With so many associates gone, who exactly are all these managers, senior managers, directors, senior directors, and VPs leading now? The teams that remain are extremely lean. It’s hard to understand why leadership layers continue to stay intact while cuts are happening primarily at the lower levels. At some point, you have to question whether all of these layers were necessary to begin with, especially now.
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@fq Would agree, it makes it easier to protect themselves when they also give each other end of year reviews. Nobody wants to say anything negative so they praise themselves even when they do nothing.
A big issue now and has been in the past is very little managers, directors, higher ups have any experience in their departments. So you have inept people making decisions who they think is important, and a lot is not based on any job performance. It is like they are scared of anyone with any knowledge or a better way that can make them look bad.
Leadership protects its own and that's why those middle management layers are so bloated...we have terrible managers and feedback on them is disregarded year over year because higher-ups protect them. There's also no other reason for directors to have one report, managers to have two or three...making huge salaries for doing nothing.
@a6 Once a manager's or director's direct reports are eliminated, the role is automatically redundant, making their termination much harder to contest legally.
don't forget there's a lot of PO/PM do nothing just boss people around and take credits, they are still there untouched.
@a6 I am very skeptical that they can offer any kind of volunteer retirement package. Because there would be mass exodus if they do and especially of the people they would prefer to stay. The offer has to be broad based meaning no discrimination of any kind. For that reason they cannot even entertain that thought. So my guess is that they will continue with manual selection. This is working for them and it's allowing them to craft the company exactly like they want it.
Next one pre labor day and subsequent one pre Christmas. It's all very predictable.
I was doing some thinking last night on the sequence of layoffs since 2025.
Early 2025 - Hard/Ruthless cut of 100+ for Ethics and Compliance issue. Level Didn’t matter.
Q2 ish 2025 - Political DOGE move to collapse certain businesses not supported by the Govt. I think 75-100 folks were let go from DEI, Climate, ESG etc.
Q3 - Another big cut of remote folks, folks not showing up to work on assigned days, folks with previous 3’s (mid performers) and in general Scrum and Agile roles. Across the board, across all levels in Dir plus many top of house resignations.
No layoffs in Q4 and Q1 2026 if I remember it correctly. Plus many resignations at top of the house. And also insane amount of VP hiring in Q4 and Q1 and tons of restructuring.
However a lot of resource planning happened in Q1 due to budget cuts. So many knew this was happening as some were involved in the planning.
Come May’2026 - very strong performers at the associate level were let go. Some were orchestrators, some dev, very few business folks. Plus some leadership that had an unfair advantage and just knew their time is up. Heavy COO BMO untouched totally useless di-k move.
Fair severance package.
Now July/Aug will be another push. It will be different is my speculation. Pretty sure they will offer a voluntary thing, with a healthy package may be plus admin leave. I think a lot of Dir and VP will take it so their exit is graceful.
Core tech using AI folks will not be touched…else systems will collapse.
I am saying all this to say there is no set pattern. Goal is to be lean and triangle shaped org. It’s a bigger diamond now with the May cuts.
There could be another rehaul of levels/titles etc to do a make believe triangle.
It’s all effed up.