#psychologicalsafety

• The culture within the technology organization has deteriorated significantly under the current CTO's leadership.
• Interactions with senior leadership are often characterized by criticism, public reprimands, and communication that many employees perceive as demeaning or disrespectful.
• Fear and job insecurity appear to be used as management tools, creating an environment where employees are more focused on avoiding mistakes than on innovation, collaboration, or long-term improvements.
• Psychological safety has declined. Employees are increasingly reluctant to challenge decisions, raise concerns, or share differing viewpoints.
• Morale has suffered, and many experienced employees have become disengaged or are considering opportunities elsewhere.

This represents a notable departure from the leadership style and culture that existed under previous technology executives, who generally fostered accountability while maintaining professionalism and respect.

There has been a noticeable and disappointing shift in leadership culture within the Quality department, moving away from collaborative corporate values and toward an authoritarian, military-style command-and-control structure. A prime example is the expectation for staff to use artificial, forced scripts and mandated pleasantries during casual daily interactions, mimicking a rigid military hierarchy. This level of forced conformity completely invalidates the deep institutional knowledge and dedication of long-tenured employees who have spent years building this company.

Furthermore, the communication style from leadership in this department is deeply unprofessional and counterproductive to a healthy business environment. Meetings are frequently disrupted by leaders bringing aggressive military briefing tactics into the corporate world, cutting people off mid-sentence if they do not receive an immediate, hyper-concise answer. This dismissive behavior shuts down open communication, erodes psychological safety, and shows a blatant lack of respect for the team's expertise. Employees joined a corporation, not the armed forces, and they should not be subjected to this type of combat-zone impatience.

What is most concerning is that upper management has completely failed to address or call out this unacceptable behavior. By allowing these toxic, drill-sergeant leadership tactics to go unchecked within the Quality department, executive leadership is actively damaging employee morale and driving away top talent. This company used to thrive on mutual respect and professional dialogue, but the current lack of oversight and acceptance of rigid, disrespectful behavior makes the workplace culture unsustainable.

Managers lecture about psychological safety but nobody is willing to speak up, challenge, or take initiatives anymore because the blaming game is strong. Don’t trust their words. Look for actions instead.

First question on the latest employee survey: Are you happy at Ally? (Y/N). This is a loaded question that will be used against you. If your manager in any way suggested/encouraged that you complete the survey and you answered this question, you pretty much own Ally. That question is asking about your psychological health. Ally has absolutely no business asking you to disclose anything about your mental health. In fact, the practice is illegal under federal and state employment laws.

The company I complain about giving me zero psychological safety rolled out their bi-annual update to pulse, as they have for the last decade. Also this is my weekly reminder that my fraud director had a full calendar today and that also means we’re getting laid off. Tell me your thoughts now a destroy the usefulness of this community some more!

Meta & Microsoft...USAA will for sure experience the similar situation especially in tech where it is so much shaky. Zero psychological safety the core Agile principle for success.

Oh, we finally got ourselves a middle manager, after over a year of blissful independence, purely so someone could tick the “yes, we have one” box. Never mind that our team handles complex fintech systems with intricate backends and high-risk frontends; our new overseer couldn’t tell you what tech stack we use, how we build, or how anything actually gets shipped.

Instead, we get endless lectures about “empathy” and “psychological safety,” followed by mandatory meetings that accomplish nothing beyond recycling the same tired talking points, while our actual work quietly piles up. Real contributions? Nowhere to be found.
What makes it even more impressive is that about ten years ago, they were in food service, and somehow parlayed a string of small-company roles and a questionable degree into a banking position they seem wildly unqualified for. It’s less “career growth” and more “failing upward with confidence.”

My coworkers have already figured out how to play along and stroke the ego when needed. I just don’t have it in me. And to top it off, the complete lack of effort in their presentation only adds to the whole secondhand embarrassment of being professionally associated with them.

In a meeting someone stated something factually incorrect. Not an opinion, a fact. I gently pointed out the error with evidence and you would have thought I insulted their mother. The room went freezing cold, and later I was told I need to work on my social skills. What they meant was, don't correct people. Don't point out problems. Don't be right if being right makes someone uncomfortable. So basically, even if I'm right, even if the error will cost us, I should keep my mouth shut. lesson learned. From now on all I'll do is smile, nod, and let the sh-t hit the fan later on.

Here what your Ai told about your strategy.

When a major tech giant like Oracle handles mass layoffs through a single, impersonal email, it doesn’t just affect those leaving—it fundamentally alters the "psychological contract" for those who stay.
While leadership often views this as a "clean break" to minimize legal risk or logistical chaos, the remaining staff (the "survivors") usually interpret it through a much darker lens. Here is the kind of image and environment this creates:

1. The "Transaction-Only" Relationship.
   By choosing an automated email over human conversation, the company signals that employees are line items, not partners. For the remaining staff, the message is clear: No matter how many years you put in or how many "all-hands" meetings talk about "family" or "culture," you are ultimately a replaceable unit of labor. This often leads to a "quiet quitting" mindset where employees stop going above and beyond because they realize loyalty is a one-way street.

2. Chronic Psychological Insecurity
   When a layoff is sudden and impersonal, it creates a "Who’s Next?" culture.

The Shadow of the Inbox: Every time an "All-Company" email notification pops up, staff experience a spike in cortisol.
Risk Aversion: Employees become afraid to innovate or take risks because they don't want to stand out or make a mistake that could land them in the next batch of automated cuts.

1. Survivor Syndrome
   Social psychologists often point to "Survivor Syndrome" in the wake of such events. Remaining staff often feel:
   Guilt: Wondering why they kept their jobs while talented colleagues were let go.
   Anger: Resentment toward leadership for the "cowardly" or "cold" way the news was delivered.
   Distrust: A total collapse of faith in management's transparency. If they could fire 3,000 people with one click, what else are they hiding?

2. Loss of Institutional Knowledge and Morale
   Layoffs by email are often "blind"—they don't account for the social fabric of a team.
   The "Watercooler" Becomes a "War Room": Instead of focusing on the AI buildout or cloud infrastructure, the remaining staff spend hours on Slack or in private chats speculating, venting, and updating their resumes.
   Workload Paralysis: Usually, 100% of the work remains but only 80% of the people are left to do it. When that transition isn't handled with empathy, the remaining staff feel punished for "surviving."

3. Brand Erosion (Internal and External)
   Oracle is already competing for top-tier talent in the AI space. High-performers have options. When they see a company treat veterans of 10+ years like a "system error" to be deleted, they begin looking for the exit. The image created is one of operational efficiency at the cost of human dignity, which is a difficult stain to wash off in the talent market.

This site is loaded with comments of actual and observed layoff behaviors. Check the new and active discussions if you are new to this site. BNY does not announce layoffs since their goal is to circumvent federal and state WARN Act notification requirements and to avoid employer payments to State Unemploument Insurance (sUI) in the event layoffs are publicized. BNY is very unusual and would never admit to layoffs. Instead layoffs are referred to as strategic realignments. They are continuous, systematic and calculated to support cost reduction and location target goals, eliminating experienced workers without severance, sending non-client facing jobs offshore. BNY also “we-ponizes” RTO policies and uses mandatory performance rating targets and forced below expectation ratings to expunge workers using PIPs. To add insult to injury, the company now has flatter or-a, changed the VP/SVP/Director pay structures, capped annual wage and merit increases (with 0 to 2 percent increases being the norm), created labor pipelines with state colleges and universities to maximize state and local tax credits, closed real estate holdings, increased the number of days required in office, and accelerated the reduction of all work from home associates. While these behaviors are not technically considered layoffs, they are designed to promote voluntary attrition. This company has created a place where there is a toxic culture and no psychological safety for anyone to speak up. Senior leadership and EC is highly scripted and does not promote an environment of openness, trust and transparency. Sure there are posts on LinkedIn from EC and chapped lips supporters singing praises, but that’s mostly to protect their positions and personal brands on social media as “hands on leaders” or “emerging leader wannabees.” Again, if you are new to this site, suggest you read through the comments to learn more about the layoff topics and comment history. The picture very clearly describes what’s going on here. The EC goes out of their way to create false optics of rainbows and unicorns. This site is for truth telling in a psychologically safe environment that the EC has intentionally, consistently failed to develop and maintain.

This deserves its own thread. OP: @ar+1kmt70t6q

I have an odd question, and I'm not sure who to take it to. I've been with my team for about 10 months, we're spread all over the U.S. and a fairly small team. I have no one with me in the office I report to. I've noticed that questions about projects we're engaged with do not seem to be welcomed. I almost feel like I'm getting a sigh and an eye roll or a curt non answer when I ask them. In my defense, these are all ad hoc projects, and not like there are documented procedures I can refer to in order to answer for myself and the initial instructions given are always scant and haphazard. The no questions thing is just not a culture I'm used to and I'm wondering if there's any insight or suggestions.

You used to be able to stand up to your boss at Ford and know it wouldn't cost you your job. Not anymore. I drafted a long reply to my boss on Friday. Pointed out why his decision was flawed. Sat there for ten minutes. Then deleted it. These days, staying quiet is safer. Hate that I have to do that.

In the modern Banking and FinTech ecosystem, BNY Mellon’s CEO and Executive Committee have become unlikely pioneers — not in innovation, not in client service, but in the industrial‑scale refinement of psychological workforce reduction. They’ve perfected a system where employees don’t need to be laid off; they simply need to be worn down until they exit on their own, grateful to escape.
This is not a strategy.

This is an operating model. Nothing is wrong, according to leadership. Turn up the psychological pressure. The model is working fine... just as expected!

Quiet Cutting
The Executive Committee’s preferred method of “non‑firing.”
Quiet Cutting is the CEO’s masterstroke: a way to shrink headcount without ever admitting that’s what’s happening. Employees are reassigned to roles so stripped of meaning that even the job descriptions seem embarrassed. A technologist becomes a “transformation liaison.” A senior manager becomes “temporary process support.” A director becomes “aligned to future-state readiness,” which is corporate dialect for “we’re waiting for you to give up.”
The Executive Committee calls this “agility.”

Employees call it “career hospice.”

Constructive Dismissal
The slow, grinding erosion of stability disguised as leadership.
Constructive Dismissal is where the CEO’s cultural philosophy truly shines. It’s the systematic application of pressure, ambiguity, and contradictory expectations until the employee begins to question their own competence.
The tactics are subtle enough to be deniable but obvious enough to be felt:

• Goals that change faster than the CEO’s talking points
• Reorgs that happen so frequently HR can’t keep the SharePoint updated
• Performance reviews that read like they were written by someone who skimmed your résumé while boarding a flight

The Executive Committee insists this is “transformation.”

Employees experience it as professional destabilization.

Managing Out the Median
The statistical purge disguised as meritocracy.
Managing Out the Median is the Executive Committee’s favorite tool because it allows them to claim objectivity while engineering outcomes. The bell curve becomes a we-pon: someone must always be labeled “below expectations,” even if the entire team is performing well.
It’s not about performance.
It’s about creating a steady supply of people who can be pressured to leave voluntarily.
The CEO calls this “raising the bar.”

Employees call it “being pushed off the bar.”

Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt
The unofficial leadership framework.
BNY’s Executive Committee has mastered the psychological trifecta:

• Fear — of layoffs, of reassignments, of being the next person “realigned”
• Uncertainty — about roles, priorities, reporting lines, and the future
• Doubt — about one’s competence, value, and job security

This is not accidental.

This is the culture.

Employees are encouraged to internalize instability as personal failure. If they feel anxious, it’s framed as a “growth opportunity.” If they feel unsafe, it’s “the discomfort of transformation.” If they burn out, it’s “a chance to reflect on career alignment.”

The CEO calls this “leadership.”

Employees call it psychological attrition.

The Executive Committee’s True Innovation
Cost reduction through emotional depletion.
The brilliance of the model is its efficiency. No severance. No headlines. No accountability. Just a slow, steady drip of pressure until employees walk out on their own.

Across forums and social platforms, workers describe the same pattern:

• Confusion as a management tool
• Silence as a communication strategy
• Instability as a cost‑savings mechanism

The Executive Committee doesn’t need to fire anyone.

They simply need to make staying feel worse than leaving.

Closing Note
BNY’s CEO and Executive Committee have not reinvented leadership.
They’ve reinvented avoidance — of responsibility, of transparency, and of the basic duty to steward a workforce with integrity.

And the balance sheet?
It applauds.

I’m concerned that a significant challenge at TIAA is the lack of constructive disagreement in our culture. From what I’ve observed and heard, there appears to be a top-down directive approach where decisions flow in one direction without meaningful dialogue. There seems to be limited opportunity for thoughtful debate or questioning of strategic decisions. Functions like Communications, HR, and Marketing—which bring valuable expertise and perspective—appear constrained in their ability to contribute meaningfully to discussions that affect employees and participants. Instead, there may be a culture where concerns about potential consequences discourage candid input.
I’m curious whether others feel they have genuine space to respectfully challenge ideas within their teams and with leadership. I’ve worked at organizations that intentionally created forums designed to counter groupthink and actively sought diverse perspectives, which consistently produced stronger outcomes. Without the ability to engage in constructive disagreement, we risk limiting innovation and creating frustration among talented professionals who have insights to share.
I wonder: Do people at the Executive Committee level and throughout the organization feel empowered to voice alternative viewpoints? Are we fostering an environment where the best ideas win, regardless of hierarchy, or are we inadvertently limiting our potential by relying too heavily on unidirectional decision-making?

I ’ve read your posts, and I see a lot of pain, anger, and smart people struggling to land. Yes, the market is tough, and yes, offshore/H1B is a factor, but let's talk about the biggest hurdle: Your Wells Fargo Leadership Narrative.

You were trained and rewarded in a toxic, high-fear environment. Now, you’re inadvertently carrying that "WF ethos" into your interviews, and recruiters are seeing it as a massive risk.

Here is the truth: Your next employer doesn't just need your technical skills; they need assurance you aren't bringing the "poison" of an abusive, command-and-control culture with you.

1. The Red Flags Recruiters See
   When you talk about why Agile failed, or how you led a team, we listen for these immediate flags:

"I monitored their tickets..." 🚩 (Translation: I micro-managed, I didn't trust my people.)

"We couldn't innovate because it was too risky..." 🚩 (Translation: I was risk-averse, I didn't create a safe learning environment.)

"Agile failed because management we-ponized the metrics..." 🚩 (While true, it signals: You don't know how to protect your team from bad leadership.)

"I had to stack rank them..." 🚩 (Translation: You were an enforcer of a toxic system.)

1. Your New Leadership Narrative: From Enforcer to Enabler
   You need to shift your identity from a manager who enforced toxic metrics to a Servant Leader who protected and enabled their team despite the toxicity. You must demonstrate that you were a student of the anti-patterns, not an advocate.

This shift is rooted in Psychological Safety (PS)—the belief that your team can speak up without fear of punishment. When PS is high, Agile works, Innovation works, teams work. When it's low (like at WF), everything fails.

Your Goal: Convince the interviewer that you know how to build a safe and empowered team that drives innovation and takes ownership.

1. The AI Chat Practice Prompt
   Use a tool like this (Gemini, ChatGPT, etc.) to practice your new answers. Paste the following prompt into your chat, and then answer the questions the AI poses. This forces you to recondition your answers and solidify your narrative:

[Copy and paste this into an AI Chat]

"I was a manager who was recently laid off from a large financial institution that suffered a failed Agile transformation due to a deeply toxic, high-fear culture. In my interviews, I am struggling to demonstrate that I have moved past that toxic environment. I need to establish a new leadership narrative based on Psychological Safety (PS) and Servant Leadership. Assume I am in an interview for a leadership role at a healthy organization.

Please ask me the following questions and critique my answers, looking for red flags that show I am still operating from a 'command-and-control' mindset:

How do you get others to trust in your leadership?

How did you approach performance reviews and development in that high-pressure environment?

How do you foster innovation and manage technical risk on your team?"

1. What the AI Will Teach You to Say
   When you practice, your answers should evolve to focus on systems, coaching, and protection, not control. For example:

Instead of: "I monitored their work."

Say: "I shifted my focus from monitoring tasks to coaching autonomy. I established clear, measurable team goals and ensured my team felt safe enough to immediately raise impediments, knowing I would remove them."

Use the AI to refine your story until you sound like a leader who learned from the fire and is now ready to build a healthy culture. Good luck—you are capable of this shift!

You know, telling us way in advance then going completely silent, allowing us to speculate, panic, fear, then eventually fight about it. There's a LOT of psychology happening amongst us in these boards. That's not my field of education or expertise, but it's fascinating to me, all the same.

Then again, it could just be the unfortunate byproduct of a new CEO with a different narcissistic driven output from the previous guy.

With all the corporate talk about “psychological safety,” I keep wondering: is that even possible when layoffs never stop?
Real psychological safety requires predictability and trust.
Rolling layoffs destroy both.
Here’s what ki-ls it:
Zero transparency. Everything is “realignment,” “strategy,” or “location optimization.” Translation: no one knows what’s really happening.

Random performance hits. One day you’re “exceeds expectations,” the next day you’re suddenly “needs improvement” right before a cut.

No beginning, no end. Instead of one clear RIF, you get drip-drip layoffs tied to RTO, org shuffles, or quiet offshoring.

And everyone knows. Employees aren’t stupid — when people quietly disappear, the anxiety spikes.
Axios recently called this the era of the “forever layoff.” as noted in the previous post.
Micro-layoffs (fewer than 50 people) went from 38% in 2015 to 51% now. Companies do small cuts all year, stay under the radar, and pretend nothing is happening. But workers absolutely feel it — morale, trust, and well-being are tanking across the board.

And honestly, Wells Fargo is the poster child for this — just look at the ongoing discussion in that thread. Rolling layoffs, opaque messaging, shifting “location strategy,” and the slow offshoring creep. It’s exactly the anxiety-inducing pattern Axios described.
So here’s the question:
Can any company claim “psychological safety” when people spend every week wondering if they’re next?

Because psychological safety + perpetual layoffs = corporate fiction.

Integration meetings between HPE and Juniper are in full steam and it is interesting to see the human psyche there. All lemmings working day and night, knowing that as soon as integration is complete, they will the first one to be let go. Toiling hard to eventually ki-l their own jobs!

Our team in Data and AI was recently pushed hard to complete the OHS survey. Initially, only about 45% had responded, but then management started chasing everyone who hadn’t filled it out yet.

At this point, I’m really starting to wonder — is it actually voluntary and anonymous?

Anyone else getting the same pressure or feeling the same way?

Constructive discharge…is this how Intel will reach the final headcount for the year? So many engineers are feeling the squeeze by ‘leaders’ who saved their jobs. Psychologically safety is definitely out the window along with ADA/DEI. Perhaps Intel should consider replacing their ‘Inclusion’ company value after the 2025 layoffs.

“ While initially the chief executive of Intel said that he planned to flatten the company and reduce the number of mid-tier managers, eventually it turned out that the company had axed thousands of engineers and technicians at its Oregon facilities. In fact, only 8% of personnel that were laid off in Oregon had the word 'manager' in their job titles, whereas all the others were various engineers or technicians in various support roles.”

https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/intel-has-cut-35-500-jobs-in-less-than-two-years-more-than-20-000-let-go-in-in-recent-months-as-lip-bu-tan-continues-drastic-recovery-journey

Does anyone NOT have concerns about our beloved gladiator-style performance ranking system? You know, the one where 25% of the workforce—excluding fresh recruits still learning where the bathroom is—must be ceremonially tossed into the “Below Expectations” pit, regardless of actual performance.

Let’s pause and admire the sheer elegance of this approach:

• Step 1: Hire smart, capable people.
• Step 2: Force them into a Hunger Games-style cage match.
• Step 3: Declare 1 in 4 unworthy, because spreadsheets demand blood.

What’s the rationale, you ask? Simple. It’s not about ethics, fairness, or logic—it’s about visionary leadership. The kind that reads Shakespeare's Macbeth for bedtime stories and thinks empathy is a performance liability.

And while we’re redefining “culture” as “competitive trauma bonding,” let’s give a standing ovation to the Executive Committee for their bold commitment to sociopathic excellence. Speaking of which, here’s a helpful link for anyone curious about symptom #1: Choosing Therapy: Signs of a Sociopath.

https://www.choosingtherapy.com/signs-of-a-sociopath/

In closing, we should humbly suggest the Committee reflect deeply on this practice. Perhaps even consider a retreat with Spring Hill —ideally one with mirrors, therapists, and a copy of Leadership for Humans.

I noticed recently a lot of messaging lately about how great it is to work at T, how everyone loves it and the benefit are fantastic (hooray for Lyra). Even our screensaver now tells how great it is to work here. Then I read this article and thought that's T.
https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/news/linkage/hidden-cost-of-positive-vibes-only-at-work
Forced positivity comes with the unspoken expectation that employees should stay upbeat regardless of stress, fatigue, burnout, or team challenges. And while maintaining a positive environment is key, forcing a culture of unrealistic optimism isn’t grounded in reality. It creates a false environment

In the past week or so, everybody got a request to complete a management survey. Is this mandatory to fill out? It would be ideal to fill it out honestly, but I'm worried about possible retaliation, especially given situations witnessed in the past. Does anybody know any details about how this works? Does it count against either the employee or manager if one doesn't respond? Thanks.

Wondering if anyone who has posted on here have had their post come back to haunt them? Have questions but don't want to ask them if it could come back to me...

I find it shocking that after months of uncertainty and fear, leadership can't be bothered to (1) guarantee a phone call to discuss your fate or (2) loop in lower level managers to have that conversation.

I was subjected to an aggressive outburst from a senior manager who yelled repeated threats about my job security and dismissed my work entirely despite having completed all assigned tasks on time. Her words were not feedback. They were intimidating:
“You seriously think about what I said to you tonight and tomorrow let me know what you want to do. You will not survive in this job, or I will not keep you until May 2026.”
This kind of behavior is not leadership. It’s psychological abuse. And it’s unacceptable.
Note: I have an audio recording of her yelling with filthy disrespectful words.

I’m raising this not just to advocate for myself, but to open a broader conversation:
• How do we hold senior leaders accountable for emotional harm in the workplace?
• How can we protect psychological safety while maintaining high standards?

I am seeking your expert advice on this situation.
• Should I report this to my director?
• Should I report this to HR/ Colleague Relations?
• Will I get into trouble if I make a formal complaint to HR/Colleague Relations?

If you’ve experienced or witnessed similar treatment, I invite you to share your thoughts. Let’s stand together for workplaces that value both performance and humanity.

#WorkplaceEthics #Leadership #PsychologicalSafety #RespectAtWork #HR #Accountability