Thread regarding Fidelity Investments layoffs

"Posting here on behalf of an employee who is working at Fid India (as this website only allows posts from within the USA)."
I am an L6 Principal Engineer in India and have spent the last 12 years at Fidelity, working across three different BUs. Over time, I’ve noticed a steep decline in the caliber of senior leadership at levels L7-8 and above. Their primary concern seems to be hosting “visitors” from the U.S.; the moment such a visit is announced, they go into “alert mode,” preparing PowerPoint slides, arranging floor walks and roundtable sessions, and coaching employees on exactly what they should or shouldn’t say. Most of this preparatory work is pushed onto individual contributors like me (L6 and below), but when these visits are deemed “successful,” managers usually receive all the credit—often in the form of a single congratulatory email or LinkedIn post from the visiting executive.
In prioritizing these presentations and visitor-focused activities, actual project work suffers. Those who create slides, manage schedules, or organize events are favored for promotions, while employees handling core technical tasks remain overlooked. Compounding this issue is that most senior leaders sit in Bangalore, leaving those of us in Chennai perpetually at a disadvantage.
Many of the managers in these tech teams either lack technical expertise or have allowed their skills to lapse, preventing them from contributing meaningfully to real project needs. Instead, they rely on strong presentation and communication abilities to secure positive performance reviews. This system rewards non-technical individuals, resulting in a leadership structure that is often incompetent and self-perpetuating. As a result, genuine technical contributions lose value, and the focus remains on “partner visits” and superficial, India-specific initiatives instead of substantive, technology-driven goals. This pattern holds across all BUs, with some business units experiencing even worse conditions.
I respectfully urge visiting executives to encourage senior leaders to focus on more meaningful work instead of devoting excessive effort to superficial presentations. Many of these orchestrated events offer minimal benefit and consume significant time that could be better spent on genuine product or project deliverables