#overworked

Collective bargaining is the only way to stop the autocratic march of America and business. It fixed the great depression, it will be the only way to fix the coming depression. They think AI will replace all of tech, but it's not ready.

All the naysayers have no clue just how much manual work goes into maintaining the illusion of this bank never going offline. If tech even took one single day off, the bank would suffer a huge financial impact. I work with one of the tech prod support groups, and you would not believe the amount of emails about things breaking. It's non-stop.

If IT wants to push back, form a union. Yes, the people who've been here forever (yours truly, over a quarter-century) would probably make out like bandits. So what? 5–7 years of being compensated what I'm actually worth, and I'll sail off into the sunset, never to work again, opening that job to the next person who has been paying their dues with personal time, for decades.

Management only has control if you let them have control, and you all - for some reason or another - are willing to let them run roughshod over you. So what if the economy is garbage? Anyone who works a real IT job here knows it takes a minimum, bare minimum, of 2–6 months to get someone onboarded and trained up. Even then, you start them out with smaller, more forgiving work, because it's a depth of knowledge job, not a breadth of experience job.

Just think back to how they thought they didn't need QA, laid all the QA groups off, then 6 months later, everyone you knew who worked in QA was back in the GAL.

Collective bargaining works, history proves it.

Stop overselling yourself to your employer, quit legacy work instantly, insist on working on latest tech only. Ask them to use AI for old legacy maintennace work.

Tech jobs not worth holding on to Instead take deep look at how your earnings are going back into pockets of corporates and government - the overpriced loq quality home u bought, the over priiced car , the MRP marked up gorcery and Medicines, the status sysbol schools you send your kids to - wake up middle class, u signed up for slavery to look good among peers in society

It's just so exhausting and frustrating day in and day out.

Any managers here who can answer how management views PIP?
For the employee, PIP is a trap, you are asked to do more, more, and more, once you are out of PIP, they will ask to increase velocity to the death, once you are exhausted you are done anyway.
But how does management stay sane through the BS pretending?

Even for people who don’t get cut offshoring adds to my workload so it essentially lowers mu salary. How? Because I now have to coach and fix the mistakes these new “equal partners” make every day. Add that to my regular job. H1B Visas are changing and hopefully offshoring will get hit too.

…crickets.

For those who don’t get quarterly bonuses (like CM3s), this is the time of year we have been waiting for. Some sort of proof that the overwhelming workload and complete lack of recognition was at least a tiny bit worth it.

But still nothing announced. Except maybe that “merit” increase, small enough to be insulting.

This last round of layoffs broke something in me. I’ve been running on fumes for months, taking on double the work, and it’s obvious leadership couldn’t care less. You treat people like a spreadsheet and then act surprised when they stop caring? Please.

Unlike most folks here, I liked working at Chevron. Good people, good pay, interesting work… I’m considered a high performer…but I’m so burnt out I don’t know what to do. I’ve been working basically 2 jobs for the last 3 years. I’ve reached the point where I dread coming in, looking at emails, getting IMs. My bosses have agreed it’s unsustainable, but I’ve cycled through 3 bosses in this period, with no continuity to make changes.

And, it’s clear post reorg this will all get worse. Less competent bosses with less time.

The only solutions I see are quitting or a leave of absence. Taking vacation is pointless, as I end up working 20-40% of the time anyway.

Our managers love to say that we’re all in this together while handing out more work to already heavily overworked people. It’s like that old joke about the beatings continuing until morale improves. At some point you just have to laugh or you’ll end up losing it.

We’ve got more tasks than people, and somehow the management expects miracles. Nobody complains out loud anymore because we all know full well it doesn’t matter. We just get our heads down, grind through it, and hope we don’t get fired in the meantime. It's depressing, to say the least.

Did your managers already start assigning work from your laid off coworkers to you? Mine tried, but I said I was so swamped there was no way to fit it in. So, so incredibly busy. Which, honestly, isn’t even a lie. I plan on staying “too busy” for it, whatever the consequences.

As CCA (Complex Clinical Audit) is very young in its programs so let’s change up leadership by moving around Directors that have never worked in other line of business…this makes zero sense. JS the Staff VP this is her grand idea. Let’s cause more division and turnover. It’s going to take 6 months to year to train these Directors in their new positions and who’s going to have to do it…the teams the managers and staff who are currently drowning!! Don’t ever work in CCA. It’s horrible everyday and the blame rests on the managers to fix the survey results!

I know I bring real value to the company, but it’s draining when leadership acts like it’s never enough. They lean on me whenever something important comes up, but when it’s time for recognition or rewards, suddenly I’m invisible. This has been going on for a while and I've just about had it. I'd be happy to be laid off at this point.

The way they handle layoffs, the lack of transparency, the way they pile work on people who are already stretched thin, and the total lack of empathy from leadership, none of it feels accidental. It’s like they go out of their way to remind you that you’re replaceable.

If your team is affected, they're counting on you taking over the work of those who were laid off. That work is not just going to disappear, and they concluded that the rest of the team has room on their plates and can do it. And we all know how untrue that is. We're barely making it as it is. Make them regret this. When they want you to do something that's not your responsibility, say no. You're busy. If we all do this, maybe it'll have some impact.

https://itc.ua/en/news/35-year-old-indian-it-worker-dies-in-microsoft-office-suspected-of-work-overload/

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.

The survivors of ER are all going to experience the consequences of “lean” teams that have been the unfortunate reality for areas that have been operating lean for years already. Doing the job of 3 or 4 is the best you can hope for. Doing 5 or 6 jobs is the norm due to attrition. The worst though is when you have a low performer on your team that does essentially nothing and everyone else has to pick up the slack and there is no end in sight because the role is occupied and management/HR are too incompetent to get b-ms out and backfill the position.

Once your area is hollowed out by ER pray you don’t you have a deadweight in your group that causes everyone else to be overworked, crushing their vitality and morale. Leadership will do nothing to save you and the most you can hope for is some tough conversations with the do nothing colleagues, extra coaching and maybe a PIP after an extended period of inactivity/bottom barrel performance. Yet, leadership will still hammer you all to produce high quality product on priority lead times while shoveling more on your plate each passing quarter as if you don’t have an anchor dragging you to the depths. I’ve seen workers do basically nothing for YEARS except collect salary and bonuses with little to no consequences while leaders/directors/GPs work everyone else to the bone and dole out meets expectations.

I’ve not see leadership one time correct a resourcing issue or solve bandwidth problems effectively. In fact, I’ve rarely seen them do a thing at all except sit in meetings or write single sentence performative emails designed to appear like they adding value that more often than not cause confusion or re-work. In my experience, these high grades mainly exist to dump the work downhill and demand results. The best of them might tell you some encouraging lies or give you an attaboy once in a blue moon to muster some motivation. Most however are too lazy, stupid or self-absorbed to even do that much.

I swear, I wish I had one of these leadership roles where I got paid many times my current salary to nothing all day except soak up kudos work product I didn’t lift a finger to produce and point the finger at anyone lower than me on the org chart when things go wrong.

Sad to say all the worthless higher-ups in my sphere made it through ER unscathed with their ridiculous salaries intact. Now I’ve got continue putting up with their nonsense until I’m sh-t-canned myself or through the grace of the maker locate a new job externally.

We’ve truly lost the plot and us plebs are paying the price. Everyone else is laughing as they drink spicy margaritas out of fu--ing Waterford Crystal carafes at their 6000sq foot summer homes. FML.

October is right around the corner and its layoff season again at HMH. Massive customer problems with this years back to school. Lots of customers asking for their money back. New CTO, with an attention span problem and flare for unprofessional behavior, dead set on getting rid of most of the technology staff. 80 hour work weeks. continuous stream of abuse to drive people to quitting so they don't have to pay severance pay..... and the result is?, you guessed it, October is fast approaching, massive layoffs both in technology and across the company. One cannot imagine why year after year of layoffs could have possibly resulted in such bad outcomes.

Will remaining employees get any financial incentive to pick up all of these work from the employees leaving with VSP? Our area has been hit very hard, we were already understaffed and overworked. Now what? Are remaining employees feeling optimistic? Or will remaining employees begin to leave for greener pastures?

We literally can't function with what we have left. I guess they'll now overload us with work until we quit. Save them money on severance. I can't think of another reason why they'd do something like this.

SM Energy needs to give people room to breathe because everyone is overworked. With AI and automation available the company should be helping employees. Not increasing their workload. the IT team needs to be rebuilt because people have stopped asking for help, knowing it is often faster to fix things on their own. all the strong it talent keeps leaving and what is left is undertrained and inexperienced. good people need to be kept instead of replaced with hires who require more training.

Mgmt should be cleaned out because the culture is struggling and expectations are unclear. communication from the top doesn’t always filter down and it makes the work harder than it should be. slow down, be upfront with expectations, and remember that client needs should guide the work.

The team is stretched thin now that so many are gone. The people we lost had years of experience, and replacing that is not simple. New hires will need months of training while deadlines keep piling up. Everyone left is exhausted and it will only get worse.

Management keeps praising people who push endless tasks onto others instead of fixing the problem. The same few employees get buried in extra work while leaders act like that is normal. Someone needs to take a hard look at how this place is being run, and I mean now.

Used until I’m worn down, then easily discarded. I no longer feel like a human being or a professional with over 30 years of specialized experience. It’s as if none of it ever mattered. As someone who once took real pride in my work, it’s been disheartening to watch what companies like ours have gradually become. The shift has been subtle but steady - eroding purpose, value, and basic respect for employees. The way people are treated now feels like near-complete disregard. At this stage, it’s probably too late for me to change careers, or even companies, because of my age. But I hope younger colleagues start to look at their careers with a different lens. Unless something gives, the culture will only continue to decline.

I don’t work there, but I’ve watched what this place has done to my sister. She’s given them everything—early mornings, late nights, weekends, endless events. And she’s not the only one. So many of you have sacrificed your time, your health, even your families, because you believed in being loyal and dedicated.

But what does this company give back? Not gratitude, not respect, not recognition. Instead, after draining people dry, they toss you out like you were nothing. It’s not a “thank you” for years of service—it’s a cold shove out the door.

We used to joke it was like a cult. Turns out we were right. A cult takes your energy, your devotion, your soul—and when you’re no longer useful, it discards you. That’s exactly what’s happening here.

To everyone getting laid off: you deserved better than this. And no matter what they try to make you believe, the failure is theirs—not yours.

Funny how things change. When she was climbing the ranks, she blasted the board as 'male, pale, and stale.' Now as CEO, the company runs like a sweatshop—understaffed, overworked, and underpaid.

My husband was laid off from Dell (back in July) after 10 years there, but was recently offered a similar role at HPE, and for better pay than what he was making at Dell (in sales).

My concern is HPE will just be more of the same, understaffed, overworked, and with just as much risk of another layoff as Dell.

Does anyone have any advice or experience going from Dell to HPE that might make me feel better about him taking this offer? He has another potential offer from another smaller company, but it doesn’t pay as well. But I’m thinking it might be worth it to work at a smaller place that might be less stressful on him.

He says it’s better to take the offer he has that’s for sure and for more money, but after reading the posts here, it makes me nervous he’s going from the oven to the frying pan.

The sheer volume of work communication is overwhelming. It feels like I'm stuck in a tailspin of Jira tickets, Slack and Teams messages, and endless slide decks and worthless meetings. Data is buried on the network; nobody seems to care. The work itself is often straightforward, but the process we're using is a mess filled with red tape and bureaucracy. It's no wonder we're constantly redoing work and bleeding money. Recalls are the norm, and we've only seen the tip of the iceberg, folks; thousands of cars with the same inherent issues will soon go belly up. $$$ spent on new buildings and programs with little hope for success. I have a feeling layoffs are just around the corner, which is how things usually go here. F

working overtime was a problem before private equity takeover.
But now it is a bigger problem. Without QEs, developer has to do job of two people in same timeframe while maintaining "high quality". This is a death knell because escalated issue, due to management incompetence, has to be fixed by overworked developers :-(

I don't understand how it's possible to lay people off when myself and my coworkers are so swamped with work that we are working 12 hour days plus weekends on salary?? So stupid! Reorg! We've lost so many longer timers with so much knowledge..we literally had to hire 3 people to fill one of their positions! Just one! But instead they are hiring more upper management!