#management

I have never seen a more chaotic and poorly managed business in my long career. Letting go of some of your best and hardest working people never ends well. If the Board and CEO were trying to streamline the company, they failed miserably.

My advice: Bring back the good, hard-working people who were let go and fire the CEO.

Too many people think complaining online means they have done something to fix a problem. It don’t. It will make you feel better for a little while, but not make change. Remember, rich people and shareholders don’t care about you. You’re a tool to be used until you are worn out and then thrown away. If you die, they don’t care. In fact, dying quickly is the wanted ending. So, how to protect yourself and other workers? Start forming a union. Google the communication worker unions. Google how to start a union. Google success and failure stories. Make contact with union reps. No rich person will pay you your value or respect you and the only way to get those things is to act as a large group. Remember, 5 day workweek, vacation, 8 hours a day are unions. And stop electing people who get paid by rich people to sc--w you.

Start discussing salary with other workers. Management hates it, but can’t stop it. You’ll find out how sc--wed you really are. Don’t get mad at people making more, get mad at management.

Do something. I am.

Given all the cuts, do we really need two chief network officers (wireless and wireline)?

Seems like they created a job for someone who was complaining. Just saying.

What are your thoughts ?

They are not worried about being out of compliance for years. The only thing that seems to matter is getting their scorecard to look green and protecting their bonus. It is a bunch of fat cats running the place into the ground, then moving on somewhere else to do it again.

Managers spread too thin across dev teams become unavailable for decisions needed to proceed to next steps.

So developers wait a week for a standup to escalate a decision, which gets skipped by the spread-thin manager delaying resolutions further.

and the beat goes on slowly… until the team is dissolved.

Nothing gets done. Priorities change by the day. Projects launch and die overnight. Key people vanish without warning. Managers are overwhelmed. I've completely checked out. No more goal-oriented work, just treading water. And I'm pretty sure most people are doing the same.

I mean, it's very easy to blame bootlickers, M5s and above, but overall it doesn't seem to add up. If I am being objective about it, I have not seen anyone extraordinarily good being laid off, ie, I was not shocked on hearing about someone. Sure, everyone claims they toiled long and hard, but only they know the truth.

But at least we have ‘agentic‘ nonsense and a falling stock.

That call could have gone worse. No idea how.

I read post on this site often about what a manager can and cannot do when it comes to hiring, firing, RIF, salary, bonus and remote work. Here is my direct experience in no particular order of importance. I retired over a year ago and am receiving my pension, so can freely write this. I know some things have changed in the past couple years, since my retirement but most of this was true in the early 2000's when I started at hBBT and is will be true forever at Truist.

1- Managers have the final say on who is hired. However, I never hired any FTE that the people that I manage did not approve of first. i.e. The candidate had to pass the team's interviews and I would have the go-ahead from my team before any offer was made.

2- If you don't get all the salary you can get upon initial hire, chances are you will never get to a salary of a newer hire. i.e. 99% of all new hires are paid more salary than experienced FTE, given the same pay grade. see next item...

3- It is nearly impossible to get more than a 10% salary increase and stay within the same paygrade. To get a real salary increase you have to get paygrade promotion and then the salary increase is capped at 20% increase (promotion) unless we managers can get a Level 3 (L3) (this was CTO level approval in my mgmt chain) to approve...which is almost impossible. If the original salary is so low that the paygrade promotion forces the new salary to be more than 20% then L3 has no say so; they have to approve. Prior to my retirement I got overy half of my FTEs a paygrade promotion and/or up to a 30% salary increase with the smallest salary increase 12%. I had 2 of the FTEs get a two paygrade promotion...from 109 to 111. Hence, it can be done, but most managers are spineless and will not even put for the effort to do so. It took me over 12 months of asking, begging, paperwork, more paperwork, arm twisting, etc.

4- AIP, yearly bonus, are somewhat decided by direct managers. We were given a bucket of money and would allocate a certain percentage or amount to each FTE that was AIP elegible. The higher the paygrade to more amount of bonus was allowed. The higher the performance rating the more bonus amount was allowed.

5- AIP allocation could be and was overwritten by the CTO at his whim. You may have heard stories from a couple years ago of the current CTO stating "It's my money and I will do with it what I want". Yep! it is true. I was there when he said it. i.e the CTO would go in at the last minute and take money from our buckets and give to his teacher's pet people with no regard for we manager. We had NO say so as direct managers. I fought that battle with a previous CTO (not the current CTO), anyone remember Eduardo J?, and HR and lost.

6- HR is not your friend. They tow the company line and will, virtually, stab you in the back while giving you a reach around. Never trust anyone from HR with anything. SERIOUSLY!

7- RIFs are 90% pre-determined. Someone/some group above a line manager is making the decision on who gets RIFed. It doesn't matter your performance, your time in service, or your salary...if someone wants you gone, you will be gone and there is little a line manager can do about it. You are nothing more than a line on a spreadsheet when it comes to RIFs. More on the next item.

8- Line managers do have some say on RIFs...if they put up a fight. In a round of RIFs in 2024, I was given a list that ~45% of my FTEs RIFed, roughly 11 of 25 people. I fought that tooth and nail and got the number whittled down to 5 that were RIFed. I was told by HR, "Your group will have some RIFs. You are not exempt". I picked those 5 names because I knew they could get a better job elsewhere and quickly. It was still a VERY hard decision for me to make. Of those 5, three ended up on a contract doing the same job for more salary, 1 was rehired 6 months later, and the last one moved on to a new company.

9- Take your vacation...every day of it each year. There is nothing that you are doing that can't get done by someone else. You are not the glue holding Truist together. Take your sick days also. Use it or lose it. They are your sick days and there isn't a darn thing your manager or HR can do to keep you from taking your given sick days. If you have a real good manger, be honest with him/her on sick days. Tell them that you need a couple days of sick time as a break from Truist. Good managers will understand. POS mangers will hold it against you and question you and demand a doctor note for every 5 minutes you are away.

10- Lastly, If you have a good manager, you know it. They will do what is right for you...not for them. They will fight for you and your livelyhood at Truist. Most managers are self-serving douch bags that only care about CYA and using you as a stepping stone.

P.S...DO NOT let Truist run your life. It is only a job. Your family, your physical and mental health, your life are more important.

TGS leaders sing songs about the need to to drive technology in support of the business but in reality all that they do is working in their individual interest and making sure they milk the company as much as they can. All of this is just empty words because the moment you try to push things forward it'll get squashed because change disrupts the status quo which was carefully built to work for the folks who built it. What a horrendous way to lead.

Lots of people speculating that Lead positions will be almost non-existent and Managers will have huge teams. Any substantial information there?

Manager favorites and ego strokers enjoy the gains !!

Seriously? We keep losing people, the amount of work stays the same. Mgmt just keeps asking for more and I am at the point where giving up is the only option I have.

All I ask is why? why are people still completing this and participating in this pompous management scheme? They don’t care about employees so why are you still participating in their bull cr-p? All it does is placing a target on your back to be RIF’d next.

Taking Million$ while delivering nothing. Best seller coming to a E- bookstore near you.

Carrot + stick + fear + metrics” = control-based management Transparency = trust-based management

I usually have my 1:1 every other Wednesday. My manager schedule 1:1 for tomorrow. Should I be concerned?

Not surprising that management missed the mark big time again.

Anyone else think that?

https://www.businessinsider.com/ford-ceo-jim-farley-chinese-carmakers-entering-us-devastating-2026-4

Can't make this stuff up.

"Tariffs are bad! Oh until they can save us from the Chinese OEMs!"

A joke. Until Farley onshores all manufacturing, design and IT, the government should give him the middle finger.

Not sure who needs to hear this, but acting like you run the place when you don’t is getting old. Constantly trying to manage everyone, inserting yourself into things that aren’t your responsibility, and acting like you own the company isn’t helping anyone—it’s just annoying.

Also, you’re not the locksmith. Stop changing things, controlling access, or acting like everything has to go through you. It creates confusion and makes it harder for people to actually do their jobs.

Focus on your role, do it well, and let everyone else do theirs.

Long story short: Our location out performs Portland and especially remote Tempe employees by miles. Everyone knows this including leads and managers. They just don’t do anything about it because the environment simply put is “someone else will do it.” - very bad perspective, but it’s true. They don’t address the lazy people because at the end of the day the job will get done.

During our team meeting today the last remark was “accountability.” Which I thought GREAT! I have literally been bringing this up to management for MONTHS. However it took a turn when it was directed towards us…. The at/above performing location. Followed by the typical avoidant manager phrase of “you each need to hold yourself to high standards.”

Basically what I got out of it is “We know people aren’t carrying their weight. So that is why we are expecting all of you to carry it for them.” What in the clownery is this work environment?

Curious if anybody else works on the weekend and isn't seeing it reflected in the time tracking. I don't work weekends regularly, but need to be in the office for certain software changes/deployments. I've, with my managers acknowledgement, treated this as part of my RTO days, but now I'm out 2-3 days what was previously shown.

Head of mobile business reassigned?

All we do is new marketing brands

I do not know why should I be surprised to see same a$$ kissers in receiving EIA.

Sick to my stomach, after yet another year / quarter where the efforts are not recognized or appreciated.

And no surprises where only the pets in the same location getting all the recognition.

Call me narcissist or petty, but no denying now that all the posts I saw about how managers have their own pets who get all the recognition were true.

I heard sales people will be targeted as per previous treads but will managers from different departments will be too?

How does HR continue to let AVPs report to AVPS and Directors with less than 6 people. There used to be span of control and that seems to be a lie.

JVB the corporate queen of organizational destruction is at it again. Glaring ageism on display and everyone sees it and knows it. Forcing generals out and bringing inexperienced and unqualified barely out of boot camp privates in. She’s earned her reputation and will leave this organization in the same shambles as she left MM sales. Arnoldi forced to take this demoted sales failure should really inspect this spin up junkie before ops becomes another failed more, better, faster experiment.

Voting neutral is acceptable and recommended, if the question is a decline from last year.

Watch Ford management jump on this post. Lol.

Heard from my friend that Meta is moving all Middle Managers and Directors to IC roles. Keeping Senior Management lean. This way it can identify whom it can let go quickly.

Should Oracle follow same ?

If you are wanting the date that you are going to be laid-off.

Really simple.

The cloud program is failing because of fundamentally poor leadership, misaligned hiring, and a completely top-heavy structure.

AC (Head of Cloud) and several of his direct reports do not have real experience running cloud platforms at scale. That lack of expertise is showing up every day in weak execution, poor decisions, and no clear ownership.

On top of that, there are multiple Grade 18+ leaders—many brought in from Amazon—sitting at ~$300K+ compensation levels with little to no tangible outcomes to justify the cost. The gap between pay and performance is not just noticeable, it’s unacceptable.

The structure is excessively top-heavy, accountability is weak within the inner leadership circle, and teams are left absorbing the execution failures. If this layer were rationalized, it could potentially free up close to $10M, highlighting how inefficient and misaligned the current operating model has become.

They give half-baked answers, I don't feel like asking any. F the policy.

I am the manager of three former ExxonMobil employees:

The first is desperate to please me and shows strong “boss-pleasing” behavior. It’s frustrating because I need him focused on productivity, not on feeding my ego. His results are what matter.

The second reacted strongly when I asked for help moving a table, saying it was a safety risk and refusing to do it.

The third seems to be living in the past. I hear “when I was at ExxonMobil…” at least five times a day.

I’ve started to notice a pattern. Former ExxonMobil employees often seem like they’ve gone through some kind of conditioning and struggle to behave normally in a different environment.

I don’t know what the company is doing to its employees, but it feels intense. They all come across as somewhat distressed, almost like they’ve developed an obsessive or overly rigid mindset.

I’m not sure what to do. They seem like capable employees, but their behavior is unusual, and I don’t want to fire them.

Any ideas on how to “reverse” the ExxonMobil effect?

P.S. They all say they left due to strategic changes, like departments being moved to other countries, not because of performance issues.

Great job Vz Board & Dan.

Great strategy... Great Execution.

Paying Dan $1M a month... do the right thing and resign.

Harvard Business Case already written howbto F-K up a once great company with DEI

No more RIF for next 8 months from Oracle but expect some performance based layoffs in mid-year. Here are the things you should note

1. Keep minimum 2 projects in your portfolio
2. Ensure you work with your customers. (don't rely on your lead or manager for inputs)
3. Maintain good relationship with your manager peers
4. Talk less. Don't share your stuff with anyone.

5. If project is not viable or repetitive, just move on

   AI is helpful for you to deliver things quickly but makes you d-mb in outside market. You get into a loop always without reason because AI does the reasoning for you.
   Use AI to remain competitive to deliver in project but don't rely on it for ever. Remember management will push AI usage to automate your work completely and stabilize it.
   Once project is stabilized you are out of game.

Do the direct managers have a say in which exact employee to cut or are they just handed a list of names and have to just execute without making any choices. How does it go about?

Just learned managers must have 15-18 direct reports, directors 7-9.

There are many managers with only 5-10, directors, 3-5.

I think we will see consolidation.

I understand that during the pandemic, the company needed the people who work to stay in their jobs… so they hired those who don’t as managers.

But I don’t know how much longer I can stay and have said managers make fun of people who have college degrees. The culture is so toxic now and it’s really embarrassing for me to work at a company that lets unqualified people stay in jobs they are terrible fits for.