#culture

Agonizing listening to new CIO talk about every minute job history, signing his temporary lease, how to say his last name, where Wales is located?????

I’ve been checking this site occasionally because for me it's where I catchup on office politics. I laughed with the sarcasm and got upset with the pain some have been tolerating. I’ve never posted before, but seeing how many people tolerate hostility and harassment made me want to share my own experience.
I had serious family issues and needed some time off. Instead of supporting me, my manager started insulting me, saying women “aren’t made for the workforce” and that he needed “strong people.” He even went around telling others what was happening in my personal life and told the program’s project manager not to count on me. Then he dropped my ranking. I was humiliated and heartbroken.
About a year later, I heard his wife filed for divorce and he was dealing with a nasty situation of his own. Life has a way of circling back.

Down 12% in two weeks.

But yeah… everything is fine. Just need a few more badge swipes and maybe another “collaboration zone” and we should be good.

Market must’ve missed the memo about culture being built in the office.

What the title says.73

create an intolerable culture so people quit—same layoffs, just without the severance bill.

Never used to get this, but now it’s every week. GK has got to go.

This is a company that is slowly losing its identity. Rent-A-Center is now forcing their employees into becoming a Amazon drop off hub. This a desperation move to attempt new blood into Rent-A-Center. This means additional responsibilities for employees without any additional pay. So on top of begging clients to buy something, chasing after past due clients that just hide behind their doors, employees are expected to ship out a unrelated companies packages. Is it even Rent-A-Center anymore or just a company on life support?

I worked at Oracle for 15 years in a GBU run by complete clowns. I realized too late that half the people were completely incompetent and they were usually mgmt. so lately a former colleague who also left O years ago told me the stories of some people getting laid off. “He was checked out since 2012…..he was waiting for it for the last 14 years….he didn’t care at all…” “oh, so sad, she got laid off….shes been there so long….i mean…” the first guy, prob hero to most. I def understand it. Now the second person. She was there when I was there. She acted like big stuff. She got roles in cloud and she never even knew anything about cloud or app or even was in the trenches. How did she move up? She was buddy buddy with our horrible mgmt. then she got one of her buddies on the team. Both of them together couldn’t update any Oracle app on their own laptops. I told my former colleague, I have zero empathy for her getting laid off. If she thought the skills and job she did that a 10 yr old could do would last forever, she deserved it. Oracle is different than many companies. Mgmt su-ks and really there literally thousands of people who are hiding. They may have joined via some small company that Oracle took a liking to and purchased and then they’re this “techie”. They’re not. My last 2 managers, Walmart greeters had more technical know how than both of them. Both were a-holes. I have zero sympathy for these people that not only skated but treated people like sh-t as tons and tons of talent left cause of people like her and mgmt. good riddance.

Prepare now. The official word will be passed down shortly for a dramatic increased requirement for Connect Week attendance come September. NO ONE on my team (FI) or others I run into in office feel that connect weeks benefit them at all and I’m sure that is one reason why it’ll be put into place. Forcing senior people out? Dragging morale even lower? Flexing hollow upper management muscle? What have you heard?

Historically, it’s always been a professional courtesy to give two weeks notice before leaving. However, as recent layoffs have shown, companies are giving no notice (Oracle). This has and will become the norm. And before someone says, well it’s courtesy to your colleagues, just remember that it comes at a cost to you and your family for being nice.

So with that said, why continue this legacy practice of giving two weeks notice? Again, if it helps the employee pack up and wrap up, sure. But otherwise, I think it’s time to reevaluate the practice. Just because society followed the same rule for so long doesn’t mean it’s correct in today’s AI world.

Love to hear your thoughts, including how you would advise your own kids if they were in the situation.

Nobody's exactly clinging to this place. A voluntary package would have takers, lots of them.

No surprises. Identical thing happened to Radio Shack, it’s like a rerun of a train wreck in slow motion.
Everyone thought it would be okay.
Didn’t turn out so well. Especially if you had a battery of the month club card. Not good.

If they've botched this single issue so thoroughly, is it any surprise the whole business feels like it's about to tip over?

For me, it’s the deeply ingrained pattern of poor leadership across the organization. Every company has its issues—I’ve seen that firsthand—but this is on an entirely different level.

It’s not just a matter of inexperience or bad decisions. What’s most troubling is the combination of incompetence and a lack of integrity. I’ve personally witnessed Directors, VPs, and SVPs misrepresent employees, distort survey results, and take credit for work that isn’t theirs. There’s a consistent pattern of self-preservation at the expense of honesty and accountability.

Blame is routinely pushed downward, while failures at the leadership level go unaddressed. Instead of ownership, there’s deflection—and then a reset with the next initiative.

That’s what I find most frustrating: being subject to leadership that is not only ineffective, but often self-serving and

Went to a smaller refiner - 20% compensation increase (salary & bonus). No giant corporate office full of "experts", "chiefs", "advisors", etc. Work done in house at the sites, no BTC's, GBC's, etc. Work is done efficiently and most importantly, correctly, the first time. It is a pleasure again to come into the office every day. No shuffling the deck of people every 6 months, so that "decision makers" can run /hide from how horrible things are run. No "ticketing system" full of unanswered, or supposedly resolved and closed tickets that still need to be addressed. The only thing I lost was saying that I worked at EXXONMOBIL! Seeing that most of my new coworkers came from places like XOM, Shell, BP, Dow, etc., it's was eye-opening to find out that saying you work for XOM may be more of a hinderance/anchor in your career, as you are thought of as a delegator of work/ticket enterer, as opposed to someone that does real work (how accurate)! Good riddance XOM!

For decades people and culture has been the strength of AT&T. I was 33
when I started at T 14 years ago. Probably the longest employment I have. The folks who were in their 40s and 50s when I started are now retiring. I lost many people already to age and RTO and supposed this trend continues. Barring some directors, my team largely is full of college kids and TDPs. At this point, I feel like I am that soon to be 50 year old in an environment which is more toxic than my predecessors started. The circle of life continues and I now contemplating to start fresh elsewhere.

People I work with do not even watch sports, and some never bother to learn. It makes Nike feel like just another corporation, if it ever was more

Remember when that was a thing? Now they scheduled a mandatory meeting for Friday at 4 PM. Then they cancelled it at 3:55. Then they rescheduled it for Monday at 8 AM. That's the new culture.

I joined this company 20 years ago and it is no longer the company I joined.

When DWW says people are the most important asset, he is not lying but he is not painting the whole picture. He needs to add the qualifier that people are a necessary asset and thus that makes them important because the company can not run without them. However, that doesn't mean he cares about the people as individuals with emotions and actual lives outside of work. When DWW says people are the most important asset he says it in the same way Egyptian Pharoahs said it while constructing the pyramids or how cotton plantation owners said it about their slave populations. DWW says it the same way Scrooge McDuck says it about his money. People, like overall wealth is important to him, the individual pennies and dollars are not - those are interchangeable.

I highly recommend employees under 40 look for new opportunities now. I recommend employees 55+ retire now rather than be shown the door via PIP. I recommend new hires do not join this company unless you are willing to give up your soul.

The promise of a 30 year career at this company is no longer true. It has truly become a job. There is no sense of family, no sense of being a technology company, no sense of fulfillment beyond a paycheck.

I’ve been in R&D long enough to think I’d seen every organizational oddity, but lately I look at my reporting chain and just… sigh. I’m a Principal Engineer, the most technical person on my team, and yet there are seven layers of management between me and the top. Seven. At this point it feels like performance art.

And the part that blows my mind? We’re a software company. We really only need three groups to function: developers who ship code, sales/AEs who bring in revenue, and top leadership who set direction. Everything else should be supporting those three — not ballooning into a management ecosystem that needs its own food chain.

Heads up, everyone.
Dell has switched to a new survey vendor this year and there are serious concerns you should know about before you participate.

First, the survey is not truly anonymous. This vendor has the ability to access individual responses and trace them back.
Second, they can manipulate the overall results to make company sentiment look better than it actually is. So your honesty could put you at risk, and still not even count.

If you were planning to give critical, candid feedback; the safest thing you can do this year is sit this one out.

A few things to keep in mind:
— Participation is voluntary. No one can force you.
— If your manager pressures you or coaches your answers, document it.
— Ask HR who the vendor is and what their data privacy policy says. Vague answers are a red flag.
— Spread the word to colleagues who may not know.
Real feedback deserves real protection. This year’s survey may not offer that.

Stay informed. Share this around.

I’m seeing an increase in LinkedIn posts of people leaving within the last week or so. Not just a couple here and there, but at least ten. Anyone hearing rumblings of anything?… just a coincidence perhaps?

Why is leadership teams so unnecessarily large? What real value do they actually add? They hold fancy titles but contribute nothing to product strategy or execution. Most seem obsessed with impressive job titles, posting on LinkedIn, and organizing pointless town halls that drain everyone's energy. These aren't leaders,they're overpaid parasites feeding off the work of G5/G6 employees.

Sewani. Oliveira. Sykes. Birrell. Flores. Your times up and no one will touch you.

Is it legal to suddenly change this RTO performance policy metrics and make people noncompliant? Previously, under 11 day RTO attendance, I was at 100% compliance. However, now that they changed their metrics calculation method, I am noncompliant. By them retroactively changing my compliant reports to noncompliant reports from Nov 2025 to March 2026, wouldn’t that be considered data manipulation by the company, which is illegal? They also failed to disclose IP usage to monitor which is also illegal.

A superior brand of long ago - now dead

Does anyone have any good experience with contractors at this company? I feel like in my 7 years here they have all been grossly incompetent. They interview well so I'm assuming they're cramming tech stack info before the interview (or are using AI to help answer questions).

Resumes are all over the place (and often more than one page and have seen 3+ pages more often than not), certifications for miles, but when it comes time to be a contributor to our workflow, they make some of the silliest mistakes or can't do more than a basic function. One contractor a few years back on our team was decent, but even they were not up to snuff. It's mostly been about a 90-95% negative experience in my tenure here. Otherwise I've run into some pretty bad issues like them not knowing about a tech stack item that we literally interviewed them for and asked them technical questions on.

So please, someone let me know I'm not crazy or tell me about a good one so I can imagine good quality contract work on my team.

Do managers also have to work the full eight hours in the office? I’ve noticed that some mid-level managers spend less than eight hours there.

From truly enjoying my work here years ago, to all the stress from waves of layoffs throughout the decline, now I've reached the point where I have no hope that Nike will ever again be a great company to work for, and I'm looking forward to being on the next list. I've been here too long to cut the cord easily, so the sooner they make that decision for me, the better.

Leadership stays busy, just with all the wrong things. Great way to use resources efficiently, right? It'd be hilarious if it weren't crushing us in the process.

Is the dilemma and misery coming to an end?

It’s getting ridiculous!

There’s a poll floating around what’s the worst job at Dell? Not lowest pay just the most thankless, grind it out, low impact role. The one nobody really wants to admit they’ve had.

Anyone under a ton of micromanaging
/scrutiny for low completion efficiencies beyond your control?

A lot of people who were not here ask how was EJ different pre-2019. A few callouts:

• JW cut $100M+ out of the budget to avoid layoffs during the ‘08-‘09 crisis. PP wants to layoff home office associates to capture millions in what she sees as “expenses”.

• JW’s agenda was the field, home office, and client. PP’s agenda was her legacy but now that she has bitten the hand that feeds her (the field) and has bitten the hand that pet her (the home office/CSTs) now her agenda is retribution.

Besides her animosity geared towards associates who did not fit her political and social beliefs, she now despises everyone.

Pre 2019 there was a saying, “You think and act different when you’re a partner”. I haven’t heard that mantra in 7 years as it went out the window with her mandates and the people she has brought in along with the leaders hired in the lower ranks. The reason her door mimics her FA door from Michigan is because the name on the door is the only name that matters to her.

Looking at new directors and senior directors for consumer, direct, and channel for Kinetic.

6 out of 7 are an easy find on LinkedIn from Frontier.

It's shocking at how much new upper management folks are from Frontier.

I've heard anyone who manages people is going remote.

The glint survey is out. Time to fry management. Not that they want the truth so why bother with a survey!

Leadership needs to get their act together.

Shouting, pressure, and creating a climate of fear in engineering won’t fix anything: in fact, it only makes things worse. Right now, people are acting out of fear instead of making rational decisions aligned with actual goals.

That’s how you end up with poor outcomes, short-term thinking, and teams that stop taking ownership.

If the goal is better performance, this approach is doing the opposite.