#culture

Still supporting many incompetant LL5,LL6, supervision. Why?

LL4- sure want to rid many GSR but living incompetent, arrogant, self serving employment in their own bubble.

“That’s capitalism folks. You either succeed or fail or someone could buy us”

I heard that from CEO in person about 4 months ago.

We have become a case study for students!

ExxonMobil is one of the largest publicly traded international oil and gas companies in the world. So why is this successful 140-year-old company dealing with an allegedly toxic organizational culture?

What is organizational culture?
Organizational culture is a firm’s shared values, beliefs, traditions, principles, rules, and role models for behavior. Also called corporate culture, an organizational culture exists in every organization, regardless of size, organizational type, product, or profit objective.

COVID-19 exposes cultural problems
According to a Bloomberg article, the pandemic was a difficult time for Exxon employees thanks, in part, to low crude oil prices. Salary increases were halted, benefits were reduced, and the company faced layoffs.

Morale was low, so after about a year and a half, Bill Keillor, global IT vice president, wanted to help. His leadership teamed arranged an awards ceremony and promoted it on the company’s internal social network Yammer. According to anonymous reports, the award ceremony, which was largely virtual, turned into a tense town hall with attendees voicing concerns and asking tough questions. Exxon is known for having an authoritarian, top-down culture, so this did not sit well. Allegedly, Keillor snapped at attendees and brushed off their questions.

Turnover
After the event, employee-created memes circulated private chats, slowly making their way across the company. Some joked about quitting, but for others, it wasn’t a joke. The company’s turnover rate is the highest since 1999 when Exxon merged with Mobil. In the last two years, 12,000 employees have departed, less than half of which were from layoffs.

According to an Exxon statement, every company has experienced attrition in recent years due to the Great Resignation, and the oil and gas company does not consider this to be a long-term trend. Revelio Labs, an intelligence company that uses public employment records, says Exxon’s turnover rate is in line with the nationwide average but higher than competitors, including BP, Chevron, and Shell. Exxon disagrees with this analysis.

Inside Exxon’s culture
Bloomberg Businessweek’s investigation suggests there may be a deeper problem at Exxon. The publication interviewed more than 40 employees (current and former) and reviewed dozens of Exxon’s internal documents, and found evidence that Exxon has an insular, fear-based culture that is out of touch with the outside world.

Exxon uses a performance ranking system. Previously, employees were ordered from 1-to-100 on a bell curve, but the system was reworked in 2020 to make the processes more transparent and helpful to employees. Instead, employees are placed in performance categories. Anyone in the lowest category can choose between a performance improvement plan or severances. According to Reuters, about 5 to 10 percent of the company’s workforce is assigned performance improvement plans. Employees in the lowest-performing tier can save their job by improving their performance, but a significant portion of them will leave.

A senior corporate advisor says the system should not be feared or a source of anxiety because it helps employees succeed and keeps their performance in line with organizational objectives. On the other hand, some individuals say the ranking system makes employees hesitant to share bad news or unpopular opinions.

According to an analysis by CultureX, an MIT organization that uses artificial intelligence to evaluate organizational culture using Glassdoor reviews, Exxon faces toxicity challenges and ranks below 143 out of the 196 industry benchmarks CultureX measures. The most frequently discussed cultural values, according to more than 1,400 Glassdoor reviews, are agility, performance, and execution.

Exxon on the defense
An Exxon spokesperson responded to these criticisms, saying they were unfounded. The spokesperson pointed to the number of new employees hired every year and how long people tend to stay with the organization. She suggested Bloomberg’s investigation made broad observations with few data points.

Despite these questions about ExxonMobil’s organizational culture, the company is performing well financially with its stock nearing a record high. If there is indeed an organizational culture problem, Exxon will have to address it to attract and retain the best talent.

In the Classroom
This article can be used to discuss organizational culture (Chapter 7: Organization, Teamwork, and Communication), morale (Chapter 9: Motivating the Workforce), and turnover (Chapter 10: Managing Human Resources).

Discussion Questions

Define organizational culture, morale, and turnover.

What evidence is there to suggest ExxonMobil has a negative organizational culture?

If ExxonMobil has a top-down, authoritarian culture, why do you think employees spoke up during the award ceremony about their concerns? Why do you think more than 40 employees agreed to speak with Bloomberg?

This article was developed with the support of Kelsey Reddick for and under the direction of O.C. Ferrell, Linda Ferrell, and Geoff Hirt.

References:
"ExxonMobil," Sloan Review, https://sloanreview.mit.edu/culture500/company/c289/ExxonMobil

Jennifer Hiller and Shariq Khan, "Angst at Exxon as Managers Begin Employee Performance Reviews," Reuters, June 21, 2021, https://www.reuters.com/business/exxon-cut-us-workforce-by-up-10-annually-bloomberg-news-2021-06-21/

Kevin Crowley, "Exxon’s Exodus: Employees Have Finally Had Enough of Its Toxic Culture," Bloomberg, October 13, 2022, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-10-13/exxon-xom-jobs-exodus-brings-scrutiny-to-corporate-culture

https://www.mheducation.com/highered/blog/2024/06/does-exxon-have-a-culture-problem-march-2023.html

John Stanley has we-ponized the 5-day RTO and turned AT&T into a corporate Hunger Games.
🚗 Long commute = the opening obstacle course.
🪑 No desk = fight for survival.
🅿️ No parking = bonus round.
🏢 Sh---y buildings = final boss.
🏴‍☠️ Low morale = the prize.

Stankey wants a market based culture, but it’s a 2 way street and we need to give them the same. Just so the bare minimum to get paid and save any effort and energy you have for when you move on to your next company.

People just want to be told what the plan is. The company should just quit with the management speak and tell everyone what the plan is. They want attrition right? Maybe admitting what the future looks like will help some people on the fence decide to leave.

Hahaha! Do you think he is transparent. Haha. He is just waiting for some luck haha

In the gilded towers of BNY a bold new vision has emerged—one that promises to revolutionize banking by replacing logic with leveraged cost ratios, and employees with AI bots. The mission? A 25% displacement goal so ambitious it makes someone with an unusually large head look like a walking Super Dome.

This is not just a transformation. It’s a crusade. A cost-efficient, culture-energizing, AI-powered march toward oblivion.

RTO: Return to Office or Return to Obsolescence
The EC’s flagship initiative, Return to Office (RTO), is less a policy and more a spiritual awakening—one that beckons employees back to the fluorescent-lit temples of productivity. Not because collaboration improves, mind you, but because empty buildings are bad for optics and worse for lease negotiations.
Employees are given two choices:

1. Return to the office and pretend the vending machine is a coworker.
2. Voluntarily resign, thereby forfeiting severance and preserving the sacred cost-to-income ratio.
   It’s a masterclass in corporate jiu-jitsu: force attrition without triggering WARN notices, all while claiming “voluntary turnover.” HR calls it “strategic realignment.” Employees call it “gaslighting with a badge swipe.”

Leveraged Cost Ratios: The New Religion
The EC’s obsession with leveraged cost ratios has reached theological proportions. Every decision—from layoffs to latte restrictions—is filtered through the holy spreadsheet. If the ratio improves, it’s divine intervention. If it worsens, blame middle management or the interns.
To meet the sacred 25% displacement goal, the EC has deployed a three-pronged strategy:
• Radical Offshoring: Because nothing says “client intimacy” like a 13-hour time difference.
• Real Estate Consolidation: Turn five buildings into one, then fill it with crowded parking lots and free ice cream.
• Geographic Darwinism: Employees must relocate to “low-cost hubs” like Pittsburgh, Lake Mary or “somewhere near a functioning airport in Poland.”
Those unwilling to uproot their lives are gently nudged toward “career transitions,” which is EC-speak for “LinkedIn Premium trial.”

Offshoring: The Great American Job Evaporation Act
In a move that would make Machiavelli blush, the EC has embraced offshoring with the fervor of a startup chasing Series A funding. High-paying U.S. roles are being shipped to India and Poland faster than you can say “knowledge transfer.” Now tell that to your son or daughter with a new Comp Sci degree and a huge student loan!
The rationale? “Global talent optimization.” The reality? A 3 a.m. Teams call with someone who just inherited your Jira board and thinks “Agile” is a yoga pose.
Meanwhile, U.S. employees are asked to train their replacements with a smile, a script, and a non-disparagement clause. It’s like being asked to decorate your own guillotine.

Real Estate: Consolidate, Congest, Confuse
BNY’s real estate strategy is modeled after a game of corporate musical chairs—except the music is a fire alarm test and the chairs are pulled with barely a WARN notice
Entire floors are shuttered, cubicles are repurposed as “collaboration pods,” and thermostats are set to “Arctic Ambiguity.” Employees who once had offices now share hot desks with the ghost of productivity past.
The EC touts this as “space efficiency.” Employees call it “a dystopian WeWork with free Starbucks coffee.”

AI: The Messiah of Mediocrity & Risk
To distract from the mass exodus and morale collapse, the EC has unveiled its pièce de résistance: artificial intelligence. Not the kind that solves problems, but the kind that generates code fixes and sends and endless stream of calendar meeting invites.
AI is heralded as the “game-changing solution” to banking’s future. Never mind that it can’t distinguish between a compliance breach and a cat meme. It’s here, it’s expensive, and it’s definitely not replacing the EC anytime soon.
Investors are told that AI will “energize culture.” Employees wonder if that means replacing the annual bonus with Eliza-generated haikus.

Investor Relations: Fiction Meets Finance
In quarterly earnings calls, the EC paints a picture of a vibrant, energized workforce—one that’s “leaner, more agile, and deeply committed to innovation.” This is technically true, if by “leaner” you mean “unemployed,” and by “agile” you mean “dodging layoffs.”
Analysts and interns nod approvingly, spreadsheets and dashboards sparkle, and stock prices flutter upward like a paper airplane in a hurricane. Meanwhile, the actual workforce is Googling “how to fake enthusiasm in Teams meetings.”

Corporate Absurdities That Deserve Their Own HR Memo
To truly appreciate the EC’s strategic genius, one must examine the absurdities baked into the day-to-day experience of surviving their vision:
• Buzzword Bingo: “Let’s circle back after we socialize this idea.” Translation: We have no idea what we’re doing, but we’ll pretend to have a plan once enough people nod.
• Perks That Feel Like Punishment: Free kombucha on tap—but new high priced benefits premiums and no dental coverage and no payment for unused vacation.
• Performance Reviews by Ouija Board: “You exceeded expectations, but we’re giving you a ‘Meets’ to keep your raise under budget.” “Your leadership score dropped because you didn’t smile enough in Teams meetings.”
• Office Space Shenanigans: Hot-desking in a building with no available desks. Hot seating means stall #3 on the 11th floor. “Collaboration zones” are of course next to the expensive coffee makers because by design this is where innovation happens. Open floor plans are designed by someone who’s never worked in one.
• AI Adoption Theater: “We’re using AI to streamline operations.” Translation: We bought a chatbot that can’t answer basic questions. “We’re training AI on our internal data.” Including the EC’s lunch order history and passive-aggressive “word salad” emails.
• Layoffs Framed as “Strategic Realignment”: “We’re right-sizing the organization.” By removing everyone who knows how the systems work. “This is a growth opportunity.” For the remaining employees to do three jobs.
• Relocation Roulette: “You can keep your job if you move to Lake Mary.” With 10 days’ notice and no relocation support. “Remote work is no longer aligned with our values.” But offshoring is.

Culture: The Energized Mirage
The EC insists that culture is thriving. There are town halls, virtual scavenger hunts, and mandatory quarterly mindfulness fireside chats led by designated talking heads, but when it comes to answering questions about people issues and layoff concerns…. Guess what, sorry folks we’re out of time!
But beneath the surface lies a culture of fear, fatigue, and forced optimism. Employees speak in hushed tones, Teams channels resemble support groups, and “career development” means surviving until Q4.
Still, the EC remains undeterred. After all, nothing energizes culture like a 25% headcount reduction and a chatbot named “SynergyBot.”

Conclusion: The Cost of Cost-Cutting
BNY’s EC team has achieved something truly remarkable: a strategic plan so aggressive it makes a hostile takeover look like a bake sale. Through RTO mandates, offshoring, real estate consolidation, and AI evangelism, they’ve redefined what it means to “optimize.”
But in their quest for cost efficiency, they’ve forgotten one thing: people. The ones who built the systems, served the clients, and made the spreadsheets sing.
So here’s to the displaced, the disillusioned, and the deskless. May your severance be generous, your next job be remote, and your AI overlords be slightly less passive-aggressive.

The sad thing is, despite the reorg, nothing will change. We need a bigger shakeup at the top if we want to right this ship. A much bigger shakeup.

Dell has 800k employees current and past that would never return to work for dell. Tootsie roll has never laid off its family and it workers don’t leave

Not suprised oracle is laying ppl off. They’ve done 150+ acquisitions and the same thing happens every damn time... staff bail or get cut. This Has Happened MANY Times Before!!!!! oracle doesnt care about your job, they care about tech, customers, and $$$. once they buy a company, they gut the overlap, toss people they dont need, and shove the rest into whatever buzzword strategy they’re chasing (cloud, ai, whatever sounds cool to wall street). turnover there is already huge, so add an acquisition and yeah... ppl are basically walking severance packages waiting to happen. remember sun microsystems, peoplesoft, bea? same playbook. oracle buys, oracle cuts, oracle moves on. so if you’re shocked, idk what to tell you. layoffs are not a bug in oracle world, they’re the feature. ....

Why?

🤣

FN1 and FN2 were at max capacity today and then some. The (small) cafeteria was full of workers using the tables as their desk for the day, folks were working at corners of desks and had to sit away from their teams. This was at 8:45 AM, not 10 AM. It's so hard to focus during endless Teams class while folks are wandering around trying to locate a desk or spot to camp out. Someone likened it to the Spirit Airlines of office places.

Chief Disruption Officer left today so she can spend more time with her family. Does anyone in leadership ever tell the truth about anything?
P.S. I feel bad for her family.

How did Moran not get fired? He is so much worse than those Juan let go. All he knows is to talk and pretend that he runs the bank, truth being his Uncle Brad is running it for him. He does not even know the industry or products or innovation or tech to grow the business, so HOW, is here he here? Sometimes stupidity and Mo--ns also get good times, it seems. He will keep cutting more people as he knows nothing more

I’m starting to decline these. Including Lunch and learn, aka bring your own lunch, but the deep dives are catered for select clowns in the Ford Big Top Circus. This place is really getting to me and productivity is now worse with RTO and people are super agitated.

Every single one with each person sitting at their desk bored out of their minds. Can we admit RTO only makes sense if everyone moved to Westlake?

I mean like why work hard at all?

I mean I think as a nation all workers should do everything they can to interfere and hold up the employers because they have all the power.

in fact everything we should do should be to confound and frustrate the enemy, our employers: join a union

now's the perfect time to join a union because that would pi-s them off the most

how fu---d would they be if we all quit right now? https://youtu.be/CXskNwIstGw

and you can do much better. Go work at a company that actually values their employees.

Their social media feeds are filled with showing off Nike WHQ and the experience. Their biggest achievement in their life is Nike, their identify is nike. Isn’t it sad.

What a joke this is. Not feeling it. Do better leadership team.

I came here thinking it would open doors, but it’s been a grind with no real connection to leadership. Fear runs the place, and playing politics seems more important than doing good work. I’m already planning my next move out of here.

Quiet quitting drags everyone down. If you’re checked out, just leave instead of coasting and dumping work on the rest of us. The whole team pays the price when people stop pulling their weight, and it’s getting old fast.

So much time is lost in pointless politics while real work gets shoved aside. Is management letting it slide because they are part of it or just bored? Either way, it is draining to deal with nonstop nonsense.

With no accountability, it is a zoo. Velo zoo.

I heard one coworker tell that to another who'd just been laid off yesterday. He was actually trying to comfort him. The guy we lost has 12 years experience, the one who said not to take it personally has been here for a year and to say he still can barely do anything without somebody holding his hand would be an understatement. And now hearing this, I'm even more convinced he's nothing more than an id--t. And he's still here. Fu-k this place.

They’re trying to break us so we leave and they dont have to pay severance. We have all experienced it or witnessed the behaviors. , U.S staff treated like 2nd class citizens, wrongful terminations, intentional forced ratings etc. The list goes on and on. Its not going to stop until we all come together and try to do something. We need to report them
to your states EEOC . Get An investigation going.

https://www.businessinsider.com/inside-amazons-hardcore-culture-reset-day-1-roots-2025-9

After 5 long years, RTO starts today! What a great thing. Alarms going off, people actually showering, getting dressed and heading out to work!

No more get the kids ready, do laundry, go out get coffee, walk kids to bus stop then.....maybe start work.

This is why they pay you folks! It is called work!

Woot woot!

Horrible culture, no care about your mental health. Your life has zero value to Halliburton. Go ahead and leave on your own accord not theirs. They ain’t paying no severance. They treat you like trash.

For decades Nike was about growth, optimism and building greatness which drove culture and results. Now it is a place where people are fighting to survive and make decisions out of fear. Much different, and won't work ever.

Might as well enjoy myself in this remote meat grinder.

Cheers!

It looks like the social media team finally got bored with this site.

The irony that on layoff day O posts on Linked In that they are having Def Leopard play at O World in October. Maybe take care of your employees and READ THE ROOM.

Havelock will be shutting down. The reason it hasn’t been done yet is because the powers that be don’t want to pay labor protection claims. So, if they slowly make cuts and claim an irreversible decline in business, their chances of having a favorable argument increases.
The writing is on the wall, see it or don’t. The people running BNSF don’t care about culture, heritage, or history. They only care about one thing… money.

Can't we just pretend we're ok, like the good old days? Get the flywheel effect back running?

The EC sends out an email today reminding everyone about the principle of "Thrive Together."

Well, let's review the principle and how it is defined on paper vs. what it means in practice.

On paper: "Our culture is built by all of us, and we lead by example. Doing the right thing matters and trust is earned. Creating an environment where everyone belongs is essential - that's how we succeed."

BNY associates are not stupid and don't appreciate being lied to or kept in the dark. That's the quickest way to erode trust, confidence in leadership and culture. In fact, these are the main reasons why people are on this site and commenting about BNY workplace and deplorable people management behavior.

Not that it matters but The People Team (or EC) would be better off to communicate early and often throughout the change process. This means acting more intentionally with greater transparency, by showing receptiveness and responding to feedback on really important people concerns, and providing clear organizational direction on people management matters. So why all the secrecy? It only leads to more fear, uncertainty and doubt.

In practice: EC wants us to thrive together by working together in office 4 days per week. The only natural consequences of this mandate are to intentionally make work-life more difficult for those not living nearby a brick-and-mortar office location, to recapture corporate control and to increase work-life inflexibility.

The EC and HR communications, micromanagement, and the lack of collaboration by 'all of us' are in direct contradiction with the written definition of how we 'Thrive Together,' do the right thing and earn trust.

Where does this leadership by example come from? Come on man!

The old boys club of Ric, Adam, Rob and Glenn getting rid of anyone that challenges them!

Looking at the stats today.
Eliza Pulse
Own it. -37%
Stay curious -17%
Thrive together -43.13%

Engagement with Eliza is tanking.