#worklifebalance

I sit in my car at lunch just to have five minutes where no one talks to me.

The problem is the limit doesn't matter because the mortgage doesn't care. The kids' school supplies don't care. The car payment doesn't care. I have to make a specific number each month or things fall apart. So I keep coming back even though I hate it. Even though I'm exhausted before I even walk in the door. The worst part is knowing I'm close to breaking. I've never been someone who loses their temper at work. I'm the steady one. The reliable one. But lately I feel this rage building. A manager will give feedback and I want to walk out. I'm scared one day I won't hold it in. I'll say exactly what I think and then I'll be gone anyway, just with no paycheck. I don't know how much longer I can do this.

So much hangs in the air. It's all driving me insane.

When people ask me for career advice now, I tell them to stay away from here. I was excited when I joined. The branding's strong and the reputation's solid. The reality's completely different. The day-to-day work is chaotic, there's no clear direction from the top, and the turnover's staggering. You spend half your time training new people and the other half wondering when your own luck will run out. It's genuinely one of the few professional decisions I look back on with regret. The toll it takes on your personal life isn't worth the paycheck. You can absolutely do better for yourself. Keep looking.

My laptop turned off and lost all access instantly. This is getting crazy.

With the average cost of gas is $3.32/gal , and no end in sight with the war with Iran, will the RTO be loosen especially when gas prices continue to skyrocket the longer we stay in the war? We’ll soon be losing money just to go into the office to sit in our cubes on teams calls.

I’m considering an offer at PNC but want to know what it’s actually like. Is it five full days? Do people badge in and then leave at lunch and work the rest of the day at home? I don’t think I can ever go back to five full days but the role seems interesting. So just want to get a sense.

It always felt a little cliché to come here after being laid off and see people posting about how they landed a new job a better job with more money, doing interesting work, and feeling valued by a new employer. Many would say their layoff from Oracle was the best thing that ever happened to them. Honestly, I used to think they were positively full of s*it. After months of rejections, all I wanted was my old Oracle job back. But it turns out those people were right. You will find another job, it will be at a better company, with management that appreciates you, paying A LOT more than Oracle, and with a healthier work/life balance. That’s exactly what happened to me a few weeks ago. So to those who are about to get swept up in the next round of layoffs (it's going to be significant) don’t panic. It won't feel like it at the time, but it will end up being the best thing that ever happened to you. Take a little time off, decompress, take a couple vacations, and then start the job search. There are better opportunities out there. I found one, and you will too.

Directors that say yes to every request from VPs no matter how ridiculous or last minute the ask continue to survive. They have their head so far up the VPs a$$ hoping to advance their own career with no regard to their team. Truly a good ole boys club at that level. At the end of the day every employee is just a number with a salary that will be the deciding factor in the next round of layoffs. No amount of extra effort will be taken in to consideration, so take your PTO and enjoy time with friends and family.

You could be sick on your death bed and Humana will still want you to call in and report your absence

Work has become a complete insane asylum. Happy employee appreciation day for those still here….for now! Everything is great and always has been. Nonstop pointless and chaotic reorgs are our winning strategy. Proud to post it note my love for vz!

There’s a lot of negative sentiment here around Thrive Together. That reaction is completely rational. Many people are trying to rationalize the decision - commercial real estate exposure, leadership being out of touch, or executives undervaluing remote productivity. Those explanations miss the point. Thrive Together is a much larger slight against employees than most people realize.

It’s easy to assume the executive team is uninformed or making poorly thought-out decisions. That assumption is wrong. These are experienced business leaders who understand exactly what they are doing. Whether internal metrics show remote work to be more productive is irrelevant. If those metrics supported the narrative being pushed, employees would see them. They don’t, and they won’t. Leadership knows the data doesn’t support the story, and they don’t need it to.

Their only real objective is increasing the stock price.

Historically, one way companies accomplish that is by reducing headcount. The problem is layoffs come with costs - severance packages and payouts of accrued PTO. Thrive Together creates a mechanism to reduce the workforce without formally conducting layoffs and without paying those costs.

Instead of layoffs, the company now has a framework where employees who cannot comply with Thrive Together requirements can simply be labeled as low performers. That label leads to performance improvement plans and eventual termination. The end result is the same as a layoff, but without severance, without PTO payouts, and without triggering the procedures that normally accompany workforce reductions.

Flexible Time Off (FTO) reinforces this system.

FTO didn’t expand a benefit - it removed one. Under a traditional PTO system, employees accrued time off that the company was obligated to honor or pay out. Under FTO, nothing accrues. Time off is technically “unlimited,” but in practice none of it is guaranteed.

FTO can function in a truly flexible remote or hybrid environment where employees aren’t bound by strict office attendance quotas. That is not the environment being created here.

Under the current policy, time taken under FTO does not reduce in-office attendance expectations. For the average employee, that creates a clear disincentive to take vacation because office quotas remain unchanged regardless of time off.

Leadership recently increased the expectation to three days per week in the office. If an employee takes a week of vacation, they still owe those three in-office days somewhere else in the fiscal year. Two weeks of vacation doubles that deficit.

If the company eventually moves to four or five in-office days per week - as many suspect it will - the system becomes mathematically unsustainable. There will be no practical way for employees to take time off while still meeting attendance expectations within a quarter. FTO with Thrive Together is structurally incompatible with meaningful time off.

What’s happening here isn’t confusion or poor planning. It’s a gradual tightening of pressure on the workforce while removing the company’s obligations that typically accompany layoffs. Even better, some employees will leave on their own to avoid the mess.

The plan was always to make you work more while creating a system that results in less time off, lower performance reviews, and a convenient excuse to fire people without severance.

As I found out just today, I cannot submit vacation from 1st of May because of One Dell.
What kind of company is this that I cannot submit my vacation which is my right per our country labour code?
Is this applied across while Dell?

Today is Employee Appreciation Day. Based on the survey results, I think most of us would actually feel appreciated if we were allowed to work from home today instead of being handed a snack that doesn’t even equal the cost of many people’s daily commute.

When the feedback from employees overwhelmingly centers on flexibility and RTO, it’s hard not to notice the disconnect. Appreciation isn’t pizza, cookies, or swag. It’s listening to what your employees have been consistently asking for.

Anyone see the “ATT is He-l” written in sharpie. Cracks me up every time I see it. Also those godda-n elevators are so slow

Found this out from a reliable source

Workplace Excellence Compliance Changes effective 4/1

• Planned communications: 3/10 employee email

• Anyone in an assigned office - updated expectation is 4 days in the office

• Everyone else - expectation is still 3 days in the office, but no consecutive WFH days. Friday/Monday is considered two consecutive days (so in office Mon-Tues-Thurs; or Mon-Wed-Fri etc)

• When in office, expectation you work a full day in that office

• External new hires - expectation is 4 days a week in the office

I sure don't. It's just a paycheck, with no hope that raises would even keep up with inflation. Between offshoring, AI hype, zero growth paths, and the constant threat of being cut for no reason other than bottom line, why even try? Working hard, doing overtime, delivering quality - it's all just investing in future regret.

This Lisa Bodello lady they are paying to talk about culture, too many meetings, taking the time to think, and all the other hogwash… she must not be in the loop of all the things Edward Jones is taking away from us right now!

She says “take time to think”. When, during our two hour commute? Because being IN the office nine hours a day isn’t going to be where we get to think when we are hearing everyone on zoom around us, being on zoom cause others still aren’t in the office, hearing people talking about their d-mb weekend plans, what they have for lunch, and other stupid bullsh-t.

She says:
Get rid of stuff that doesn’t matter— being in the office doesn’t matter.
Ki-l stupid rules at work —come into the office four days a week - it doesn’t add any value to the EMPLOYEEEE.

This Lisa lady speaking is absolutely fu--ing ironic and absurd - have a town hall basically telling us to fu-k off and our kids don’t matter - and the next day have this Lisa lady trying to tell us what we need to stop doing to be better for ourselves when Edward Jones is taking it all away. THANKS FOR THE GOOD BELLY LAUGHS EDWARD JONES.

Been working for years at T and not able to crack interviews in other companies due to technological shifts and not enough preparation. So the only choice left is to RTO and keep the job to put food on the table. The sooner the better.

i still can't comprehend the reality that there were people in a room deciding this is a necessary idea, are high level meetings just a bunch of sanitized robots? is there a culture of treating people lesser than? what has it achieved im still doing individual work plus teams meetings and not a single in person meeting

night and day difference in quality of life for the worse, just why?

I am really worried about layoffs here - is anyone else worried that people are too focused on staying employed rather than doing good work? I am seeing a growing amount of toxicity (even more than usual), but maybe it's just my team.

So I was previously located in another area of campus in a flexible seating space. Over a short period of time all of the flexible seating became assigned seating and neighborhood pods. Of course those neighborhood pods and assigned seats were the preferred seat seating near windows, quiet spaces, etc. and the only options left were in the noisy busy parts of the floor..

Our group just moved to building 600 pod C and it’s happening again.. seriously don’t understand the purpose of flexible seating if teams are going to start going through the process of making assigned seats. It’s so obnoxious to get stuck with the creepiest seating options just because I’m an individual contributor and not in the position to throw a trantrum to secure the preferred seats. So here I am once again being faced with having to sit next to the door where everyone enters and exits all day long. This whole thing is so obnoxious and ridiculous… even comical to some degree.

The Australian state of Victoria said on ​Wednesday it will launch legislation ‌to give employees the legal right to work from home two days ​per week. The laws, that ​are due to come into effect ⁠on September 1, will allow ​anyone with the ability to work ​from home to do so, regardless of the size of their workplace.
“Work from ​home works for families, because ​it saves time and money and it ‌gets ⁠more parents working,” Victoria Premier Jacinta Allan said in a statement.

https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/australian-state-plans-give-employees-legal-right-work-home-2026-03-04/

I hate this company. Micro managing is becoming intolerable

Luckily I have 3 years savings so can walk out and likely will

Just TUPE-ed to a different contact provider who actually gave us a 1.5% increase on transfer because the timing means we miss their annual review and DXC's (ha ha) March review.
It remains to be seen what they're actually like as an employer - but they'd have to try really hard to be worse that DXC.
Hope things work out for the rest of you.

LAYOFFS!!!!

I just quit Walgreens after 25 years because we all know what is going to happen to this company , but I just want to tell you all do not fear is ok to reinvent your self. now I have a small business of my own and I fine I have more time with my family, thing always work out don't be afraid to stand on a thin branch just trust your wings

1.  Do you feel like there aren’t better opportunities out there for you?
2.  Are you actively looking but still job hunting?
3.  Are you just going with the flow and not really thinking about it?
4.  Or do you have hope that the company will turn around?

The last couple of years we’ve had a day off in recognition of Employee Appreciation (3/6).
I take it this isn’t happening in 2026?

We would have needed an 8% increase this year to match how far behind increases are compared to SSA COLA over the last 5 years.

If it feels likes like you are making less, it’s because you are.

Guess we should all work 5.68% less hours to keep up with deflated salaries.

Boss has no life outside work and expects the same from me. He's paid well, I'm not. Even if I was, I wouldn't sacrifice everything for this place. Starting my search.

Management loves to brag about perks and post about balance, but ignore a late night message and suddenly you are the example in a meeting. The whole wellness message rings hollow when the expectations never switch off. You can see who gets protected and who does not, and it is not subtle. I would take blunt and direct over this polished version of pressure any day.

No hope, stripe is the top 1, due to their innovation , r n d, great work life balance, top notch salaries, fedex, also uses stripe, similarly toast took over clover, people still working here dont have talent to find jobs outside, and are ok with being slaves, getting no annual increments, spending 8 to 8 in the office, producing nothing but keeping the lights on, the legacy products need 10 people tl run them, no hopes, wonder how the vps, svps sleep at night working on such products and paying the slaves peanuts year after year! Jesus christ

30 hours, 20 hours, heck 5 hours and has a second job they milk? You can get away with so much stuff!

We're stretched thin, underpaid, and drowning in work, but they keep organizing these mandatory happy events. Last month our manager brought snacks while pretending our 60-hour weeks don't exist. Is this just us? If not, does anyone actually feel better after these things? What would real acknowledgment even look like?

EVERY DAY

Gen X female here…
The “old boys network” doesn’t refer to us all being se-----y as--ulted or discriminated against.
It was a time where the focus was sports and the athlete and grit.
It was before we offshored everything to folks that know nothing about our company and want to su-k us dry. You get what you pay for.
It was before we had to hire the coddled generations where everyone gets a trophy and is addicted to the slack alt pages and cries over not having a succession plan.
It was where we made money hand over fist.
Not sure we can get back to that with the leaders and employees we have now. Bunch of soft bi--hes. Come at me…..

The performative posts from people who still have jobs are getting exhausting. All that humble bragging and inspirational garbage while so many of us are struggling to find work. It feels like a highlight reel from people who either got lucky or won't admit how bad things really are. Hard to scroll through it without rolling my eyes these days.