#gaslighting

Or is my manager just gaslighting me?

Days like today are always tough. When smart, hard working and loyal, good people get let go from doing their jobs to assuage the hubris at the top. Every single layoff has a personal and professional impact. I think there is growing frustration at NetApp that GK, our President and SVP of Comp to name a few continue to be here despite years of stagnant growth, lack of vision and being completely disconnected from field teams and customers. Everyone with a brain cell knows $10B by 2028 is not happening yet GK and executives keep pushing the same BullS*** narrative. Unless we get acquired or acquire a company it will not happen organically. Why not make $8B a realistic goal and stop the gaslighting. It's time for Executive leadership to be held accountable.

With layoffs over our heads, no jobs and managers making up stuff to pretend you are IM instead of meets I go home on Fridays with so much anger. It starts again Sunday night. You gaslight people everyday and this is what you get. Is this week the week my life gets altered through your cr-ppy layoffs? And May is mental health month. Hahahahahaha. What they are doing is literally a recipe for mental health challenges.

$1 billion share buyback announced while they have $500 million they still need to repurchase from the last buyback.
At the same time...the leadership team has wipes out the last 6 years of growth and gains.
They are basically gaslighting shareholders at this point as I'd rather be able to dump ally shares at $250 as opposed to $98.
The announcement didn't help stock price as it only stayed in the green for the first hour and a half of market open.

L7s, L8s, and L9s have forgone years of experience and nuanced knowledge that their teams’ possess in favor of having their egos stroked by fluff words from a machine that placates whoever is prompting it.

Many people who have been on businesses and can advise on actionable things to make them grow are being gaslit, ignored, and essentially told “shut up and do as you’re told”.

Of course it’s understandable how and why a corporation thrives on hierarchy, but having leaders who are NOT experts in their field giving vague opinions with zero willingness to learn about individual business does not make sense from a business perspective much less a personal one.

They expect us to decode their ChatGPT strategy and do backflips and upheave our lives to mind read and materialize what even they don’t know. This isn’t just a tool anymore, gen ai is running this company.

Long gone are the days where we were guest obsessed and interacting with the our shoppers to understand their needs. We now create product to appease one or two people.

Praying for a wake up call to save this mediocre and spineless company. I used to love this job so so much. I want it to get back to the way it was when the guest loved us and WE THE WORKERS loved it here as well 💔

Since they are all so busy, they may be worried about getting their goals in by the 15th. Let's share some ideas here! I'll start: AC remove the defacto hiring freeze, stop the gaslighting, and then just go home!

At belk if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is in fact a squirrel.

Truist's culture has officially become the worst. They are the laughing stock of the banking industry. Bad teammates will get promoted because they fit the new culture, and leadership will get worse with the corporate gaslighting. There's no hoping that they will change and do right by the teammates. Think about this when you're driving into the office or sitting at your desk tomorrow.

After 20+ years at Verizon, I’ve never seen morale this low or trust in leadership this broken.

Yesterday’s EMEA call was a brutal reminder of where things really stand. Yet today we’re all expected to log in, smile on calls, and carry on as if nothing happened.

What makes it worse is the constant stream of polished messaging from management and our Exec team that feels completely disconnected from reality. We’re told everything is about “transformation,” “strategy,” and “opportunities,” while RIFs happen all the time and the remaining staff are expected to absorb the work.

I feel like we’re being gaslighted.

Everyone knows AI is coming and it will fundamentally change large parts of the workforce and remove even more jobs at a rate much higher than we've known before. Employees aren’t stupid. Most of us have decades of experience and can see exactly what’s happening.

What’s astonishing is the apparent belief from leadership that the workforce will just nod along and accept whatever narrative is being presented.

After more than two decades here, I’ve never seen this level of distrust between employees and leadership. People can deal with tough decisions and difficult change. What they struggle with is the feeling that the truth is being managed rather than communicated.

Right now, the biggest gap in this company isn’t technology or strategy. It’s credibility.

Google it of you don't know the story. Make a person a manager and tell them they have to stack rank people. Suddenly they feel totally justified making up problems and documenting made up deficiencies in case they need to cut you later. It creates an atmosphere where every interaction becomes an excuse to gaslight or present things using the worst interpretation possible. It's crazy how easily people can move from "we're all one team" to "I'm documenting this conversation to make it seem like you did something wrong". And of course the employee is also documenting everything in case they need to backstab their boss. The team goes from people who work together to people who collect dirt on each other and run to the hr. Don't you wish you could just spend your time focused on work instead of trying to sabotage other people so you don't get cut instead?

Pay equity? That's a massive raise for the CEO and "meaningful increases" for low-mid rank salaries, but 2 years of 0% awards for director level and above.

HR said to focus on total comp but oh dear what's that you say cumulative inflation since Covid is nearly 30%? No time for any more questions I'm afraid.

So after the C suite took cash earned from ERP from 168 to 112 to fund future projects, removed raises, tanked the share price of the company impacting pay of anyone with any equity, doing constant layoffs....

The next thing we are being told is we are about to get a lesson on the Stoics? Yes, this is true. We need to compare ourselves to philosophers from 300 BC and ignore all this nonsense and see it all in a positive light. That is coming from the top.

Company wants to be more efficient so they hire more managers, lay off seasoned/experienced engineers, introduce the "product model" which is great for software developers but slows the rest of the tech teams down/delivers slower results to our internal customers, increase bureaucracy, and gaslight everyone. 15 years ago, this was a decent company to work for. Yeah they did not pay top dollar, but you had the ability to grow your career, work with good people, advanced, and where ok with the less pay because the company valued "work life balance" and did a decent job of investing in skill development/training. You actually felt like you can grow and build something that helps advance the brand, better serve the customers, and where better rewarded with innovative ideas. Now, it is all the bad of the tech world: work life balance out the door, health insurance benefits mid, constant threat of layoffs, a massive slide in technical leadership, a feeling of constant uncertainty/direction, gaslighting, a significant increase of teams backstabbing each other, more offshoring esp with sensitive customer data, political pandering, and paying customer satisfaction at an all time low. Unless it is automation or a way to layoff more people, innovate ideas are frowned upon esp if they challenge the "product model"/hired too many new managers. Current leadership team brags about how they "revolutionized" CVS, yet CVS when they where there, but look how bad CVS has performed over the past decade. I get that the only thing that matters is the stock price because everyone above director is paid with stock shares. I think the reason you don't see higher attrition rate is because the company is still pretty remote/hybrid (good thing they got rid of a significant amount of real- estate or else this would be different). However, there is going to be a strong return to office mandate soon even if the majority of your team is offshore in a different region of the country. If you do not live near an office because you believed the company about working remote, you either better relocate or start looking elsewhere. By the end of the year, there will be a new tech out that will have the ability to better track remote workers/hybrid users and HR is already looking at it as a way to eliminate/reduce remote workers.

Perfectly said, @rh+1kgyvphgn.

I want to take a moment to express my deep appreciation for the culture at FactSet. Kissing a-s is the only way to get any meaningful traction.

Special dedication to the HRBP, L&D, Talent Delivery and Organisational Effectiveness leadership. Your inability to discern between noise and substance, between nuance and context is the reason for the unnecessary challenges we face in the business.

CFO, CPO - I hope you look at your stock awards and question your lack of judgment and willingness to take ethical stands that led to FactSet’s fall. No points for guessing how instrumental your contribution has been in deflating the firm’s value.

Special place in he-l for those gaslighting the outliers in the name of “culture”.

We may get our paychecks from NTT and have an NTT email address, but we're still the serfs or property of the 'Other company'. Nothing has changed for us, other than throwing a couple of NTT managers into the mix. The toxicity, gas-lighting and manipulation hasn't gone away, infact there is little more of it from the NTT side now.

Also it has become apparent that there are different variables or opportunities that come into play as compared to a real NTT employee. And that is we have none. Instead of being mentored or given the opportunities to further the paths of our own choosing. Obstacles are thrown in our way and under the table deals are forged to prevent one from pursuing anything other than what has been dictated or desired by those above us.

Should you voice your concerns or issues to a manager. Expect the repertoire of how everything is your fault and have your tried to find employment with another company.

If one could sum it up, it would be in the song 'Hotel California'.

All the complaints around severance, PIPS, notices etc…. It’s a mixed bag of confusion on purpose. Designed to frustrate you and have you just walk away and not follow up. Tons of gaslighting, shuffling of meeting times and mixed message. It’s not disorganization, it’s the plan. A meeting invite to “discuss things” , your PIP. You show up and no one else does. Then much later an apology as something more urgent came up that needed attended to so a reschedule is needed. This will happen a time or two. It’s all designed to keep you on edge, stressed so that you’ll leave.

The same applies to the severances. “Any questions, concerns or updates needed just contact this number\email\person etc..” and when you do, no answers, no return calls, no traction. If you’re persistent enough you’ll get somewhere but again, its all be design.

All in all, they just want you to go away with little to no hassle or fuss. Trust me, this is the plan at work. None of it is illegal but certainly pushes the boundaries of the Citi trustworthiness, honesty, yada yada…but they don’t care. It’s the bottom line that matters and the bottom line is that you have to be ran off in order to make up for the lack of the return on investment on AI that was promised to the board. Unfair or not, this is all there is to it.

All of these changes have made working at CVX a complete nightmare.
I'll be taking my CIP and looking elsewhere.

The worst thing is the gas lighting that HMP and Leadership throw at us: "Better together", "We benchmarked against Exxon - they are doing it!", "If it works for Google, it must be good"

of course, my heart goes out to those who lost their jobs and will lose their jobs, and heck I may also lose my job next week, but i have feeling based on what I do and our tiny team, I’ll probably stick around and get more responsibility or rather, more sh-t thrown on my plate and i’m sure many others will be in the same boat. So surely, we don’t have to worry as much about how we’ll put food on the table or pay the rent but our lives will be he-l and we’ll be gaslit by leadership when we complain about the increased workload and lack of resources to be “thankful” that we didn’t lose our jobs and to kiss the ring

I have been at 3 banks now, where I was hired fully remote and was eventually RTO5'd. All 3 happened after a large acquisition. Let me tell you, it's not fun. Here's the thing. Over the last 5+ years, these banks have hired great talent all over the country and have all done well. Look at PNC for example. YoY increase in profits, productivity, and stock price since being fully remote.
Here is what happens:
You drive ~1 hour round trip to commute (if you are lucky), with more expenses, less flexibility, and less sleep / mental well-being.
They haven't invested any money in the offices in years, so you sit in a run-down office with half of the amenities it may have once had.
You take team calls because your team and other teams you collaborate with are spread out all over the country, and do the same exact thing you did from home, but now from an office cubicle / open floor plan desk.
The objectively worse work environment + the lack of being able to take a mental break/reset eventually drives you mad.

This is not for collaboration or culture.
This is not going back to what it "used to be". As a matter of fact, most people in technology were hybrid long before Covid and NEVER worked 5 days in the office.
This is not "were going to see how this works out and maybe..."

Nope.

I don't know what the reason is. Maybe it's a soft layoff, and they want people to quit. Maybe it's from outside forces. Maybe it's because of the acquisition, and certain people want to continue to line their pockets more. It's probably all of the above.

Whatever it is, this is not what the employees wanted. Don't believe me? Check out the results from the end of year survey.

I am already hearing "this is what people wanted.", "The people who have already RTO have loved it.", "This is just an experiment, and no one knows what's going to be the outcome.", "People have been doing this for years before covid with no issues."
It's all BS.

What some of the downvoted comments on here have said are correct. If 5 days in isn't for you, then look for a new job or simply don't comply and get fired / inevitably laid off. Or suffer until one of the above happens.

I would really love to think that we the working people can do something to change this but it is painfully obvious that they do not care or have ulterior motives, so they are probably not going care about any counter efforts. They want some employees to stay and some employees to leave.
If the ones who they don't want to retain leave - great!
If the ones who they do want to retain leave - well, they can always be replaced.

We all want WFH just like we all want paid more, and how many companies have ever paid their employees more out of the kindness of their hearts?

They do not care about us and it's not just PNC it's 99% of all companies in this country.

The biggest reason people doesn’t trust management is we can see with our own eyes what they tell us isn’t true. We work better in person- sure, me sitting alone in a cubicle trying to make sure I click a button a certain undefined number of times is so much better. Indians are our equal partners - sure when I fix something for the tenth time and the guy in Bangalore has no consequences it’s so true. So why would I believe it when they say WFC is a place to build a career when all I see are layoffs?

Hans used 5G to try and distract us from reality. Dan is using AI. The long term plan is not dictated by either of these technologies and while the changes and headcount reduction are part of a plan, we will not know what that plan is until it happens. A sell off? A shut down of all stores and migration to resellers? Moving wireline work to the newly acquired Frontier team? We don't know.

What we do know is the constant gaslighting over the years that has become nauseating. Telling us we have the best network and customer service when customers tell us the opposite?

Layoffs will resume Q1 of 2026. I am ready and waiting for my number to be pulled. With the writing clearly on the wall, how many people will be back on this website panicking because they did nothing to prepare for the inevitable? I hope it's a minimal amount but some will be blinded by a new year and an attempt at Q1 kick off meetings to distract the easily distracted.

We have a week left of 2025. Once the clock turns midnight, the peace and quiet is over and the cycle will start again.

Ask questions, ask for clarification when the answer doesn't make sense, and remember you are not valued as a person, you are a dispensable number and will be treated as such very soon. Meanwhile, our executives are raking in millions, annually.

Dan Schulman

Verizon Compensation (2025 onwards)
Base Salary: $1.5 million annually.
Short-Term Incentive: Target of 250% of base salary (prorated for 2025).
Long-Term Incentives (Equity): RSU/PSU grants with target values potentially reaching $9.5M and $20M, vesting over time.
Total Potential: Can reach nearly $60 million, depending on performance.

Signs that you are being gaslit. Every item below happened to me. Finally left a few years ago because I got sick of the abuse, the bait-and-switch, burn-out, and out right theft of my work. Don’t let this happen to you.

1. Expectations that keep changing
   ↳ Goals get reset halfway
   ↳ Promotions dangled, then vanish
   ↳ Yesterday’s "great job" becomes today's "not enough"

2. Work that feels meaningless
   ↳ Endless decks no one reads
   ↳ Projects with no impact
   ↳ Work hard, feel… empty

3. Leaders who disappear when it matters
   ↳ Present for wins, silent during chaos
   ↳ Emotional distance dressed as "professionalism"
   ↳ Absent in moments that count

4. No space for real conversations
   ↳ Feedback feels like formality
   ↳ Honest talks are risky
   ↳ Everyone smiles. No one speaks truth.

5. Invisible efforts, visible mistakes
   ↳ Wins are "team effort"
   ↳ Mistakes? That’s on you
   ↳ Your hard work becomes someone else's highlight.

6. Leaders who fear strong voices
   ↳ Challenge is mistaken for conflict
   ↳ Assertiveness punished as “tone”
   ↳ Quiet compliance gets rewarded

7. Promises made in hiring... quietly broken later
   ↳ Career growth, autonomy, flexibility
   ↳ Turns out: deadlines, control, and burnout
   ↳ No one explains the switch

8. Recognition becomes transactional
   ↳ One-size-fits-none awards
   ↳ “Thank you” only in slides
   ↳ Praise wrapped in KPIs

9. Wellness preached, burnout rewarded
   ↳ Meditation app, but no boundaries
   ↳ Rest is guilted
   ↳ Stillness is seen as slacking

10. No one asks: ‘What do you need?’
    ↳ Assumptions > curiosity
    ↳ Fix the task, not the tension
    ↳ Support feels like a script

Great people don’t leave because they’re weak.
They leave because they’re wise.
They leave when staying means self-betrayal.

The start to this townhall really represents how things are in TS ( Global Payments and Trade).

It’s a mess. How many executives does it take to operate a slide deck and Webex? Apparently at least four.

Love how she actually said that our company does so much for employees. Gaslighting knows no bounds.

It’s peak gaslighting. Not a shred of information on anything even remotely important.

How does an org claim to take the best of both pre-merged orgs, yet cut the best things/benefits each org offered?

• 401k- cut/decreased matching
• momentum-cut/decreaded
  1ESPP (created post merger- restricted offering periods)
• birthdays off-cut/eliminated
• WFH (even if hired remote or had the ability to WFH pre-covid- cut/eliminated)
• TPA award recipients (best of best teammates- demoted, RIF, or cut, less than 1 year after being rewarded)
• Insurance business (a cash cow- sold and cut)
• Best talent wealth of knowledge (encourage to take early retirement)
• End to end credit delivery system (cut to originate, book, and service loans on 17 different systems that DONT talk to each other or archive records- it’s on a shared drive)
• consistent doc repository systems (eliminated for shared drives)
• Career progression (non-existent, just make project teams, and loan teammates to departments to avoid creating needed positions, yup do 6 jobs for the price of one)

I see a pattern of gaslighting, deception, lack of accountability. Just go back to the drawing board, admit this is a failed merger, and build it up. Stop putting a bandaid on a fatal g-nshot wound.

We won’t cut our way into a higher stock price and teammate satisfaction.

I started at Humana around the time of the CenterWell rebrand, and ever since then, I've seen one poor leadership decision after another and watched the ship quickly start sinking. I saw quality people jump ship at a rate I've never seen in my entire career, and those remaining go into survival mode or went completely unhinged and treated everyone poorly. I saw bosses use their direct reports as punching bags and give them menial work while stealing their direct reports ideas and passion, claiming them as their own... and the same bosses act completely fake to "teams that matter" while slave-driving those that worked thankless jobs behind the scenes, which kept the wheels turning. I've seen Humana sink hundreds of millions of dollars to implement new software, then implement new software over the new software... rinse, lather, repeat. I've seen brilliant minds reduced to glorified assistants that weren't allowed to speak. I've seen repeated empty promises from senior leadership, gaslighting, manipulation, disrespect, verbal abuse... but hey, the benefits and pay are great, right?
I let before I completely lost my mind and my individuality... with no real plan except GET THE HECK OUTTA HERE. I do not regret my decision, even for a moment.
Humana is the wild wild west and I did not want to be mentally gunned down any further.
My advice to anyone still there... leave while you can. Their words do NOT cover up what's really going on. Please open your eyes.

We are proud to announce third consecutive quarter of record-breaking profits, achieved through a bold trifecta of financial wizardry, workforce shrinkage, and algorithmic optimism.

While revenue soared thanks to strategic offshoring and the deployment of Eliza™, our AI-powered job shrinker, we also successfully identified 25% of employees as suddenly “non-performing,” despite their actual performance. Truly remarkable!

As a result, we are thrilled to reward our top talent with a generous 0 to 1% merit increase. That’s nearly enough to cover one Starbucks™ venti and a half tank of gas—if you drive a scooter— and you drink free coffee!

The firm attributes its success to:

• Eliza™: Our AI chatbot trained on 1990s legacy system coding and HR performance feedback communications (oh wait, what HR communications?)

Eliza now handles 80% of client interactions and 100% of employee feedback loops. She’s programmed to say “I hear you” while flagging your sentiment as a compliance risk.

• Force Ranking 2.0: Inspired by medieval jousting, our new performance system pits employees against each other in a Hunger Games-style meritocracy. Winners get a 1% raise; losers get a “growth opportunity” as future Wal-Mart™ greeters.

• Leadership Transparency: Our executives remain committed to open communication, as long as it’s pre-recorded, legally vetted, and delivered with a catchy British accent. When asked about the disconnect between profits and pay, one EC member replied, “We’re not shrinking the pie—we’re just slicing it with AI precision to help our associates.”

Analysts speculate that the profits may stem from a combination of deferred (no longer available) severance packages, strategic ambiguity, and a new revenue stream called “Emotional Tolling,” where employees pay to access their own feedback.

In Q4, BNY plans to expand its “People Optimization” initiative, which includes:

• Replacing exit interviews with $5 off Subway™ coupons when ordered online in the app
• Offering stock options in the form of NFTs shaped like pie charts (if Goldman Sachs CEO "DJ D-Sol" - David Solomon approves)
• Launching a new internal podcast: “You’re Not Fired, You’re Just Misaligned”

In summary, BNY’s record profits prove that when you cut enough people and obscure enough truth, even the balance sheet starts to believe the story. How's that for AI/ML! After all, nothing says ‘transparency’ like a frosted glass conference room where decisions are made by people you’ll never meet, about jobs you no longer have.

I mean… it’s beyond ridiculous that leadership refuses to acknowledge layoffs that have happened, are happening, and will keep happening until who knows when. The gaslighting is unreal, and so is the complete lack of the most basic requirement of leadership - owning up to actions and their consequences for the people you lead.

I used to feel confident but now I doubt myself every single day because of the favoritism and gaslighting here. Even as a top performer I’ve never felt so low about my work. It’s utterly exhausting trying to hold it together and I don’t know how much longer I can.

Continue to keep your eyes open and resume's ready as SF is a pile of sh-t just like the rest of corporate America. Corporations like SF are slowly and methodically sealing/draining our nation and our way of life's doomed faith.

Return to work mandates to run people off
Cutting benefits and pay, with added unlimited responsibility, you fill all roles!
Reassignments to shi-t departments or jobs, constant bullying
Accountability Cycles and bogus performance improvement plans
Understaffing to reduce expenses and inflate executive bonuses
Horrible training with path to proficiencies that set you up to fail
Woke and DEI- another way to say you are helping under represented groups but actually methodically abusing them and setting them up to fail. Labor abuse is the oldest form of systemic racism in America.
Age Discrimination
New Executive philosophy- you owe us 100% loyal and total sacrifice and we owe you absolutely nothing and will discard you at our convenience.
Constant surveys to target trouble makers and fake talent reviews to decide who is next.
Constant gaslighting, controlling the narrative, Exec propaganda, and constant sleight of hand and lies.
Remember never trust one single thing they tell you, sabotage SF at every turn and tell anyone and everyone you know what kind of trash they people are!

They’re on here playing on your experiences and gaslighting so FLD can keep selling $XX million of whatever stock and direct f5 to an oblivion of fake setting the bar shenanigans. Get out. Just leave. Then go tell your story on LinkedIn even if under a mock profile.

The place is effed and you’re effed if you care about staying there.

GET OUT NOW BEFORE THEY SEND YOU HOME

I started gaslighting myself by thinking about the good ole day at fidelity… then I remember being on multiple teams where women had extra children just for some time off. No, it’s always been this bad.