#culture

Fascinating how a storied and successful company like Marathon with a unique culture and technical achievements can disappear and not be relevant again. This is testament to leadership drive for self enrichment and the middle managers who destroyed the morale of the organization.

The company appears to be in a state of decline, with leadership frequently chasing the latest industry trends. Every few months, there’s a shift in direction and new sets of goals, often driven more by buzzwords than by long term strategy. It can be frustrating and sometimes even amusing to watch leadership make decisions based on vendor pitches, despite lacking hands-on experience themselves.

Strategic direction often changes based on which vendor a VP has a relationship with. Microsoft is currently the favored trend, but just a few months ago, it was all about "prompting." These cycles repeat, creating instability.

Benefits are decent, but be cautious getting sick can be expensive. PTO is generous, and pay can be competitive depending on your role and negotiation. However, layoffs happen regularly, roughly every six months, with many roles increasingly offshored to Allstate India, which probably accounts for over 50% of the IT staff.

The company is heavily focused on “cloud” and “AI” at the moment. Overall, I’d rate it an average workplace, it’s a place where you do your job, keep your head down, and hope to stay employed. Tenure doesn’t offer much protection. If your views don’t align with the ever changing corporate vision, you may find yourself out.

If you’re hired, my advice is: agree with leadership, reinforce their ideas, and avoid pushing back, your opinion won’t carry much weight. On the positive side, there are solid opportunities to improve your skills through a strong internal training ecosystem.

https://www.financialexpress.com/trending/its-scaring-me-microsoft-employee-of-7-years-says-current-work-culture-has-changed-for-the-worse/3982230/

In the first plot select 'Insurance' and 'USAA':

https://www.economist.com/interactive/business/2025/06/16/corporate-culture?fsrc=core-app-economist&mc_cid=fa28ffc4ba

The second chart shows culture dimensions like Transparency, Candor, Strategy vs leadership, pre and post COVID.

Spoke with an old co-worker last week, who got LR'd last year and still does not have replacement job. Really sad, great worker.

I was LR'd years ago, and moved on luckily to much greener pastures.

I was at Cisco a long time, the last two years were Psychological Warfare. Felt I would get LR'd; sure enough eventually did.

Early in career, was a "highly valued" and highly paid, who then, with time morphed into an older male. Great money. The problems indeed began when new "management" took over our BU. It took a year, but there was a dramatic "change" of "philosophies", which also brought more likeminded folks into the BU. Let me just say, languange became a definite much tougher to navigate challenge. Also, many cultural differences.

That is not a popular opinion, but it was reality. Sounds like it still may be reality. Now even more.

I am SO glad I was removed from the sullbhit and moved on. I am also glad it was years ago, and not in today's market. Times are tough. If I was still there, I do not know what I would do, the opportunites are not there.

Many people will most likely not like this post. I am supportive of all peoples, but skill and job abilities were, and appear to continue to be for the mostpart, completely ignored at Cisco.

To the upper management who sanction and condone this pile of sullbhit, I hope you feel truly proud of your accomplishments, mostly of padding your pockets while picking off other workers, and continuing to foster a culture of misery.

if you come across a better opportunity, move on. Your sanity will Thank You.

No offshoring / put profits over patient care.

We lost a great manager. They decided to nuke our department for no good reason and then handed the pieces to someone who loves micromanaging and playing politics. I went from enjoying my job to dreading it within a few weeks. Again, for no good reason! This place makes no sense to me.

Now, what a fu--ing waste of everyone's time - also, powerpoint lides make it much worse.

The reward for doing good work is getting to do more work. Can I get a witness!

Why do we need several meetings to decide something that should take five minutes? It looks suspiciously like people just drag stuff out to make themselves look busy. Meanwhile, I’m doing real work and stressing about layoffs, and they get praised for this nonsense.

The goal isn’t a promotion anymore, it’s escape. Forget raises or fat bonuses, the real win here is landing a new job and walking out. That’s the only future that looks good to me right now, and I’ve been chasing it for months.

what bothers american workers the most today? oh gee, where do we start.

Imagine getting one of the most decent people around to walk away from his life’s work. Imagine buying Ben & Jerry’s and then putting a muzzle on its founders, the very people who built it into what it is and who’ve always stood on the right side of history. Messed up is all I can say.

A question for people who've been working for Oracle for more than 10 years.

I wanted to see if you can quantify how much quality of employment at Oracle deteriorated over last 10 years.

10%, 50%, 90% worse than 10 years ago.

Pick your number and see if you can tell us why you feel that way.

love how this works.

my manager gets a terrible rating, keeps being the same awful person, and nothing happens.

zero consequences, zero change.

but sure, let’s keep pretending VOE means something.

We have a few coasters in our team working on same item since idk, 5 sprints

And they have 0 knowledge of what they are building, cannot even write or understand a simple join query

Guess what, they get to demo all my work.

Why do managers encourage such behavior???

How sc--wed are we now that DoorDash is taking over? I've only heard bad things but that's mostly about how the company treats its drivers. What about the rest of us? Is it just as bad? To say I'm nervous about this whole thing would be an understatement of the century.

They’ll burn out your creativity, crush your motivation, and smile while doing it. Get out while you’ve still got some spark left in you, because they won’t give it back once it’s gone.

You can tell a healthy company by the way it grows. A sick one just keeps restructuring to squeeze a few more bucks out while everyone burns out. Sound familiar? Working here is like living in a company that’s eating itself alive instead of actually improving.

Pay me to leave. Go ahead. I dare you. I’ll dance out of here happily. If this was the old Synopsys I knew and loved a decade ago, maybe I’d be upset. Maybe I'd stress over it. But walking away from what’s become an unrecognizable toxic dump? I won’t feel bad about that.

The post pandemic work life at the firm has made me seriously consider leaving the workforce completely. “Support” being a new buzzword with zero meaning is the base of the new culture.

So many people keep talking about how other companies are worse, so I kind of don’t want to take my chances.

That is why Walgreen's has failed the past few years bigtime. The never hired any true leaders.

Received my 'invitation' to participate and complete this survey which is a vital part of Leadership's efforts to proactively manage Truist's health. After Dr McKinsey provides the results from the check-up, wonder what medication will be prescribed? Imagine antidepressants and reflux medications will on the list.

Being an observer of Sysco South, Florida, the current management is driving this company into the ground.
They are destroying the very fabric which Sysco used to stand for as leader. Sysco South and Southeast covers Miami to vero and the keys. They are doing their best to run the company into the ground. For all of the sake of a balance sheet, which makes them look great, but does nothing in the long term, salesman who have been with the company for are up and leaving due to the autocracy its becoming You have a few VPs in Miami starting with sales upper management, etc. that are trying to take the dollars out of the representatives mouths for their hard work they get nothing but if you kiss the rear end management, you get everything this is not how a business should be run. Im asking Houston to get people in those positions that know what they’re doing, people that are customer oriented and not do as I say don’t do as I do management group. I’m ashamed to say a once great company. That was based on family, quality, professionalism, and customer service has become nothing but a dictatorship, run by a president in Miami who is a wimp and especially vice president such as sales who are a dominant cut throat whatever makes them look great egomaniacal person. It breaks my heart. For once great company to crumble at its foundation.

Is the us upstream, specifically production obviously, the only division where working hard and going above and beyond gets you nowhere and the worthless/lazy employees and contractors that do nothing get rewarded/promoted on whose b*lls they kiss? I wasn’t sure if this was a global plague or not.

What you have with your employer is a business relationship and not emotional. So stop using words like company loyalty, work family, corporate culture and other BS. The more loyal you are to the company the more you will get hurt when they clip you. Always remember- you are getting paid for your talent and the time spent there. If you want to show loyality - show it yourself, your family, your skills, your health and wealth but NOT to the company you are working for.

Every morning I have to talk myself into staying one more day.

Punish first, play favorites second, repeat. After a while I stopped thinking of this as a career and started seeing it for what it is: a place where it's all about surviving another day without getting crushed.

When I left Medtronic it felt like I’d crawled out of a pit. Took me months to feel like myself again after all the toxicity. It drained everything from me, energy, confidence, and health. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

I think being laid off at this point wouldn't be such a bad thing, considering the current state of SF.

Title says it all. Enough said.

Just shut it down at this time. Noone cares and each and everyone is looking for jobs. Most of us are envy of those who got CPMd and got a package and are now free from this he-l hole

Is PayPal links clunky? How PayPal world works better, we need success.

What is your experience working with and or in that organization?

Meet Paul. Paul is a business major bent on making his mark on the world. Where's a place to start than the Dell EMC NextGen Sales Academy as an Emerging Technologies Specialist?

After speaking with recruiters and the most distinguished of inside sales managers, Paul is promised "incredible growth, tremendous learning, best of breed technology!" After all, Paul is so lucky to be working and commuting to 176 South Street from his little apartment in Southie.

Paul starts with a class of 20 people - these are all the future sellers of Dell that are going to take the company to the next level. Paul goes through the 6 weeks of intense onboarding. Where he learns how Dell is the greatest infrastructure vendor in the world, and that competitors such as Pure, Netapp, HPE, and Rubrik are absolutely abysmal. He doesn't learn from tenured sales engineers and technical solutions architects, but rather gets to hear from fabulous sales development managers!

Paul is then introduced to senior inside sales leadership, who promise him that he can make great money and thrive in the NGSA program. Paul truly believes in and trusts in the executive leadership, even though they RTO'd inside sales on two days notice a couple months before the rest of the company!

Paul completes the rigorous onboarding where he is grilled constantly about the key features of PowerStore and the tremendous benefits of Data Domain. Can't forget the Dell Technology Advantage! Paul and his cohort have to memorize the DTA Buckets and Why Dell for AI messaging for his cold calls! The Emerging Technologies Specialists have to tell IT Managers about Dell's strategic AI Partnerships, and if Paul wants to get to the field, he damn well better know his brief.

Paul is then sent to cold calling. He is goaled on 5 appointments week over week, 80 dials a day, and 2 hours of talk time. However the dial and talk time talk time is inaccurate, causing Paul's brand to go down. Paul gets to see where he stacks on the leaderboards weekly with his team and the rest of the sales floor on emails sent by NGSA leadership, gotta get to Team MVP of the week!

Paul calls a very angry IT director that is tired of the constant unsolicited calendar invites and the 10 different Dell reps calling him. Paul tries to set an appointment to talk about tremendous benefits of PowerStore when the IT Director had already moved to Pure based off price, poor Paul is unfortunately shot down. When Paul asks his brilliant SDR manager, the SDR manager shrugs and says "Maybe you should have delivered more business value!"

Once Paul gets his first cold call appointment, he gets to ring the gong on the sales floor in honor of his mighty victory. After all, senior leadership told him he had to be "All In" and that the sales floor is a magical fast paced place according to JC.

After the first few weeks of cold calling, Paul is granted "BCI Access" by his superiors. What does this mean? Paul and his class are now permitted by leadership to send blind calendar invites to accounts to provide even more business value and generate demand! On a biweekly basis, Paul gets to have the privilege of "floor stand-ups" where the other legendary sales associate managers get to rally the rest of the cold calling as-----ns, because Thursday is the best day to cold call!

I'm a long service employee and have seen a few RIFs in my time - in fact someone from HR told me that the most common reason for leaving Oracle is being laid off. So we know it comes with the territory.

Sadly we also know that there are people queueing up to join Oracle - it is a good thing to have on your resume. Or at least it was.

Reading a lot of the recent posts, it's indiscriminate - teams across the whole company. People who have had great performance reviews (for what they're worth IMHO). I've seen some really great people get laid off in the past, just because they happened to be in the wrong area at that point in time - although this time it feels like pretty much any area of the company could be the "wrong area"

But the bit that I can't fathom is what the expectation is going forward for our customers. Again, a lot of people have stated how they're committed to delivering quality support to our customers - someone even got laid off and was unable to join a scheduled support call with a customer as they lost their access immediately upon being informed. What message does that give?

I'll tell you what it says - the leadership and shareholders don't give a cr-p about the customer experience (even less about the employee experience). They're after the next big buck - which this time around is AI.

With the pipeline deals recently announced surely there is funding for both the required AI footprint AND continue to offer quality support to our customers.

It's a theme - when Oracle buys a company (e.g. Cerner) yes their product suite is nice to own , but it's the customer base that's the prize. And we always lay off the technical experts from those companies 2-3 years in. Always

Many times I've seen people with no product knowledge trying to support a customer with an issue. Might as well ask someone on he street.

To sum up, quality support isn't a priority - they'll probably claim that AI/chatbots can provide that support. Personally I don't think they can and a lot of support issues can get quite complicated.

Clearly as long as we're delivering stellar results the customer experience doesn't matter at all