#lessonslearned

I’m planning to submit my resignation tomorrow with same-day notice. Before I do, I want to make sure I’m not overlooking anything important.

What are the must-do steps I should take before submitting and heading out?
Thinking about things like documentation, personal files, benefits, HR, or anything you wish you’d handled differently.

Appreciate any quick advice or lessons learned.

Hi there. I am trying to connect with WD employees who were recently laid off and still searching for job. I am on the same boat and wondering if we can share our experiences and lessons. Using this platform because we can comment anonymously.

For those currently in the Transformation or tagged CO dedicated how many of you have received the STEER email? Trying to understand the actual substance of this seemingly nice program versus the stated goal of 'supporting internal transfers' Has anyone seen any concrete results or movements from it yet?

Also, for any former colleagues who were let go: did you receive this communication prior to your departure? Any insights or 'lessons learned' regarding what this email actually signals would be greatly appreciated.

Since I'm leaving, figured I'd share what I wish I'd known. Don't trust promises from above. Keep receipts because people will throw you under the bus. Management won't protect you. HR protects the company. Have a good life.

Asking for obvious reasons.

I was laid off a while back. I really messed up during my layoff meeting.
I had enough service time to get the maximum severance and had kind of seen it coming and had taken steps to prepare for the next chapter of my career. So I was more or less going to be ok.
All the same it was upsetting and I let them see how upset I was, which was exactly the response they wanted.
I should have just laughed in their faces and walked out.

I’ve been an employee for a long time. I honestly felt that I have been treated well and fairly throughout my career. I felt like management cared about me as a person. Having the flexibility and working in the office three days a week helped me to get a little more sleep as I wasn’t commuting every day. It helped me to balance doctors appointments for me and my family. I was able to take care of a chronically, ill family member. It made me happy to go above and beyond because I felt Pnc was going above and beyond with the work/life balance.

With the announcement today, I just can’t understand what is happening at PNC. With other employees around me being on calls all day long, I’m not sure what type of interaction they expect me to get. I can sit at my desk all day and not one person talks to me because they are on conference calls. I have nothing in common with any of them. We don’t do the same job. Not even close. The only thing that this is doing for me is costing me more money. Money that I don’t have. I don’t have the luxury of having paid parking downtown and although I appreciate the discount in the northside, it adds an additional 40 minutes onto my commute daily. (20 minutes each way, not to mention I’m getting up way earlier to come into the office to begin with.) I can’t afford to park downtown every day like some of the higher paid employees at the bank. I can’t afford to pay for someone to help a chronically ill family member. Through a program that is offered to us, It would cost me $125 a week. The chronically ill family member did not have an illness prior to Covid so I didn’t have to worry about this. Wtf 2 days a week helped me tend to their needs on my lunch time, and after work, but now I’m not able to do that as i’ll be downtown all day and will be getting home significantly later in the evening due to all the traffic for my commute home.

I’m honestly hurt by this decision and cannot believe we are not being given some flexibility for our families. We only have one life to live and we are just passing by on this earth. My family will always be my priority. Nothing will come before my family.

Don’t think that hard work, good reviews, or even being chummy with your manager will save you. You’re a number on a spreadsheet. If you make more than your coworkers, well, bye bye. If you don’t want to be caught with your pants down, you better accept this as reality.

My payout is wrong. The numbers do NOT add up. Called benefits hotline and they couldn't understand where the payout is coming from either. Do not leave anything on the table.

Don't bother working for this company of you don't want to see the executive council be the only ones who get money. Also you will have no say in any company policy. If you speak up with a good idea to improve processes or morale you will be retaliated against

ABU was among the first business units to move toward modernization and, in the process, implemented unassigned seating. The experiment failed spectacularly, creating widespread frustration and ultimately forcing a reversal back to assigned seating.

It’s hard not to ask why we continue to repeat initiatives that have already demonstrated clear and predictable failure, rather than learning from past experience.

Remember this feeling of being Discarded, remember the betrayal that had NOTHING to do with your performance or metrics. Remember how easily they threw you to the trash can once it became expedient— remember it before you sacrifice yourself again climbing the corporate ladder and neglect your family, health and pursuing your own dreams for the sake of giving more to the Company. In the end they don’t give a DAMMMN about you, it’s all about the shareholders, Execs and appeasing Wall Street. The rest of us are easily discarded like used toilet paper once they have finished wiping their ŠŠŠ with you.

How can we pay bills when the entire top level executives are settled for life. Verizon had a bad culture. Fix it in tech work. No calls after 5 . I see people are crying and I knew they worked really really hard.

Just give a like so it’ll be viewed. Companies now know to take care of themselves.

Never be loyal to Dell or any employer. Make sure to always serve your own interests. Never stop looking for new opportunities and as soon as something good comes your way, be ready to move on. Loyalty is dead when it comes to employers. Make sure the same is true for you as well.

I worked at Gartner for several years. These layoffs come to no surprise to me, especially as free AI websites become better and more robust. Gartner hires new sales people in waiting for others to quit, get fired, or leave for other roles(inside or outside the company). They literally hire you to sit on the "bench". I worked within the startup sales division, 1-50 Employees, Gartner can help them grow, that is no doubt, however, when I was there, startup funding was in the sh----r. I achieved quota my first year but after that, my territory got taken and the new territory I was given, 2/3 of it was in the Artic Circle... Working with startups, they have incredibly small budgets, we had to sell at the same price that our medium to large sales teams sold at, tell me how that makes sense... That being said, we were not allowed to sell 1 year contracts, unless management liked you. I provided 9 verbal and written commitments to my manager for 1 year contracts with significantly higher than base price asking and was denied. Base was 57,300, I was selling them in the 70s... guess their money isn't green enough(BTW avg deal size was 61k). Gartner really only sold on their name, they are just a consulting firm, nothing else. I knew that the small business division was dying. The first manager I had, was essentially worthless, their onboarding and training is also worthless, and many, many people will agree.
Even with the 9 written commitments, they tried to PIP me twice and I clearly beat it, until the 3rd time, they found out my wife was to have a baby in the middle of the 60 window, that they guarantee you have, and they fired me, obviously I was going to take my full paternity leave. I couldn't be better off at my company now.
The company is garbage, the consultants, while extremely educated aren't as hands on as they claim to be. Gartner says you have unlimited access to them... no you don't. They let you read research notes, thats pretty much it. Management is so out of touch with reality and what sales people are going through, they should be RIFFED.

I liked to say it was a good experience - it wasn't.

I'd liked to say that we helped each other thrive - we didn't

I'd like to say that F5 puts out new and innovative products - they don't

I'd like to say that F5 puts out quality products - it doesn't

I'd like to say that customer issues were resolved - they weren't.

I'd like to say that the customer was treated right - they weren't.

I'd like to say that the executive staff members are leaders - they aren't.

I'd like to say that I will recover from having worked at F5 - I can only hope.

I'd love to hear from people who have left and learn more about any tips you have for navigating the post-Cengage career journey.

What do you miss? What do you not miss? What have you carried forward? What have you left behind? What did you learn from your transition? How would you approach it differently if you had to do it all over again?

Once upon a time, ExxonMobil told me I was part of a family. Turns out, it was a family reunion where someone always gets voted off the island. Every year, the corporate ritual begins: managers huddle in air-conditioned rooms, armed with bell curves and buzzwords, ready to determine who deserves to be a “star” and who must be sacrificed at the altar of “forced distribution.”

It’s not personal, they tell us. It’s the system. And that’s exactly the problem: the system is personal. It’s designed to pit friend against friend, teammate against teammate, until collaboration becomes a liability. Help too much, and you’ve given away your edge. Share credit, and you’ve signed your own exit papers. At ExxonMobil, teamwork is celebrated in the posters, but quietly punished in the rankings.

I survived this game for years — until I didn’t. One morning, my badge beeped for the last time. Not because I failed. But because someone had to fail. Someone always has to. That’s the brilliance of the system: it doesn’t matter how many projects you delivered, how many nights you stayed late, how many crises you saved — the curve must be fed. And this year, it was hungry for me.

Meanwhile, senior management writes love letters to Wall Street, filled with words like efficiency and right-sizing. They call it strategy. I call it theatre. A tragicomedy in which real people become line items, and livelihoods are “optimized” into quarterly metrics. Funny how bonuses at the top never seem to follow the same bell curve. The VPs ascend while the rest of us are sorted into neat statistical buckets: star, survivor, sacrifice.

We joked about oil wells, about decline curves, about depletion. Turns out, the cruelest decline curve was our own. We became non-producing assets, flared off like unwanted gas. Quick burn. No emissions report. Just silence.

And here’s the saddest comedy of it all: ExxonMobil doesn’t need to fire you. It only needs to erase you. Your email blinks out, your calendar evaporates, your name is deleted from the org chart as if you were never here. The system is efficient — cruelly so. It doesn’t spill blood; it sterilizes it.

I’m left with a twisted gratitude. Gratitude for colleagues who became friends even while the system forced us to compete. Gratitude for the absurdity of it all — because if you don’t laugh, you’ll drown. And gratitude, perversely, for the clarity: now I know the truth. This was never about “our greatest asset.” It was about protecting theirs.

So to the survivors still inside: play carefully. Smile at your peers while secretly outscoring them. Innovate, but not too much. Collaborate, but only if the credit sticks to you. The machine loves you — until it doesn’t.

ExxonMobil: Energy lives here.
Translation: Human energy is expendable. Executive energy is renewable.

This is what you get when we could have unionized the entire company under one flag and held them by the short and curlys. Instead you all trusted a corporation to have your best interests at heart. Life lesson for you all.

And we'll pay the price. What happened last week will look small compared to what’s coming, because everyone keeps throwing all their eggs into a basket that has yet to show any real results. There’s only so long you can get by on buzzwords and promises without anything to actually back it up.

100+ offshore jobs added in the last six months, and MCK people sent over to train them.....

Sad to see the slow death continue.

Too bad Paragon leaders are making the same bad mistakes that ki-led Horizon, but not using lessons learned.

The only people in my office that have not packed their desks are #contractors and onshore #H1B people. Offshoring has worked so well in the past (sarcasm).

MCK management seems incapable of learning from past failures. #lessonslearned

Another one opens. I can say that with certainty. Be hopeful people! Follett IS NOT the end all, be all. You don't deserve to be treated unfairly, nor have your confidence stripped. Move on sooner than later, there are great opportunities out here, I can attest to that. I landed a better paying job with a better company in under 2 months. Working with a bunch of insecure and stressed people is not my idea of a healthy environment. Give yourselves the best Christmas present this year...start looking for a new job.

#lessonslearned #lifegoeson #keepyourheadup