#leadership

Because we’re not a-s kissers like that other guy.

Thank you for your attention to this matter!

ANONYMOUS, Employee of Teradata (TDC) Corporation

Bad enough that every day feels like a punishment for a choice I barely remember making.
And if I dare complain, Ernest’s voice echoes in my head: “You self-selected for this role.”

The expectations?
They are not expectations. They are shackles.

Seven days a week. Twenty-four hours a day. No pause. No mercy. No life. And still “You self-selected for this role.”
Four jobs crammed into one because people burn out and leave, and replacements never come. Their absence becomes my burden. And still “You self-selected for this role.”
Forced into company charity work, even though my own family barely remembers what I look like. And still “You self-selected for this role.”
Begging for scraps of budget, even with a team of a hundred souls. Every dollar has to pass through Ernest, because we are all assumed to be thieves stealing from his bonus. Because God knows, we will never see one. But of course “You self-selected for this role.”

I missed my son’s entire summer of sports. Every game. Every smile. Every memory.
Gone. Because I was chained here.
I leave home at five in the morning, return after seven at night, and collapse into bed only to wake up still exhausted.
I have fallen asleep in the bathroom at work. I have fallen asleep driving to work.
I confessed this once to my colleagues. You know what they said?
“Do not say anything. Do not make Ernest angry. He does not care.”

And he does not.

We cancelled the VIA because Ernest did not want to hear the complaints.
The job market is brutal, and he knows it. He wears it like armor, like permission to treat us all like dirt. Like criminals. As if respect is too expensive a luxury to waste on us.

Quarterly reviews? Forget it. My boss literally told me to just get AI to generate something. Promotions? Not a chance. Ernest fills jobs from the outside, proudly waving the diversity flag, while those of us drowning here never get pulled from the water.

Every single person in Supply Chain hates their job in Spring.
We are exhausted. We are broken. We bleed for this place, and in return we get nothing. No bonuses. No stock worth anything. Just the knowledge that Ernest collects his fat paycheck on the blood and sweat of our backs.

And the Fire Side Chat?
God. Two hours before, you will hear someone calling this place what it is, a shithole. But once the cameras roll, suddenly it is smiles and empty words about how great it all is.
It is pathetic. It is tragic.
We are so dysfunctional it hurts.

Heard there is a small contingency of GP's discussing a no confidence vote for Penny. Has this ever happened at the firm?

In his now infamous “to all employees” diatribe, Mr. Stink penned, "We run a dynamic, customer-facing business, tackling large-scale, challenging initiatives“ but I am here to inform you that we actually run a telephone company. For a hundred years it was a monopoly, but even after divestment, it’s basically the same business. People (aka customers) want to communicate and we provide the utility infrastructure. The end. What your still here? Waiting for me to eat shawarma? Since you’re still here, ask Mr. Stink at his feeding trough in South Akard why we need him? If I ask Ask AT&T, ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot Chat how to run a successful dynamic customer facing system, it will give me a 2,500 word double spaced response in 30 seconds and ask if I want it in PDF or PowerPoint. I can ask that question while chained to a desk or watching the TV and I wwill get a response. So maybe instead of chasing all of us Gen Xers off your lawn because we can dial on a rotary phone, you can pack up your shine box and hit the road, pyjam-pa!

Google AI: Medtronic Org structure is very deep, not flat. Will EM involvement drive middle or senior level of management layoff?

AI answer:

Involving activist investor Elliott Management (EM) at Medtronic is likely to drive layoffs at both the middle and senior management levels. While middle management is most vulnerable, senior management is also at risk due to a culture of long tenure and deep hierarchies.

-- Layoff risk for middle management
Middle management is most likely to be targeted in a push for a flatter, more efficient corporate structure.
Elliott's history: Elliott has a well-documented history of pushing for aggressive cost-cutting and workforce reductions at companies like Southwest Airlines and AT&T.
Operational inefficiencies: Medtronic has a deep, bureaucratic hierarchy with "excessive bureaucracy" noted in employee reviews. The newly formed Operating Committee, influenced by Elliott, is tasked with improving cost discipline and efficiency, which often means streamlining the organizational chart and reducing redundant management layers.
Redundant roles: Restructuring often involves pushing accountability down to the operating units, as CEO Geoff Martha has previously attempted. This makes layers of middle management that are not directly tied to revenue generation more vulnerable to elimination.

-- Layoff risk for senior management
While less common, senior management is not immune to restructurings influenced by activist investors.

Challenging the status quo: Elliott's approach challenges the "entrenchment of long-tenured executives" that can characterize large, stable companies like Medtronic. Elliott can advocate for leadership changes and board reshuffles, including CEO replacements.
Holding leaders accountable: The new board committees will hold senior leaders more accountable for the performance of their portfolios. The potential for divestitures and strategic shifts driven by Elliott puts the leaders of underperforming or non-core business units at a higher risk of being replaced.

Reshuffling and departures: The creation of new board committees and the shifting strategy often cause high-profile executives to depart, as seen in the recent exit of Medtronic CFO Karen Parkhill.

Potential outcomes

• Initial reductions: The process will likely start with cuts to operational and supply chain roles, as has already begun.
  Later-stage management cuts: These will be followed by more strategic trimming of middle and senior management roles to create a leaner, more agile leadership structure.
• Varying impact: As CEO Geoff Martha stated in a past restructuring, the impact will vary across teams, regions, and countries. Some departments, especially those tied to specific functions like manufacturing and supply chain, will see heavier reductions.

In summary, Elliott's involvement and Medtronic's focus on profitability will likely result in layoffs affecting both middle and senior management. While middle management is most at risk from cost-cutting initiatives, senior leaders in underperforming portfolios or those whose roles are deemed redundant will also face significant scrutiny and potential elimination.

(1) Hard Work Isn't Enough
Results need to be seen. Advocate for yourself - quite efforts get ignored.

(2) Loyalty Won't Pay The Bills
Companies are loyal to profits, not people. Look out for yourself first.

(3) Your Job Title Is Temporary
Focus on building skills, not clinging to labels. Titles do not define your value.

(4) Your boss isn't always right
Leaders make mistakes too. Challenge respectfully when it matters.

(5) Networking is Non-Negotiable
Your skills are important, but connections will open the doors.

(6) Burnout is not a Badger of Honor
Work smarter, not harder. Protect your energy - it's your greatest resource.

(7) Comfort Zones Ki-l Growth
If you are not uncomfortable, you are not growing.

(8) Feedback is a Gift
Even the harshest feedback can teach you something valuable. Seek it out.

(9) You Are Always Replaceable
Focus on making an impact, not being irreplaceable. IMpact builds a legacy.

(10) Perfection Slows You Down
Aim for progress, not perfection. Done is better than Perfect.

(11) Career Progress Is Not Linear
Side steps, failures, and pivots often lead to the biggest wins.

(12) No One Will Hand You Success
Take ownership. Push for opportunities. No one is going to care more about your career than you.

Author's Footnote - The 12 Truths listed below are not just for engineering but apply to all jobs. In addition, I would add the following advice. Be honest, respectful, humble, and guard your reputation and integrity to establish yourself as someone who can be trusted and has credibility.

There would be more accountability. Ginny would have been tossed way before 2020. She was horrible. Declining revenues quarter after quarter.

Alvind would probably have been shown the door as well. He is an awful leader, he is awful at communicating and he is arrogant, and just plain miserable. He hates being held accountable for his blunders.

Are there director and VP level individual contributors?

I thought this was funny. All I did was ask is Stephanie Farris liked?

— here’s the unfiltered version of why a lot of people dislike Stephanie Ferris at FIS:
• Worldpay Disaster – People feel she was part of leadership that massively overpaid ($35B) and then sold it at a huge loss, destroying shareholder value. Many see this as one of the biggest fintech blunders ever.
• Wall Street First, Employees Last – She’s viewed as prioritizing appeasing investors (stock buybacks, dividends, “cost savings”) while cutting thousands of jobs and gutting teams, leaving employees demoralized.
• The “Future Forward” Spin – Her transformation program is seen by critics as corporate jargon masking layoffs and cost-slashing, without a real growth strategy.
• Reactive, Not Visionary – Instead of leading with innovation in a fast-changing fintech/payments space, she’s seen as patching leaks, restructuring, and spinning failures as successes.
• Trust Issues – After major service outages and technology failures, people blame her for not modernizing systems fast enough. Customers and partners feel burned.
• Culture Ki-ler – Former and current employees complain on forums like Glassdoor and Reddit that under her leadership, morale has cratered, communication is poor, and talented people are leaving.
• Poor Communication & Accountability – Investors and staff alike feel she dodges responsibility, blames “market conditions,” and leans on vague optimism without real transparency.

In short, the harshest critics say: she’s a cost-cutter, not a builder. Instead of driving innovation in payments and banking tech (where FIS desperately needs it), she’s focused on financial engineering and PR spin.

She no longer show up on Sparq. Not exactly sure what her portfolio was but she was a judge at the Tech Tank sessions.

Any guesses/rumors/gossips?

Our team is a mess because no one is keeping things in line. Personal drama takes over, but we still scramble to meet goals by working extra hours just to stay off the radar. People are tense, worried about job security, and it is draining to walk into this every morning. Proper management could fix so much, but no one steps up.

Now that it's public, perhaps the post won't be taken down!

Why are we treating him with kindness internally and saying he retired?? He was ruthless and never showed one ounce of respect for anyone in FIG. He was fired, relieved of his duties... Whatever. Retired gives him the dignity he never gave any one else. DISAPPOINTING announcement! We were clear on Jenn and the others. Why not him?

Intel might not need any more CPMs since the attrition will be so high due to the non-existent AI strategy,no accountability, no decision making, high handedness , absolutely no market/product insight , just PPTs for academic purpose, thanks to our AI CTO. People are frustrated , angry and disillusioned. Don’t know why LBT cannot see it

Does anyone actually get promoted for their work, or is it always about who you know?

Sometimes these engineers won't talk that much or only talk when a discussion is actually meaningful. Sometimes what they say won't matter anyways so they simply focus on implementation and development work.
They are among the few who deliver solid results.

Is management aware of this phenomena?

There are so many people here with big titles who barely lift a finger. They cover for each other and make it impossible to clean house. If they ever got out of the way, we could probably fix a lot of problems in no time.

New or old, I can't think of one good leader here.

Long Time Employee. Got moved to the MTL role.

I was constantly asked what I need for support. I don't have the ability to articulate what I needed when we are so damn low paying, and nobody wants to do our jobs. The beverage portfolio is so many skus and our teams hate the job. Go into a Walmart at 5AM and look at how much more work Pep Merchandisers have than all the other companies in the store. The Coke guy gets 5 pallets and 80% of it is red silver or green. my 5 pallets take me team three times as long. Our teams get burnt out because the work is terrible then I end up doing the labor. I am going to work with heavy machinery make a 50% pay raise and not manage people. BYE!!!!

Hey senior leaders, we have the most complexity and slightly above average pay.

More rats leaving a sinking ship: John Lovelady announced today that Bryan Grundhoefer and Dr. Carlos Hernandez are leaving WellMed.

Bryan Grundhoefer served as president of WellMed Medical Management.
Dr. Carlos Hernandez served as president of WellMed Medical Group.

https://web.archive.org/web/20240403135023/https://www.wellmedhealthcare.com/about-us/leadership/

Over the past few days, we have been hearing about quite a few people who had dedicated their lives to Juniper. These people spent upwards of 80hrs a week in supporting the organization grow and deliver.

As this acquisition is taking shape, we are being informed that these folks do not have a place in the new organization. This is beyond comprehension. How can our SVP's EVP's make such decisions and completely ignore these individuals in favor of the new team. Some of these people let go have a resume that's longer than the age of these new members.

I'm beyond stunned today as I hear about a specific individual who worked tirelessly in delivering the results, appreciated repeatedly and making our SVP/EVP successful in the eyes of our CEO. If this isn't betrayal I don't know what is..

Today, I can say that I no longer have any respect left for this person's previous supervisor.

Apart from CEO.

I really thought that after this phase that I would find reason to believe in the firm again. The opposite happened. It’s clear to me that this is not a place I want to work.

Even though I’m safe, my faith and trust in leadership is broken forever. The way they kept demotions/grade drops under the radar intentionally and their handling of the six-month layoff process generally is inexcusable and riddled with unforced error after unforced error from the disastrous, word salad, tone-deaf firm town hall to the callous superficially transparent corpo comms.

The results are also a complete failure. I don’t see any efficiencies gained, just unnecessary confusion with all the middle management boneheads still around bloating the org chart. And the people they decided to promote? Nearly all are brown nosers or obviously unqualified.

On top of that i no longer feel any job security. What’s to stop the firm from arbitrarily dropping my pay a year or six months from now? Now that leadership has the taste of blood, it seems they like and will return for more. I don’t want to be here when that happens and I don’t have to be.

I didn’t think it would come to this but I’m going to start actively looking. The firm can do what it wants and I am sure will be just fine but I want no part of this new culture where employees are seen as less than human cogs to be broken, switched around internally or cast aside on management’s whim. No thanks.

Hey y’all! Hoping you had a relaxing Labor Day weekend - I hope this Labor Day allowed you what I call the “3 Rs” - it brought you time to recharge, reflect, and reconnect with what matters to you most. My fourth “R”? “Remember” to sign your severance or demotion package today by 11:59 pm CST.

Enough about a holiday that celebrates the American workers contributions. It was Women’s Equality Day last Tuesday so I wanted to celebrate a few of my favorite heroines in “Herstory” (aka History). But before I do, I need to address a question I keep getting. You all know I didn’t take the last name of my husband. That would not be progressive. Many of you ask, “Penny, why hasn’t he taken your last name?” Well…I’ve been championing this change for years but he’s a stubborn man!

Let’s look back in time to a few females I respect:

Marie Antoinette - she is famous for saying, “Let them eat cake”, when the French people were starving, and living in inflation, and many in squalor. For some reason the French citizenry didn’t like the royal coffers being filled at their expense. What? I call that “Penny Economics” or what some of you may call trickle down theory - demote and take away the current peasants earnings and use those funds to pay people’s severance. Oh…I’d be remiss in not saying this…”Cake” means “Crumbs” so when you are trying to put a Christma…I mean a Holiday dinner on the table, you can tell your kids and spouse, “Let them eat cake!”. One foot note - I’m not a fan of how the French people treated her. She was a visionary.

Catherine the Great - ahhh…now let’s talk about humble swagger. She was the empress of Russia from 1762 to 1796. She came to power after overthrowing her husband, Peter III. Talk about moxy! And I like the ring of her title…”Penny the Great”. I digress, apologies. She is often included in the ranks of the enlightened despots…like me! But, just like me, an evaluation of her foreign policy was completed and it was considered a dishonest one. Catherine failed to reach any of the initial goals she had put forward. And just like me - Catherine lacked a long-term strategy and from the very start was characterized by a series of mistakes. She imposed a comprehensive system of state regulation of merchants’ activities. It was a failure because it narrowed and stifled entrepreneurship and did not reward economic development. Catherine called in “Russia Reimagined”.

Those are just two women I wanted to celebrate since we missed recognizing last weeks holiday. Next week I’ll highlight Amelia Earhart’s exceptional aviation skills.

As I wrap up and focus on business, I wanted to share a few more changes in 2026:

• The “Toast to Ted” will be retired and there will be a mandated “Toast to Penny” at regional events.
• We are working on standing-up a BRG for the Demoted.

Enjoy Labor Day today as you reflect on your years of service and don’t forget. “Qu’ils mangent de La brioche”

The recent CEO and Board are a bunch of cowards plain and simple. Total lip service and many even bought that lip service. Look what has happened. Beyond a sad day for many people. They say the only constant things in life is change and paying taxes. But change doesn' t mean to sell out to VULTURES. You FAILED as leaders ...but what do you care. You get a lot of money..That is what is it all about right. But also many of you voted for this. You RUINED a respected... what was once a pretty good company. A fact is a fact. Just terrible.

It's an older podcast interview with Richard Davis.
https://www.bankdirector.com/article/a-second-act-for-richard-davis/

3 minutes in he gets to US Bank culture and how he put employees first before even customers and shareholders and how employee satisfaction drove customer happiness which drove shares up making the shareholders happy.

That all seems to have disappeared quickly after he left. It's time to go back to that philosophy. If anyone in the C Suite is reading this, pay attention. Richard Davis was the golden era. Learn from him.

But nothing officially announced. No one knows except those impacted. Others have to figure out what really happened. Many don’t even know Cisco had a layoff. Such is the game, play wisely. Don’t wait and think you’ll outsmart others to survive. Calm before the storm.

Hans Vestberg just gave us a corporate update… about his meniscus. Surgery, rehab, jogging again — as if Verizon’s future depends on his morning runs.

Employees are getting cut, the stock is stuck, and competitors are eating Verizon alive. But Hans? He’s posting selfies with interns and bragging about finishing a 5K.

This isn’t leadership. It’s narcissism. Verizon has become a backdrop for Hans’ personal brand — where his knee surgery is a bigger headline than the company’s direction.

The meniscus healed. The company hasn’t.

If the job market weren’t as bad as it is, I’d honestly consider those laid off the lucky ones. I’ve worked at several companies in this industry, and this one is, hands down, the worst managed, most impersonal, most dehumanizing, and least efficient by far. Funny how all those negatives always seem to come together. The worse you treat your employees, the worse the company itself becomes.

Remember Michael told his leaders beginning of last year to get the stock to $200 by end of fiscal year 2026 or executive heads will roll.

Thanks for dedicating your life to ntap. I just got here and am going to sc--w you without even buying you dinner. thanks for your pto, what used to be an amazing place to work is now awful. Your awesome Wissam, gfyourself from everyone at ntap that made this company great.

Who was the best or worst CEO of Avaya?

Donald Peterson
Louis D’Ambrosio
Charles Giancarlo
Kevin J Kennedy
Jim Chirico
Alan Masarek
Patrick Dennis

Best?

Worst?

So do people think it’s normal to just assume that you will be laid off any day you come in? When the new leaders come in they just clean house and bring in people. What kind of work gets done when people are worried all day?

State Farm here! Come over and read our posts about what this sh-t hole is doing to its people! Your CEO has set the pace/tone for all the other CEOs to fall in line! They attend the same meetings, talk to the same consultants and run in the same circles. I've been at SF 30 years and need a couple more to retire. If you happen to have SF insurance cancel that cr-p, it's too expensive, service su-ks and all you are doing is giving 10-15% of your premium to a SF Agent. I'm about to move all of my internet and cell away from AT&T after your CEO sent that letter to employees basically telling them we owe you absolutely nothing and we expect absolute conformance and loyalty to AT&T! Same sh-t hole people no matter where you work in corporate America.

Hey Penny Pincher Pennington! The thin veil you put in front of every HO associate’s face will most certainly backfire! Hiring a ton of offshore associates for cheap won’t magically fix your problems!!! We tried it in the past! It doesn’t work!!! Ever heard of the law of diminishing value?? Welp, too late now!!!!!!!

This is insulting that the train wreck our c levels created is now our front line manager problem to fix.

Low Point: Being told to stress how amazing Walgreens Cash is and to turn ourselves into a marketing mouthpiece if/when asked by family&friends how the latest shift in Walgreens is panning out for us all. Ew.

Concept of an executive chairman also seems spooky in practice with that much punching power over a standard board member. To be determined though if that’s ever leveraged too casually.

High Point: I’ve rarely ever heard Stefano pop in for one of these. But he came off the most genuine and straightforward out of anyone who spoke. Everyone else was sweating bullets, meanwhile Pessina’s all “bibbidty bopiplity, I Italian man, we used to be American only, that worked before, so welcome back.” Maybe it was just the language bit that made his simplicity seem that mindful? Half fell asleep for everyone else’s segments.

What has this company become. I’ve given 19 years of my life to it and how do the big wigs repay me? A choice between termination or demotion. There aren’t words big enough to express how disappointed I am. So much pain and sadness.