#productivity

My calendar’s full, my work isn’t getting done, and half these meetings could’ve been emails. Who’s benefiting from this system, because it certainly isn’t any of us who actually have things to do?

Nothing’s changed. Offshore more work, thin out US teams, stack roles, and squeeze productivity. The direction of the new leadership is obvious - same ol' same ol'.

Root Causes:

1. Forced ranking
2. PIP % goals to reduce headcount
3. Sponsorship and false high ranking of sponsored id--ts
4. Continued degradation of employee treatment and reduced benefits
5. PIPing competent 50+ HC10 employees to replace with low cost/low quality 3rd world cheap labor
6. All productive work only happens so can put on PDS to avoid PIP

Results:

1. Loyalty approaching zero
2. Pride in EM already zero
3. Employees treat each other like competitors hoping to avoid the PIP
4. Teamwork only occurs if employees think their contributions will look good on PDS
5. Supervisors and coworkers constantly and falsely claim successes of others on their PDS
6. Most employees advise college graduates not to interview with EM
7. Sponsored id--ts given easiest assignments for very short durations, and transferred at the slightest indication their stupidity will be traceable to them. Leads to dangerous false confidence, zero skills attained, and inflated arrogance.

Bumping it up so it’s not lost in replies. This deserves its own thread. OP: @cq+1kcsvj34s

As a union represented tech my job entails turning sc--ws and mounting various sized/ colored boxes on customers houses and buildings. I’ve been doing it for several decades. When I’m unhappy or getting the shaft ( which is more frequent recently) the sc--ws get turned much slower and the boxes don’t go up as fast. Productivity? That’s a hilarious concept. Pride? Gone years ago. Loyalty? A concept for corporate cucks mo--ns. It’s a business transaction - I turn the sc--w and you compensate me.

Can we just work harder?

Ah yes, the latest RTO decree—marketed as “structure,” experienced as punishment with better lighting. It’s the corporate equivalent of saying “We care deeply about your well-being” while handing you a cage and a feathered costume.

Associates now shuffle back like coal-mine canaries, expected to chirp cheerfully while inhaling the fumes of hollow empathy. Leadership insists this is about “connection” and “culture,” but the only culture anyone feels is the petri dish of distrust spreading across every floor.

The irony? The very employees they’re chasing—the masters of remote camouflage—will simply relocate their hiding skills to cubicles. Instead of dodging Teams calls, they’ll dodge eye contact in open-plan seating. Mission accomplished, Executive Committee.

Meanwhile, the rest of us lose the flexibility that actually fueled productivity. Remember that quaint concept? It thrived when associates weren’t commuting two hours to sit in meetings that could have been emails. But optics matter more than outcomes. Nothing screams “strategic leadership” like forcing everyone to show up for the illusion of collaboration while trust remains missing in action—buried alongside the latest batch of layoff casualties.

And empathy? It rings so hollow it could double as an empty Christmas stocking. Every memo drips with “we understand” and “we value your contributions,” yet translates to “we don’t trust you unless we can watch you suffer in person.” Associates have cracked the code: empathy here is garnish, sprinkled on punishment to make it LinkedIn-ready.
BNY Mellon has perfected optics-as-strategy. The Executive Committee beams about “rebuilding culture,” while associates quietly wonder if culture is just another word for surveillance—or HR justification for not paying severance. HR and PR polish the fantasy, posting glossy updates about “thriving together,” while employees mutter, “thriving where, exactly?”

So yes, structure without trust is punishment. Punishment dressed up as empathy is satire. The Executive Committee may think they’re leading a renaissance, but associates know the truth: they’re just the canaries, feathers ruffled, waiting for the next puff of corporate smoke.

And now, the holiday “grace period.” The EC retreats to lavish resorts and second homes while commoners aka associates are told to recharge, believe the theater, and stop chirping about RTO.

Spoiler alert: the canaries aren’t fooled.

Do you foresee the stock price to rebound with the last investment acquisitions but slow productivity?

1- cut guidance for remainder of the year and into 2026
2- seasonal slowdown. Lot of ppl out on people
3- org restructuring tolls which is happening now and it causes confusion often times, cutting projects half way through or affecting productivity. Even with the AI roadmap it brings conflict (overlapping across different orgs)
4- morale is down knowing incentives are poor. Usually 2% raise or maybe rsu worth 2k or less.(if you are eligible)
5- consensus for eps is already lower meaning that even good catalyst news wont help much.
6- our sheets are showing debts and lawsuits coming

I dont want to be pesimistic but Do you guys see any catalysts helping to rebound? Please tell me things to give us some hope about the tomorrow here.

Hadn't thought much about RTO in last few weeks. I didn't get hit and neither did most who I work with directly. We're all pretty spread out, so not near one of the offices where RTO has happened so far. But sat through a client call this morning where the person leading the call was in office. It was horrible. That person is trying to have an important discussion with the client and we all hear people in the background the entire time. They weren't particularly loud or whatever. Sounded like they were also on a work related call based on the stuff you could clearly hear them talking about.

Poor colleague knew it too, clearly. They tried to use mute to mitigate the issue, but that only led to them being muted when they were trying to talk and not muted when they seemed to think they were. And for what? I know this colleague is not interacting with anyone at the office site that is involved at all with any of our work.

So stupid.

. . . was the mentality behind the execution of RTO, forced relocation at employee expense, and seemingly random surplusses?

Are we a leaner, more cohesive and productive work force? Did it create a brighter future for AT&T?

You've had 2 years to experience and observe. Would you have executed it differently? Share your observations.

With all the uncertainty, my productivity was lower than ever. It wasn't even intentional, I just couldn't concentrate on work.

I'd like to start next year being able to focus on my work (if I'm still here, of course). I have been half-productive since this whole thing started. It's not intentional, I just can't concentrate properly when all I can think about is if I'm next and what I'll do if I lose my job. Can we just get this over with?

How would you feel if you multiplied your output in the same amount of time by removing all that’s extraneous?

Early in my career, I learned that if you don’t treat your time as a valuable, finite commodity, others won’t either. When meeting with Allstate employees this past October, I wanted to take this learning a step further by focusing on making the most of the time we have. So, instead of thinking more time is needed to get things done, focus is on efficiency. Think shorter meetings, less distractions, concentrated time blocks, clarity in conversation and feedback.

With this mindset we give ourselves the gift of recovery time. Time to breathe, time to recharge, time to ideate.

Let’s spend our time and energy on achieving greater outcomes. Exponentially multiply the outcomes, not the hours—a concept I’m calling output squared or O2. This is about more than working smarter. It’s about making room for excellence, not exhaustion!

So far, I've spent 2 hours going through my inbox. I've only gotten 1/3 of the non-filtered emails I received in the past three days cleared.

Now I've got a teams call that will eat up 30–60 minutes, then I can get back to reading and deleting emails.

This is what it takes to avoid the downtime I, as a technology worker, regularly have due to the nature of my work being reactive. I'm not getting anything of value done, but at least I'm not gonna show up on a non-activity report, since I've been working non-stop for over 2 hours. Just think of how good my metrics will look.

It's amazing how productive I feel!

I thought managers were supposed to manage, and that all our bloated procedures supposedly served a purpose. Out of all the meetings we had lately, maybe one or two were actually useful, the rest were a complete waste of time. Most of us actually know how to do our jobs. But I guess some managers still need to justify their existence somehow.

Seems no changes to VZI yesterday. What’s happening from that front? Anyone know Dan’s POV on outsourcing?

I can tell you from my experience that the onshore GTS developers are far more productive and skilled, but you can get 4 offshore for the price of 1 onshore.

Because I certainly didn't.

Why? Why is that needed? Most of those meetings are nothing but people repeating things that were said many, many times before just packaged another way. It's not like something positive or new comes of it. So what's the point, other than to keep useless people busy?

Thanks goodness for RTO. My productivity is way up. So much so I wanted to share my successful office routine:

9:00am: Well actually 9:23am because you know, traffic. Roll in sit down. Get that laptop out and for it up.

9:32am: Laptop is logged in open email and Teams so it looks like I'm here. Time for coffee. Let's go to the break room. Taking the scenic route.

9:52am: Got back with my coffee and snack. Time to look at my calendar. Okay first meeting at 10:30am. Time to check Fox News and trade some stocks.

10:30am: First Zoom meeting glad I'm in my cubicle to talk to everyone on Zoom.

11:00am call is over. Was intense. I need to walk around and think about it.

11:20am: Walking around and time to take a dump.

11:45am: Made it back to cube after walk and dump. Check emails. Buy something on Amazon. Trade some stocks.

12:00pm: Lunch time. Let's drive somewhere.

1:30pm: Back from my long lunch. Let's check Fox News again. Trade some more stocks. Next call at 2:00pm.

2:00pm: Next Zoom call. Super productive now that I am in the office. Vibe is way different than taking a Zoom call at home.

2:30pm: That call was intense. Time to go for a walk. Bathroom break, break room break and outside break.

3:15pm: Back at the desk. Trade a couple more stocks. Work on an excel for 10 minutes. Getting tired. Time for another coffee..

3:45pm: Back at desk with coffee. Check eBay and look at emails. Traffic probably bad. I need to leave early.

4:15pm: I'm out of here. Kids home from school. Bye.

We can easily save money by freezing hiring, freezing travel, and penny pinching spending.

Oh wait... But we did that already.

But why are projects delayed???!!

I'm the VP of inflated egos and I don't understand! I hired two 3rd world contractors to take the place of that principle engineer. According to my advanced calculations... 2/1, we should have twice the productivity!

Well I've got a solution...

I'll create a new corporate team of VP's, give it a cool name, and our meetings will save money!

Winning. Too much winning!

I have been bad mouthing DXC Technology for some time , since before I retired for the lack of annual merit pay increases.

But reading all the blog posts about some DXC employees do quite quitting, quite striking I see why DXC margins are so high, if the employee's would work to the best of their ability (as they still are being paid a salary), the work would get done faster, the margins would go way down and the company might be able to retain more clients and also grab new ones.

When I was employed, I complained but always worked my butt off, as I have pride, ownership and didn't want to let my team mates down, or most of my supervisors/people managers and directors

Say you get RIF'd on 11/20 and have to work until end of Dec. How productive are you expected to be during those final 3-4 weeks?

If you had projects you were planning to finish before end of year, do you still complete those? How much effort do you put into offloading your work to another employee? Are you still expected to follow the 3/2 hybrid?

Or are you basically just doing minimal work during this time, and not coming into office?

What have you seen from lame duck employees in prior RIFs?

Customer service and technology employees differ significantly from shopfloor workers, rendering the principles of Scientific Management and productivity gains through motion studies irrelevant and ineffective in these roles.
However, Truist, as a service-oriented company, places undue emphasis on the Sapience tool to measure productivity. While this highlights Sapience’s success in marketing and selling its productivity tool to large corporations, it raises concerns about its appropriateness for evaluating service and technology roles.

Associates being able to collaborate across time zones and optimize their productivity with flexible hours is especially relevant for global organizations.

Work-from-home can indeed reduce commute time, improve work-life balance, and potentially increase efficiency—provided the right communication and collaboration tools are in place.

Heard a rumor of 3 days/week and possibly 5 days/week starting Jan 1. Haven’t seen anything from corporate. Everything has been heresy. Teams are gonna fold. WFH works. We’ve been able to release the new online banking to 11 million customers while mostly WFH and during a pandemic. Tech buildings are chaotic with numerous distractions. We’ve said it many times, open floor concept does not increase productivity. It does the opposite. PUSHBACK PUSHBACK PUSHBACK!!!

Well said, @67a+1k4tc23cn.

I had my first meeting about this yesterday, and I’m here to tell you that it’s very real. My manager reported my average active hours over a period of time and my team’s average active hours for comparison. Since this was the first meeting, no guidance was given on what to do/not do based on my numbers.

What isn’t clear, and wasn’t provided to me despite asking, is exactly what activity is being captured, but based on the numbers, I have to presume it’s some combination of engaging with applications and being active on Teams calls. Ironically, what wasn’t captured was the quality of my work during the same time period. And before any assumptions are made, my role is fairly senior. I’ve been with Wells for a long time; I’m not in a call center or ops type position. I can’t be any more specific than that without risking anonymity.

So yeah, this is the next phase.

It’s obvious who coasts through long lunches and so-called meetings (what gets accomplished again?) and who does the work, makes repeated sacrifices and worries if the next mandatory town hall will be their last.

This is my first time witnessing a layoff. I recently graduated college and just joined the job market lol. I was lucky and got to keep my job but I’m having a very hard time getting back to work and “prepping for peak”. Do we really just have to go back to working like nothing happened? And specially during the busiest season? Surely they thought about how this + the production freeze would decrease productivity….

Work smarter or let the id--ts do the works. Razor focus on getting richer than the id--ts next to you working harder.

https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/microsoft-teams/microsoft-teams-is-about-to-become-your-boss-lapdog

This zero-innovation management team would be gone yesterday, and employees at all levels (management are also employees) who think spending 8 hours a day being in an office building translates to 8 hours a day of productivity would be culled in favor of those who understand 80% of your results come from 20% of your effort.

Effective employees avoid the other 80% of effort because it's almost always useless. AI could hold an earnings call and draft a better earnings email than any of the current management team. It would certainly sound more professional than WF's Chief uhm-ahh Officer.

I understand tools like Copilot help pick up the pieces. But, That’s insane to say.

New building has so many wide open spaces, but no practical place to do work. Why can't every desk have an ergonomic chair and monitors? Pretty sure the couches, benches and cushy chairs outnumber the actual workstations.

No logoff entry defaults to 8 hour network login

My laptop is so slow ALL THE TIME and WF makes it so difficult to get a new or better one. What laptop model do you have and does it work? Any tips?

I've been RTOing for a while now, and it still feels pointless most days. My work gets done the same as when I'm home, just with more noise and random chatter I don't care about. The constant interruptions make it hard to focus, and the commute eats up hours I’ll never get back. And for what? I still can't figure that one out.

As long as management is quick to take credit for a firm’s successes but equally swift to blame its workers for its failures, no surefire remedy for low productivity can be expected in American manufacturing and service industries.

Because there are so many useless teams like QPOET which have been doing NOTHING for so many years!

Can somebody name one thing that's better now than it was before layoffs? I'll wait.

When a company focuses on badge swipes/RTO mandate, instead of employee productivity and project/work outcomes, they are doomed to be left with robot employees that offer no loyalty, no creativity, no passion, and no team spirit. Best of luck Ford. Merge with another company that knows how to treat their employees, before it's too late!