employees were told they’re wrong, he’s not, and there “might be a disconnect between you and your current professional choice.”

What really stood out was the characterization of the feedback as “more outliers than we’d like.” … Outliers?

When it’s most employees saying the same thing, it isn’t outliers at all. It’s the majority. The same concerns were being raised across all organizations, teams, and locations. That’s not an “outlier” problem. That’s a leadership problem.

The email read like someone who was genuinely shocked by the feedback…. But maybe that’s the real issue. When you’re surrounded by direct reports blowing smoke up your a$$ telling you everything is working, everyone is aligned, and the policy is a grand success, eventually you start believing it.

Then one day reality shows up in a survey and your mind is blown.

What made the email so damaging wasn’t just the double down on policy. It was the authoritarian mindset behind it.

Instead of asking why most employees felt the same way, he seemed determined to explain why employees were wrong instead of him. Instead of adapting, he doubled down. Instead of listening, he lectured. Instead of taking responsibility, he shifted the blame back onto employees.

That’s not leadership.

Leadership is about recognizing when a decision isn’t producing the intended results and having the humility to change course. What we’ve seen instead is a stubborn refusal to acknowledge reality and accept responsibility, no matter how much evidence piles up.

Since Stankey became CEO, the stock has delivered a negative (-25%) price return. Morale has deteriorated to all time lows. Talent continues to leave. Outside rankings of culture, morale, talent, future readiness place AT&T at the bottom of its peer group and near the broader field bottom as well.

Yet somehow employees are still treated as the problem.

At some point, the board has to ask a simple question- if the strategy is working, where are the results?

Employees are paying the price for decisions they didn’t make- longer commutes, less flexibility, less take home pay, lower morale, increased uncertainty, and the departure of talented peers.

The company doesn’t need more presence reports, more mandates, or another angry manifesto explaining why employees are wrong and to blame for the company’s failures. It needs a leader who listens, adapts, and can admit when something isn’t working.

The most dangerous thing a CEO can do is become so convinced of his own correctness that he stops hearing what everyone else is telling him, and that’s where we are. That’s the disconnect employees have been talking about all along.

Wow. Have you seen this? I just saw it. They’re talking about it all over—everyone is talking about it. Dan Schulman, the guy from Verizon. Great company, by the way, very big, very powerful, though frankly, the signal in Mar-a-Lago could be better. We’re looking into that.

But Dan—fake news Dan—he’s writing love poems. Can you believe it? Love poems! To his wife! And let me tell you, I’ve seen the poems. Total disaster. Weak. No vocabulary. Sad! He tells his wife her eyes have "low latency." Incredible. If I told Melania she had low latency, she’d lock me out of the penthouse. Total catastrophe. Dan is out there dropping calls in the bedroom. He’s got zero bars, folks. Absolutely zero bars. Sad!

Do you have the impression that your current managers in this company are psycopath ?

Seeing a bunch of complaints on Slack about SpaceX and Elon lately.

Be real for a second: If you had to put your own money into just one company right now — SpaceX or Nike — which are you actually choosing?

People keep saying to report problems, but report them where? To who? All I've seen so far is that speaking up gets twisted back on the employee. Every single time. So why bother?

It is very depressing as there are some very good people going because they asked to. Why can’t the organization organize themselves to get rid of dead wood instaesd of not creating an environment where talent and good people feel comfortable.

We were one of the most respected American companies. Now we're nothing but a joke. What a sad reality.

I'm not happy here. But I also know my friends at other companies have it worse. So I'm staying for now. But I'm curious about people who are ready to leave. What would it take? What would be the final straw that makes you quit?

I'll say it plainly. This is a blind company without any real direction. If you think I'm wrong, go ahead and prove it.

I hate what's being done to it. I used to be proud working here. Not anymore.

One day I think we've got what it takes to climb back up. We've still got plenty of smart people and good products. But then I look at how far we've fallen and I wonder if we'll ever get that back. So I'm asking all of you. Do you think we'll find our way up again, or are those days behind us for good?

The only FAST thing that is happening is that as a result of their direction they are wasting company resources on initiatives with no return. In fact not only do they cost us money the things and processes they building attempting to build are making things worse.

As a fresh grad. when I joined CDC design Verification (DV) , team used to have a great, merit based culture where technical decision were driven by logic and data.
Recently, a leadership change at the top for DV ruined this dynamic. The top lead lacks a technical verif. background, makes unilateral decisions, and pushes aggressive deadlines just for his upper visibility and no techincal contribution for him.
We went from a collaborative team to a strict "no questions asked" environment.
Feeling highly demotivated and could sense the same with my peers and leads.
need advise - is it worth speaking about this to the lead? is this kind of one man pushing his view normal across Qualcomm or is it a major red flag and i should start looking outside QCOM?

We finally got approval for a role on the team. How am I going to pick when I sit in on interviews? The worst candidate. With the mandate that someone has to get does not meet I’m not going to help select the best candidate that might knock me into that category for future layoffs. So for people trying to transfer to a new role internally be aware that people are actively hiring fall guys.wouldn’t it be great if we could actually hire the best person so we could do good work?

https://presentofcoding.substack.com/p/please-switch-to-python

Stata can’t. SAS can’t. SPSS can’t. MATLAB’s answer is “call Python from MATLAB.”

even where these tools have some capability, it requires calling Python, or expensive licenses, or both.

I’ve rarely met anyone who learned Python or R after switching from Stata or SAS and said, “I wish I were still working in those.”

Probably the only way out of this mess is to make FOSS illegal or legally cripple its usage within the country and, if possible, around the globe. There are movements afoot…

This used to be a place people wanted to work. Good projects, good reputation, and good future. But now it has turned into a dead end for so many people. Nobody expects to grow or learn or advance here anymore. When did we turn into that kind of place?

Anyone have any thoughts? The guy that "was" in charge of all the cores and is now a segment head is always missing in action. How are we supposed to fix the leakage problems if SVPs are not held accountable? We all have our head buried in the sand thinking problems will go away. Such a mess.

this is so interesting

https://briefglance.com/articles/wells-fargo-exec-told-to-be-less-visible-discrimination-suit-alleges

EH built a huge ticker out front counting down the World Cup and you couldn’t manage to make your shoes different colors than the competitors? It’s literally a sea of pink cleats, impossible to set apart the brands. Nike in a nutshell, who is to blame? Should the color team be accountable? The head of global football? Where is the ticker to determine how many more days we have to watch this embarrassment?

What’s the deal with this new practice of screening candidates with an AI cultural fit exam? What do they even ask on that thing?

I've watched at least five people leave my team over the last few months. I don't blame them, but the company makes no effort to hire new people, so those of us who stay end up doing the work of two or three people. Which means that deadlines that used to be reasonable are now impossible. If this keeps going, I'll be the next one out.