#culture

This witch SM is having her Town Hall and is putting me to sleep. What a waste of company time

Got email that they care so much about us and our employee feedback that they are having a book reading.

They just don't get it.

In the last Employee Survey, many of you emphasized how important it is to feel that AT&T truly cares about your health and wellbeing. We heard you—and we’re taking action.

....blah, blah, blah stuff about your work-life balance being a priority...

We’ll share a bit about our personal wellbeing journeys, preview what’s coming in the program, and introduce a book we’ll read together as an organization.

Leadership is STILL going all-in on this insane, stupid idea that AI needs to be a part of every product in this company. That every engineering team needs to be shoving resource intensive LLMs into their application no matter if the use-case of AI is.. useful. Otherwise they lose out on funding.

The critical, cognitive defect of these re--rds is astounding. Engineers who do actual work are either fleeing en masse, quiet quitting, or burning themselves out as they struggle to keep pace with the level of stupidity from their leaders.

I have NEVER in my time here seen something so astoundingly fu--ing stupid, and there's been a lot of astoundingly stupid things from our braindead leaders. As much as they gray-haired boomers liked to bring up buzzwords like ML, blockchain, etc. I never recall an initiative that EVERY team needs to be working with ML, or arbitrarily shove blockchain into their application.

It'd be one thing if they were simply asking engineers to use AI in some way, i.e. Copilot, ChatGPT, etc. It's another thing to have them invest actual time, resources, and FUNDING into throwing chatbots uselessly into their apps.

This is insanely disastrous and has gone on long enough from our negligent leaders. This DOES NOT "better serve our customers," in fact it does quite the opposite. This is a malevolent use of funding.

Our goals were rolled down to us from senior leadership.

They are not measurable, vague, and for several it is unclear how they are applicable to our job.

I would expect clearly defined, measurable goals - not this hot garbage.

I feel like it is clear that they are trying to set us up for failure.

Replace the first levels with AI.

The real issue isn’t just layoffs, it’s trust.

When cuts happen and communication feels vague, people lose confidence fast. Add tighter return-to-office rules on top of that, and it can feel like control is going up while security is going down.

WFH flexibility isn’t just a perk. It’s a signal. It says: “We trust you to deliver.” Being super prescriptive with attendance dashboards and badge monitoring sends the opposite message.

If leadership wants to retain the best talent, they must listen actively to the needs of the incoming generations who are screaming to balance their life needs better then previous generations. It comes down to a few basics:

• Be clear about what’s happening and why
• Be consistent between words and actions
• Trust people to do their jobs
• Push the flexibility policy more and stand behind it

Layoffs test culture. Culture eats all strategy (even the best ones designed by DW). Flexibility and transparency are how this company will succeed or fail. It’s too late for me because I made my decision so I leave this for the new hires coming in to witness.

Your move, DW

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?!

How many of you are planning to no show next week and continue working from home? The more of us that do it, the harder it will be for them to punish us. Who’s in??

Sorry, just needed to vent. This company is so stingy. I cannot believe they don’t reimburse lunch while traveling for business and have certain hours for dinner. I arrived at my hotel at 11:30 starving because I have been flying since 5 pm and I literally just a bunch of single serve creamers to try to deal with my hunger pangs.
Also, almost no one in my department seems to know what they are doing. They pay cr-p so all they can afford are inexperienced people. The poor analysts are bombarded with too many deals. Hire more people at entry level. Their salaries are the lowest.

Should have known how stingy this place based on their branches. Hated being a customer at a branch with no teller. The ATM and virtual teller constantly glitched out. Ugh!

I walked into the break room the other day and I was the only non- Indian out of 15 people. That would be fine in Bangalore but it was in AZ. Is it too much to ask that WF has some diversity? Where are all the beautiful people of all races and creeds?

Abby couldn’t manage people and let the company go down the toilet. She was afraid to lay people off and that is what’s responsible for the current culture.

Legacy Xerox Employees like to turn you in / setup red tape as much as possible.. almost purposely trying to add on multiple layers so that absolutely nothing gets done…. Things went out the door when the company they purchased to be the true backbone going into the future (Global) started transforming into XBS and the entire Global Business Solutions playbook that worked beyond dreams for soooo long was just thoughtlessly tossed it the trash …

Spilker is out! Now someone take VB please! We need our nice Optum culture back!

Lexmark was purchased by Xerox.
Yes Lexmark is owned by Xerox.
BUT... Lexmark the company has not yet been disolved.
SO.... Lexmark employees are still getting pay checks from the Company Lexmark.

But lets be honest.
Legacy Xerox no longer exists.
Legacy Lexmark no longer exists.
What exists is "New CO", but I only see Xerox people fighting against the future and instead holding on tight to the "Legacy".

So the bigger question is why do the "Legacy" Xerox employees feel a need to be mean, narcisitic a--holes to the "Legacy" Lexmark employees who are just trying to do our jobs as the "Business" / "NEW CO" has asked us to do?

Since you get offended anytime you feel like the "Legacy Xerox" way is being subligated or talked badly about or neglected... please tell us how you would like us to refer to the different technologies, proceadures, processes and servers so that there is no mistaking which component is being discussed?

Also Please let us know how we move forward as the "NEW CO" so that your feelings aren't hurt everytime a business decision has to be made for the betterment of the "NEW CO".

Would you like us to just start refering to "Legacy Xerox" people as "our supreme overlords" and "Legacy Lexmark" people as "Those that you saved"? Because thats how it feels.

Or here is an idea... how about you get rid of he idea that the Xerox you see today is the same Xerox that existed a year ago or 5 years ago etc.. etc..

Instead realize we are now a team and we have to make hard decisions and choose what's best for "New CO" which means cobeliing together pieces from both. Maybe that means chosing "Legacy Xerox" options or maybe it means chosing "Legacy Lexmark options.

You don't have to like it but fu--ing stop with the narcistic idea that you are somehow better than the people trying to work with you and patch the holes in the sinking ship.

How does one deal with managers pets who are super annoying????

Maybe I'm new to the corporate culture but this individual has been annoyingly pushing themselves into everything just to show off and have their "fingerprint" on everything.

And since I'm not in same location as my snake of a manager, all of my work is being showed by this annoying credit stealer.

You can at this point guess our BU.

The cover story for layoffs is that the financial incompetence of leadership led to layoffs, but, in fact, the impact of layoffs seems to be a rise in Authoritarian management practices (do this or we’ll axe you, whether you like it or not), which leads one to wonder if that was not always the point?
Foreigners in management coming from corrupt and inbred home countries cannot be expected to understand the drive and spirit that made Silicon Valley unique and powerful, so, in the mockery of imitating greatness, they replace inspiration with the whip?

How can an individual contributor ever hope for an exceeds expectations rating when they are being calibrated against managers? The visibility, opportunities, and important meetings that managers are privy to isn't an option for individual contributors -- at least not on my team. It is not a level playing field. The managers should be calibrated against other managers, and individual contributors against other individual contributors. This would require more of a general pool approach with milestones adjusted per level-- not so much role. Managers should be expected to perform at a higher level, but the way it's set up now, the bar is same for managers and individual contributors, yet the opportunities to exceed the bar is not. With the "rationing" of exceeds expectations -- it is even more important that at least the playing field is as fair as possible. There is also too much of an opportunity for nepotism and favortism the way it is set up now. Where are the checks and balances? How do you keep someone from saving a favorite who is barely performing at all by stealing from the kitty to under rate a top performer?

WTH is with the new name? Everyone I've spoken to says "sounds like a cleaning product". They are not wrong - there's at least a handful of random products out in the market that share the same name. You would assume that someone from branding would have checked. Ugh.

Not to mention, this is going to cause some confusion for the foreseeable future. Not the first time a company in our industry has tried to rebrand but that has rarely worked out well.

https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/press-releases/remodeling-growth-set-downshift-late-2026

More decline ,in what matters for home improvement .Lowe's can sell t shirts ,candy and adult novelties .It is not their core business ,which Mr M has abandoned .

Does anyone know what changes are being made to the STI program for 2026? The communication sent to managers makes it sound like negative things are headed our way.

Turned all the way off when I see our ceo dripping in designer labels, meanwhile half of us don’t get a raise… the two piece Chanel suit for 15k, the Gucci sweater on Instagram. Does she think we are stupid or does she just not care? Either way I can’t respect someone who displays such a lack of care and respect for the worker bees just trying to make ends meet.

Thank you for all that you’ve done! Here are your impossible deadlines, and here’s your Meets Expectations. For some, here is your pip instead of layoffs with packages

Ram led a beverage turnaround, earned the credit, and was rewarded with a promotion and a massive pay increase. We delivered a beverage turnaround too—so why did we receive only 69% of our bonus target? At some point, we have to stand up and say: enough is enough.

Dell has changed, they are no longer the company we once knew and loved.

When a system shifts risk to employees, the experience changes and the job starts to su-k more.

Stress becomes structural, not situational

The math starts working against the us

Even big wins can feel diluted

Over time, effort and reward drift apart, and trust in the model breaks down.

Great sales organizations create environments where performance, ownership, and outcomes stay aligned. When that alignment exists, people do their best work.

We have to ask ourselves, are we doing our best work or just trying to survive a broken system?

There are no LEXMARK employees any longer, you got bought by XEROX and are therefore all XEROX EMPLOYEES now.

There, has that now sunk in.

Now we aren't paying photographers and more. Of course we blame the court. The large brands made a deal...so billions not going to be paid and it's only started
Meanwhile Bloomingdale's alone featuring 35 new brands on 3 floors in. NYC and it's only the start.. Nordstrom also featuring thousands of new items unlike before.

The positive side with Ai. Now I can pretend work with useless Ai trainings. I am working with fake POC with Ai. Ask ai for some dummy implementation and call it as my poc.
I can watch Netflix whole day and still get good performance review, because everything now must have Ai, regardless if is useful or not.

Just learned some director in R&D don’t even have a BS degree, is this the new PepsiCo Way?

Bank needs happy employees to build profit. Why care about producing quality work? They dont care about us. Missed risk? Oh well. Unhappy customers? Oh well. Lost accounts? Oh well. Because guess what? U stripped us of dignity and respect and comp. What's left to care about? We will just buy our time until they eventually cut all of us. Let em think their highly bloated team of managers and leaders will carry them to victory and profits.

It's cutting a swath across the staff. The atmosphere is so heavy.

As a legacy Lexmark employee the last few months feel like my parents got a divorce and we were left with the dysfunctional family; whom parents lie to themselves, go on spending sprees and are barely able to pay the rent at the end of the month.

i'd start with "eliminating favoritism" - it's soo rampant in my group...

I told a stranger I work at WF
And they said "must be nice to handle large amounts of cash"

It's clear they're either going to gut it or tear it down, it's just a matter of time. Why else would they have only like 3 (above ground) floors in service? It's weird hearing about how some functions don't have desks but we've got 10 empty floors in 220. This feels like a metaphor for... something.

My team lead, a nice guy but not the sharpest, decided to do my appraisal this morning. As usual, everything was “fine.” Lots of fluff and no real substance, except for one thing. He kept stumbling over words and mispronouncing them.

It was obvious he had no idea what he was saying. It sounded like a seven-year-old reading their first chapter book, except the words were not even difficult. It was honestly embarrassing to sit there and deal with him.

At that point, it became clear that he did not get the position based on performance.

It was pathetic. I understand using AI to clean up grammar or help organize your thoughts, but having it actually write the whole thing for you? No.

If anything, AI will replace low-level managers before it replaces the people actually doing the work. That is crystal clear to me now.