#corporateculture

We’ve spent a lot of time polishing ads, colors, and confusing campaigns for clover, but very little time shaping what our name stands for. Brand isn’t the shade of orange we use. It’s the instinctive belief customers have about whether we’re reliable. Right now, too many people see our name and expect inconsistency. It’s like the difference between a car company you trust and another you don’t trust. Whether or not the perception is fair, one brand is trusted and the other isn’t. Until we deliberately cultivate reliability as part of our identity, no campaign will overcome that perception.

Wow, the business world has made AT&T C-suite and BOD look like a bunch of imbeciles. Buying assets above market price only to sell those same assets for pennies on the dollar. Can they really be that inept? T CEO Stankey and Stephenson are notorious for getting "hoodwinked" and beat out of billions. It almost rises to the level of a conspiracy, other companies raiding the AT&T coffers. How these guys can even show their faces in public is beyond me.

Go Go has a new video on LinkedIn where he talks about great leadership.
It’s very short and he just repeats a lot of the same stuff he’s said before.
What gets me is how many “likes” it gets from employees.

CEO Dennis Mathew’s said TWO weeks ago that the Optimum name is more than a name change, it’s who we are and where we are going, and that the organization was deepening its commitment to customers, employees, and the communities it serves. LOL. What a lying sack of 💩. Guy said that knowing this was happening. He can never be trusted again. Management’s word is meaningless. Hapless man, garbage company.

Not a good look to clinicians, clients and internal staff. Paints the company in a negative light.

Had my PMP this morning, and my supervisor confided that he felt I deserved 2 EEs, but that he’s discouraged from giving 2. When I asked what i could do next year to improve my odds, he said nothing, that’s it’s essentially not allowed. Welcome to the new Chevron everyone!

Anyone’s guess how much money has been spent on constantly renovating corporate over and over again? And why? Everyone hates going into the office.

Welcome to BNY Mellon, where corporate communication is less about informing employees and more about testing their tolerance for absurdity. Think of it as a daily improv show where the punchline is always the same: we don’t believe you.

At the top of this spectacle sits Robin Vince, delivering pronouncements with the solemnity of a statesman and the substance of a clown balloon. His memos promise transformation, transparency, and trust, but associates know these are just corporate Mad Libs—insert buzzword, ignore reality. If they say “transformation,” translate it to “chaos.” If they say “transparency,” read it as “fog machine.” The safest approach is to laugh first, then check if your department still exists.

HR, Public Relations and James L. serve as the Ministry of Spin, ensuring every announcement glows with positivity so artificial even Eliza would blush. “BNY Mellon is thriving!” they declare, while associates quietly check their workloads and wonder if thriving means "dodging HR land mines" or “running on fumes.” Employees now treat official communications like parody scripts, reading them aloud in dramatic voices for comic relief.

Then there are the Directors and wannabees who rush to LinkedIn to applaud these corporate fairy tales. Their posts are the digital equivalent of clapping at a bad magic trick like a trained harbor seal: “Amazing leadership!” they gush, while everyone else mutters, “You do realize the rabbit was stuffed in the hat the whole time, right?” These cheerleaders don’t inspire confidence; they inspire memes.

Inside the company, two realities coexist like parallel universes. In one, associates slog through toxic culture, opaque decision-making, and a daily grind that feels less like a Fortune 500 firm and more like a reality TV show where no one wins. In the other, leaders announce breakthroughs, cultural transformations, and “authentic transparency” with the confidence of actors who forgot the audience already read the spoilers. The result is cognitive dissonance so bad and so intense employees could qualify for dual citizenship: one in the land of lived experience, the other in the fantasy realm of executive spin.

Distrust has become so pervasive that employees now play a game called “Spot the Lie.” Every new communication is dissected for euphemisms and omissions. “Restructuring” means layoffs. “Efficiency” means budget cuts. “Innovation” means someone discovered Teams has GIFs. The prize for winning? A sense of smug validation and the knowledge that you’re not crazy—the memo is.

BNY Mellon’s leaders may believe they’re shaping perception, but in reality they’ve cultivated a culture where disbelief is the default setting. Credibility isn’t just low; it’s subterranean. Employees don’t ask, “Is this true?” They ask, “How false is it, and how quickly will it collapse under scrutiny?” Cynicism has become the lingua franca, the coping mechanism, and the unofficial brand identity.

In the end, BNY Mellon has achieved something remarkable: it has turned corporate communication into performance art, a theater of the absurd where every announcement is greeted not with applause but with laughter, sighs, and sarcastic memes. The Executive Committee may think they’re leading a financial institution with great vision, alignment and execution, but associates know the truth: they’re trapped in a long-running satire, and the punchline never changes—we don’t believe you.

Opinion by David Bookbinder. opinion contributor

American consumers shouldn’t have to pay twice for the damage done by multinational oil and gas companies — once through the harm their products cause to our health and our planet, and again when those same companies use lawsuits filed by local communities as an excuse to hike prices at the pump.

That’s how these billion-dollar companies work — and the industry’s fake outrage over it says everything.

Recently, The Hill published an opinion piece from an industry-backed front group calling itself the “Consumer Choice Center,” claiming I support imposing a back-door “carbon tax” through climate liability lawsuits. That is not true. What I said is that the multinational oil companies, not the public, should be the ones to pay for the damage their products cause.

Another publication had to run a correction because they ran an op-ed from an energy industry advocate that falsely claimed I am currently representing Boulder County in their climate lawsuit against Suncor and ExxonMobil. They also implied that the Environmental Integrity Project is involved in climate liability litigation, which is not true. But the pattern is clear: industry-backed pundits have been misrepresenting my words, and their spin machine has gone into overdrive.

But let’s be honest about what’s really driving their outrage: discomfort. The oil and gas industry doesn’t like anyone saying plainly that their product causes harm — that they have built a business model on avoiding accountability. When someone points out that elephant in the room, they panic, because the public might start asking why they have gotten away with it for so long.

Big Oil’s executives have known for decades that their products are damaging the climate and public health. They have spent tons of money to deny it, delay action, and deflect blame. And whenever someone tries to hold them accountable — including cities and counties hurt by wildfires, flooding, and other climate-related damage, as has happened in recent years — they are likely to pass those costs on to consumers at the pump, claiming that lawsuits “hurt consumers.”

But it is their greed and the pollution from their products that hurt consumers.

Gas prices and climate change policy have become political footballs because neither party in Congress has had the courage to stand up to the oil and gas lobby. Both sides fear the spin machine, so consumers get stuck paying the bill.

Oil lobbyists and their front groups have always been adversaries of American consumers, hiding behind patriotic slogans and “consumer advocacy” campaigns that exist solely to protect industry profits. Their latest op-eds are no different — corporate spin masquerading as populism. The Consumer Choice Center’s own website admits that it has been funded by the chemical, nicotine, alcohol, and cryptocurrency industries, among others. That’s not really consumer advocacy.

The fossil fuel industry’s reaction to my comments is straight out of a very old playbook: deny, distract, and discredit the whistleblower. It’s the same tactic that protected tobacco companies for decades. Big Oil is just the latest in that long line of industries that can’t stand accountability — and that always try to externalize the costs of their own wrongdoing onto consumers rather than paying the price themselves. They twist words, inflate outrage, and flood the press with talking points to avoid responsibility for the damage they cause.

Without accountability, oil and gas CEOs will keep making the public pay for the pollution they create. Americans deserve better.

David Bookbinder is a longtime environmental attorney and climate policy expert. He is writing here in his personal capacity.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/opinion-why-big-oil-is-panicking-over-accountability

After 15 years at Verizon leading AI initiatives, I was swept up in the latest RIF which was ironic, given that one of my current projects was highlighted in Dan’s recent AI pitch.

I began transitioning responsibilities to a senior colleague, only to be told today that I should now train a new hire in India. Same title as mine, brought on last week, fresh out of a 2021 graduation, yet his resume reads like he mentored Sam Altman. Apparently, “worked exclusively with US companies in India” is the new definition of deep experience.

When I asked my Sr. Director for clarity, the response was : “This is out of my hands. More org and budget changes coming soon.”
Translation: brace yourself, the outsourcing wave is just beginning.

Let’s be clear, Verizon isn’t cutting costs by hiring “cheap labor.” as I see some oblivious people saying, these contracts start at $40 an hour and can climb past $60, often padded with fantasy resumes. The difference is they’re remote, from small towns where overhead is low, while Verizon keeps cashing in here in the US.

So don’t fall for the AI fairy tales or the “Verizon values” slogans. The reality is simple:We U.S. employees are being replaced, while our politicians & news outlets are busy with nonsense and the greedy companies keeps pocketing the profits.

Someone needs to investigate Verizon and it's executives. There's no way they aren't hiding things that would get them thrown in prison. Stock manipulation, earnings manipulation, growth manipulation, taking bonuses while laying off employees, allowing outsourced calls centers to steal customers information to then be used by scammers (which we all know come mainly from overseas), ECT ECT. I'm sure the secrets they hide keep them up at night. Enough is enough!!!

I’m so sick of the AI slop on Penny’s Page. Real interesting how all these em dashes started showing up after generative AI advanced. Disrespectful. Just stop posting instead of pretending we are all too stupid to notice.

GCAS moving to a functional accountability model, head of CIM APAC is gone and will be overseen by a US head. Honestly this is a good change because CIM APAC has been a disaster for years with no accountability or desire to follow required internal or regulatory processes.

Our annual shutdown will take place from December 25, 2025, through January 2, 2026, with a Day for Me on December 26, 2025. This time away gives us a chance to recharge and focus on what matters most — you and your family. The shutdown also helps Cisco reduce its carbon footprint, saving more than $6 million in energy costs and 22,500 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions over the past seven years.

The shutdown also helps Cisco reduce its carbon footprint, saving more than $6 million in energy costs and 22,500 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions over the past seven years.

CISCO forcing everyone to burn AI token for every stupid tasks using 1k tools at the same time is very concerned about footprint haha

They say they are going to change, but dear God in heaven when is one iota of change for the better going to happen?
This is like the worst bad relationship your parents told you about.
They say they are going to communicate more… they don’t. When they do it’s more words, less action.
They have made you lose a lot of good friends aka coworkers, for reasons you still have no idea of. There are still way too many bosses.
So help me if someone tries to say they are going to bring Tar-jay back I am going to scream. It’s over. It’s like Mean Girls and Fetch. Stop trying to make it happen. These are NOT your guests anymore. Why can you not understand this?
And speaking of not understanding your guests, you really had a great idea
with the grab bags, but you failed. Aside from the winners, I cannot even fathom who would be impressed or happy with what was in that bag. There is better and more sh-t presently in my vehicle than what was in that bag. And you hyped it up, to our guests. Who waited for it, thinking it was something great! You couldn’t even load it with snacks? A $5 gift card? Jesus anything? My kids birthday gift bags are better and we are poor.
I feel like you are just sabotaging the company now with these decisions. Trying to tank all of us.
There are so many of us who still and who did bust their a-s for this company, and for what? THIS?!

Be real. Wells Fargo made money in up years and bad years. It was due to the various lines of business they had. It was a highly conservative and well balanced business plan. Norwest Bank, and then Wells Fargo, was a premier place to work and to put your trust. Until the new management and "new profit" centers were brought in. At that point, the bank, which had been steadily profitable, and a great place to work, began to break down. New managers, who's only thought was the latest FAD, were put in place. Accelerate that to today's situation, and you can see that Wells Fargo has become just another Citi, just another big corporation that is only organized to make money for shareholders. Many long time employees have left. Many have been terminated. Many have been laid off.
You can see where this is going. Fast forward to some unknown economic issue, and the bank is caught flat-footed. Losses. Huge losses. Due to new direction and lack of diversification. All straight line responsibility to the "new management" that have arrived, similar to locusts. Yes, locusts. You see, they bring their fellows. you know, the "yes men" who give good subservience but don't call out the risks. And then, everyone is surprised when the dominoes fall.
What a joke.

Can we talk about how awful the company culture and military like the culture is at Schwab?

Along with the constant broken promises for career growth to employees feels fraudulent!

They have been playing all kinds of dirty tricks on employees to push them out aggressively.

Hard to believe some of the latest managers are long term employee and have no clue about the basics of the oil and gas industry. Instead of the old managers from just a few years ago who would be in the field shoulder to shoulder with us, we now have managers that fly in from Houston and go to the field for 30min and brag about it on social media and in the townhalls.

Verizon still has an a deeply rooted anti-customer mindset that needs to be rooted out. The company’s employees are very internally focused (painfully evident on posts to this site & elsewhere online).

That ingrained problem (both conscious) can't be corrected by simply throwing money at the problem (e.g., Network improvements, addressing IVR routing, etc.).

What Verizon should do is require every Manager and Occupational to have a full rotational assignment (i.e., 1 1/2 - 2 years) in Sales or Customer Service!

P.s., If Verizon Leadership is monitoring online feedback this suggestion needs to be immediately taken back to Dan Schulman & The Board. In fact, I think I'll send this directly to Dan's Office.

When are we going to call out this company for doing small layoffs to stay under the WARN number to keep it quiet and implementing RTO to make our lives miserable so that the EC gets the attrition they are looking for? Rick said no plans to change RTO in 2025 because he knew he was going to change it for 2026 and no large scale layoffs because he has a bunch of small scales ones planned. He doesn't want to be called a liar like Walt was but I'm tired of them not being transparent about what they have planned. This place used to care about employees but now its the same corporate McKinsey nonsense we see everywhere else. Executives getting insane amounts of stock compensation and trying to make it sound like we are getting a good deal getting less than three percent raises and an extra 10 percent bonus. 100k comp is comparable to 54k 20 years ago

I hope when Dan and the other execs watch Christmas Vacation this holiday season, they realize that they are essentially the a-hole president of the company, Mr. Shirley. In the movie, even the guys wife found his actions to save a quick buck at the expense of his employees was disgusting. I hope Christmas Vacation is on every channel, on every TV this holiday season, and they are forced to watch that part over and over with their families.

At least Mr. Shirley redeemed himself in the movie, Dan will be an Ebenezer Scrooge in real life. Dan has no excuse to say he simply inherited a bad situation, and had to make a tough decision to right the ship. He's been sitting on the board for the last 8 years operating in lock-step with Hans, one disaster after another.

Instead of propping up the stock price by increasing the dividend, Dan should enroll the shareholders in the Jelly of the Month Club and use the cash flow to pay down the debt from previous failed acquisitions and golden parachutes.

Today marks the end of ExxonMobil's presence in France, with the change in control for all remaining assets owned by US major to North Atlantic. There will only remain a tiny commercial structure with less than 20 employees. Esso France is dead, long live North Atlantic Energies.
Rejoice! This is the end of all the corporate bullsh-t people had to swallow for years (and keep smiling as if they liked it), the end of decisions made from 30'000 ft with limited knowledge (if any) of the local context, the end of dysfunctional organisations, having to deal with the incompetence and carelessness of “service” centers supposed to support you, the end of underinvestment in industrial sites making them more and more challenging to operate etc. etc. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?
To all those in the EM world facing the same prospect (i.e. being dumped by big mamma): DON’T BE AFRAID. There is a world outside the fence of the prisoners' camp... 😀

For those of you too young to remember, he's the basic history of Corporate layoffs in America that all started with the government mandated breakup of the AT&T Bell System telephone monopoly on January 1, 1984 ("Divestiture" of AT&T's local Telephone Operating Companies, including Bell Atlantic).

AT&T Information Systems (IS) layoffs started in January 1984 that impacted ~25,000 employees with literally dozens of major rounds of cutbacks at AT&T following well into the 2000's. When it first began to happen it was literally a feeling of disbelief by not only by AT&T employees and their families, who were used to the benevolent Bell System ("Ma Bell") work culture, but also by Americans at large who couldn't fully grasp that the "contract" of employment for life was over at major companies. IBM soon followed suite and once they did the floodgates opened up on mass corporate layoffs which soon became commonplace and continue to this day.

What do current and former IBMers have to be grateful for ?
More layoffs (to come) and more jobs going to India on some flimsy pretext or the other.
And of course, Arvind getting more medals pinned on his chest from Modi for services to the Indian Republic. That is gratitude.

Money compounds but character compounds faster - Buffet.

(Reputation, Trust by clients and employees.)

Excited to have our executives visit locally and get us kicked off for an awesome 2026. I plan on wearing two foam fingers and shaking the noise makers they provide to show my enthusiasm. Will the theme this year be football related where we get to hear our executives talk about their favorite team, or will we kick things off with trivia questions and t-shirt give aways? I hope they bring more than one special red chair for us to use for pictures as the line will be very long and I want to get back to delighting our customers. It would also be great if they brought interns back to speak to us about the awesome culture they are experiencing. Their 4 months of insights were so helpful and encouraging. Let's go V Teamers!

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid0roqpdp5UX4KS1QNaNghonZw12YD4MTJgvkWHdzy6KQLJGKAbsYu6NkAibDYhWFYKl&id=61568467476584&mibextid=Nif5oz

This was posted on SAPs board here on thelayoff but it totally applies to us as well:

We work for a criminal enterprise full of self-righteous, borderline re--rded psychopaths.

https://thevisafiles.substack.com/p/capital-one

You are running the easiest semi-legal racket in the world and your unchecked greed is going to bring the whole thing to the ground. Money just rolls in and you don't even have to produce anything tangible. You don't even have to guarantee healthcare for your Insurance premiums. A little advice from a street guy, when your getting away is as a shylark especially in a crony-capitalist fraud it is better to keep customers happy and maintain the illusion of legitimacy.

Unless you’re dancing with the cobras, your job is in jeopardy.

Offshoring is cheap now. But you get what you pay for. No innovation. No advancements. No improvements. There is an overall lack of understanding of US culture, well being, and best business practices. Metlife investors will suffer as the co continues to lose ground to competitors.

It's not fun whatsoever to watch coworkers, friends and/or family loose their livelihood. I know many at Verizon who've been going thru this round of layoffs turmoil, and amongst them some who lost their jobs. It's very hard watching people you know suffer, however it is a reality of working at large corporations.

Honestly, it's something you inadvertently sign up for when you take a corporate position, especially in the Telecommunications industry which has regularly had staff cutbacks for nearly ~45 years beginning with the breakup the AT&T Bell System in 1982.

I've worked in Telecom (AT&T, Verizon, Virgin Mobile, Sprint, T-Mobile and Boost) since the mid-1980's and have been thru major rounds of layoffs literally dozens of times (impacted 1 time personally when AT&T shut down their entire Consumer Business in 2003) so I can certainly emphasize with others enduring the same.

This could well be Verizon's "new norm" going forward (also Telcom & Corp America) with AI, automation and operational changes significantly take hold.

P.s., I've previously worked closely with Verizon's CEO, Dan Schulman at AT&T and Virgin Mobile over the years. He's a good Executive doing what's necessary to right Verizon's lagging performance.

Hans cried during a webcast on the George Floyd protest....that was the most cringe moment at VZ I ever witnessed

I wish I’d recorded our faces while he went on about “dedication” and “hard work.” Even he couldn’t hide that he didn’t believe a single word coming out of his mouth. I honestly don’t get how these corpos still think this kind of theatrics works. Are they really that out of touch? Incredible. And on top of it all, he wasted half an hour of our time.

“Verizon doesn’t have a problem with its products or services; it has a people problem” - a former employee who tags Dan

Home girl the service is inadequate, and many of us have had to say it was great while trying to improve it.

Let's be real

Dear Team,
After years of paying you to do your jobs, we've discovered that the real problem holding Verizon back from "delighting customers" is.... you! Specifically, 13,000+ of you. Your salaries are apparently the only thing standing between us and becoming "faster, simpler, leaner, and scrappier". We are firing a fifth of our managers so the rest of you can live up to your potential. This isn't a layoff, it's an exciting "reset" and "reorientation" around our sacred mission of delighting customers. Think of it as a HOLIDAY GIFT. 'Tis the season to be overworked as we enter this new era of additional blackout days and longer store hours. If it doesn't ki-l you it will make you stronger which should help you during our next rounds of "promotions to customer". But don't worry, we're putting 20 million in a "reskilling and career transition fund" - that's roughly $1,500 per person which is totally enough to learn to code or become an influencer in this economy. We didn't even notice this was taking place during the holiday season and trust us, it was totally unintentional. Survivors, act grateful, work harder, and remember: the next "reset" is always one bad quarter away. Cheers!

Charles Schwab and his wife Helen attended the White House Dinner - the special guest was Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud.

Questions regarding the appropriateness of Charles R. Schwab - who continues to represent and lead the company in his capacity of Co-Director of the Charles Schwab Corporation - attending this particular event are legitimate and not inflammatory.

So the question is why thelayoff.com removed the earlier postings regarding this topic.

So I had cause to re-watch Office Space over the weekend. The studio released this movie in 1999. It focuses on the corporate absurdities that permeated cubicle life in the late 1990s, with the lead-up to Y2K as a backdrop.

I’ve seen the movie countless times and still find the story of the Bobs—two consultants hired to reduce headcount—hysterical, although the last seven years of hired consultants and annual layoffs is a bit too much art imitating life.

What struck me this time was a throwaway line I hadn’t noticed before. The main characters work for a company named Initech—which, they explain, is a made-up word created by smashing innovation and technology together. Sound familiar?

So the “innovative” naming that made us all Solvers became part of cinematic history over 25 years ago. Make no mistake, folks: these leaders of ours are not bringing anything new. We talk about AI and the positions it will eliminate, but with this crew of senior leaders, we could replace them with a Magic 8-Ball that simply says, “Hire consultants and restructure.” That seems to be their cure for anything that ails us.

Happy Thanksgiving all.

Mid-Markets to be cut in half. Calls have already been sent out of EST. This will be a total shake up, if you survive you will not have the same title or job scope Jan 1. Get prepared for them to make more money on your backs.

Any word if CHS will be conducting Corporate layoffs this year or next year?