#culture

I was put on a PIP this early morning after 1:1 with my manager.

I can see the light at the end of the tunnel...

Anyone else seen the culture take a nose dive for the worse since February? People stressed, checking out, listening to coworkers get screamed at on calls by on fellow coworkers and nothing happens as a result of the unprofessional behavior. Departments fighting with one another. Not agreeing on the direction to take on projects or even the go-forward strategy for the company. People sending nasty, sarcastic emails to one another. Terrible!

Let’s be clear: this is not a criticism of women broadly and certainly not of the many women of color at Nike who consistently kick a-s, deliver exceptional work, challenge broken systems, and make the company better.

This is about a specific corporate archetype: privileged, entitled "leaders" who we-ponize victimhood whenever their competence or conduct is questioned. They demand accountability from everyone beneath them while treating accountability for themselves as persecution.

They turned personal insecurity into “leadership,” favoritism into “talent strategy,” and organizational politics into a substitute for results. They promoted one another, protected mediocrity, punished candid dissent, and surrounded themselves with people unlikely to challenge them. Competence became threatening. PowerPoint replaced product.

Meanwhile, the people who genuinely understood athletes, footwear, design, engineering, and innovation were sidelined while professional meeting-attenders accumulated titles and congratulated themselves for “transforming” the company.

Now, after helping dismantle a culture built by generations of talented people, they will undoubtedly insist that none of it was their fault.

That may be their most enduring Nike innovation: failing upward while presenting themselves as the victims.

Hard work and skill won't get you ahead. Flatter your boss and trash-talk the competition. That's the winning combination.

Most people here have been here for years. We joined when the rules were different, when loyalty meant something and a job was for life. Then the rules changed, and for those of us well into our careers, that's been hard to accept. But new hires came in knowing they'll move around and are not afraid to quit after a year or two. It's funny, it's the same company, but completely different mindsets.

Synopsys is in real trouble. Most of the people with actual skills, the ones who could make a difference anywhere, are headed for the door. They've figured out that better pay, significantly better culture, and actual work-life balance are out there. Unless something drastic changes, there won't be any true talent left here soon.

I had a colleague who bragged about not taking a single day off in two decades. He saw it as a mark of character, as something to aspire to. I told him he was a fool and he was genuinely surprised. That kind of thinking is exactly what's wrong with Elevance culture. There's nothing noble about sacrificing your health and your family for a company that would replace you in a week.

The best benefit my new job offers isn't pay or perks. It's a culture that won't ki-l me with stress.

I left Verizon about two months ago on my own terms, and looking back, I’m very happy with my decision.

At the same time, it’s difficult to watch former colleagues being laid off, terminated, or feeling mistreated within the company. Years ago, I never imagined wanting to leave Verizon. I genuinely thought it was an amazing company and a place where I could build a long-term career.

But over time, things changed. The culture changed, the environment changed, and unfortunately, not for the better.

I say this as a former Customer Success Manager and Strategic Account Manager who spent many years with the organization. Since leaving, I’ve spoken with others who have also moved on, and I keep hearing the same thing: leaving was one of the best decisions they made.

The crazy part? I finally understand exactly what they mean.

Sometimes walking away from something you once loved isn’t giving up—it’s recognizing that the place you loved isn’t the same place anymore.

It’s just sad. This company used to be amazing.

Ford should rotate managers, supervision... around or bring quality talent from outside to change the culture.

I’ve been here a good number of years and feel such a lack in company sponsored retreats, team bonding events etc. I haven’t even experienced a real company year end dinner. All I get every year is more work. And I was on a call with a VP that said don’t expect any budget for year end event this year. Not that we ever had one.

I haven't discussed this with my manager yet so would be grateful for input or info anyone has on policy. Here's my situation:

• I work East Coast hours from West Coast (CA)
• I have worked 6am (and sometimes 5am) to 8am from home, then train into the office (I don't own a car...takes about 40 minutes each way).
• I do not work with anyone else in my office...I spend my day on Teams meetings or doing my work.
• I go home at 2pm or 3pm, depending when I started in the morning.

Am I now supposed to haul my bu†† downtown at 4:15am to get my 8 hours in the office? The trains don't even run then! I'm not buying a car just to satisfy this. Honestly, the absurdity of all this is what bothers me the most.

Right now, I'm planning to my boss that he's going to lose access to my work and contacting me until 9am Pacific time. Many of my team and project-related calls fall before that time, so they can either allow me to continue working the way I do or lose my participation in various routines, ability to answer questions and fix stuff...I'm stumped.

I changed roles thinking it would help, but it didn't. Nobody leads, nobody mentors, nobody even seems interested in talking to me. My manager has never asked if I need anything or how I'm doing. That's not leadership. That's just someone occupying a title. I'm not staying where I'm invisible.

Now we have a noticeable deterioration in morale, performance, and commitment. I wonder why...

The idea we can return Nike to glory or even growth just selling more to Wholesale has never been right. Sounds like an easy fix because it is too simple. On and Hoka didn't eat our lunch because of shelf space. Their products were innovative, comfortable and looked cool or different and our running products were not any of that - until at least the Vom18 which is a pretty good Hoka knock off. New Balance brought back retro running and got cooler and deeper in culture through athletes. Adi sparked a low pro trend as were overheating on chunky high pro Air Force, AJ1 and Dunks. They did sell those in wholesale. We now have lost all of the people who get all of this. If or when we ever get those types of people or a new visionary and our mojo back, Nike digital stores and wholesale will all grow. It's not complicated - innovative or cool/style right product and inspiring brand marketing and also being part of shaping culture have always been the answer. When that happens, our products sell everywhere. This is not a turnaround taking longer - what drives Nike's growth just isn't happening here any more - not now nor over the past 2 to 3 years. Even still, that's all easy to say, hard to do. Need visionaries who can also hire talent and inspire everyone. Layoffs are not the answer either.

Why is this going on for so long?

Email stating no code changes in ANY environment from October 2026 until August 1, 2027, except for “keep the lights on”. Do we really think FMMC is going to let that many employees sit there with no productivity that long?

Am I the only one that finds it odd that this large charity event we hold every year does not have our MP anywhere near it? I swear this woman is a ghost and is checked out from this company. She makes time to fly around the country for photo ops at random country music concerts, but cannot spare a couple hours in her "home town" to attend the United Way event.

Workplace excellence often ends up meaning:

looking good
sounding good
being visible
being “aligned”
being socially smooth
fitting the corporate narrative
participating in culture, meetings, rituals

It’s about optics and behavior inside the system.

Work excellence usually means:

delivering results
doing the hard work
solving the real problems
carrying the load
improving the bottom line

It’s about actual output and impact.

https://finance.yahoo.com/small-business/articles/prove-went-office-inside-charlotte-090000670.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall

Why is the TAO leader (P. M.) threatening an employee about his job security in front of hundreds of employees during her talk in Bengaluru? Why has the Board of Directors and CEO not taken any serious action? Are leaders at that level not accountable for their words and actions? What happened to Nokia being an Ethical Company? How do you think the employee who was being threatened felt after being embarrassed in front of hundreds of employees? Does she think this is a joking matter? What type of damage does this do to Nokia (brand, investors, customers, future contracts (gov't and commercial), employees, etc)? Should leadership be just as ACCOUNTABLE as any other employee?

Anybody watch the Netflix Boeing documentary “Freefall”? The parallels with what we’re currently doing will have you shaking your head.

DDAT locking down claude code and cutting off use by business teams that have already been using and have built substantial workflows of value at a fraction of the cost or that DDAT probably previously told them they couldn’t do right now…or they didn’t know how to do it… the AI revolution… it’s beginning…

Worked with Technical Architect Lead who did not even know difference between relational database and S3 buckets.

If you are a bootlicker, then have a good growth in this company.

Heard the update on GCC. A lot of questions were asked by attendees of which some were selected for response. The answers were non-answers which was not surprising. People can handle uncertainty and difficult truths much better when they are presented plainly and honestly. I just wish our leaders understood that.

1. Nix big meetings

Excessive meetings are the blight of big companies and almost always get worse over time. Please get rid of all large meetings, unless you’re certain they are providing value to the whole audience, in which case keep them very short.

1. Ditch frequent meetings too

Get rid of frequent meetings, unless you are dealing with an extremely urgent matter. Meeting frequency should drop rapidly once the urgent matter is resolved.

Leave a meeting if you’re not contributing

Walk out of a meeting or drop off a call as soon as it is obvious you aren’t adding value. It is not rude to leave, it is rude to make someone stay and waste their time.

1. Drop jargon

Don’t use acronyms or nonsense words for objects, software or processes. In general, anything that requires an explanation inhibits communication. We don’t want people to have to memorize a glossary just to function.

1. Communicate directly, irrespective of hierarchy

Communication should travel via the shortest path necessary to get the job done, not through the ‘chain of command’. Any manager who attempts to enforce chain of command communication will soon find themselves working elsewhere.

A major source of issues is poor communication between departments. The way to solve this is allow free flow of information between all levels. If, in order to get something done between depts, an individual contributor has to talk to their manager, who talks to a director, who talks to a VP, who talks to another VP, who talks to a director, who talks to a manager, who talks to someone doing the actual work, then super d-mb things will happen. It must be ok for people to talk directly and just make the right thing happen.

1. Follow logic, not rules

In general, always pick common sense as your guide. If following a ‘company rule’ is obviously ridiculous in a particular situation, such that it would make for a great Dilbert cartoon, then the rule should change.

What gives?

This is a great site. Really.

People come here with good questions, stupid questions, and occasionally questions so id--tic they achieve a kind of accidental brilliance. That’s society. We live with it.

But we also know this forum has a dedicated HR “team” reading pretty much every post and repost. And, apparently, the “moderators” occasionally lend a hand by making particularly effective posts disappear.

Not insider trading. Not NDA material. Not confidential information.

Just good, sharp criticism of the current leadership.

And my favorite feature—arguably the best health indicator on the entire site—is the down-arrow brigade.

Mention a particularly sensitive subject and, within minutes, the arrows start raining down. You couldn’t ask for a better diagnostic: someone hit a nerve.

And apparently that nerve belongs to the oligarchy.

So, to the HR “team” and the helpful moderators: please, keep it up. The disappearing posts and instant downvotes are remarkably refreshing. They tell us far more than you probably intended. Like that is gonna fix your problem

And to the people running this place: you’re welcome.

We’ll keep asking the uncomfortable questions, poking the obvious holes, and—apparently—keeping your lazy as--s employed.

Try not to delete this one too quickly. It’s almost a compliment.

Change my mind.

I am one of the 400 remote workers who has been ordered to RTO. I'm looking for work and applied for a fully remote contractor position. To my surprise, they told me the client is O'Reilly. They are looking for outside contractors to document the iSeries software for another team to do a complete rewrite. We received assurances that the CIO is leaving the iSeries platform alone, but this discovery clearly contradicts that claim. This CIO is secretly scheming to eliminate the iSeries as soon as possible.

Here is the job description that is posted on LinkedIn:

Capstone IT is helping our client find a RPG Developer who will analyze legacy RPG applications in an IBM iSeries/AS400 environment, document how those systems work, and support planning for a future move to a Java-based architecture. This role is light on daily coding and heavier on discovery, documentation, workflow analysis, DB2 data review, and modernization support.

Top 4 Skills:

RPG III / RPG IV / ILE RPG
IBM iSeries / AS400
DB2
Legacy system analysis and documentation
Responsibilities:

Analyze RPG applications running on IBM iSeries/AS400.
Document application functionality, dependencies, workflows, and business processes.
Review DB2 data structures and data flows.
Support discovery and planning for migration to a Java-based platform.
Assist with limited RPG enhancements, troubleshooting, and production support.
Work with business analysts, architects, stakeholders, and modernization teams.
Qualifications:

Strong RPG development experience, including RPG III, RPG IV, or ILE RPG.
Hands-on IBM iSeries/AS400 experience.
Solid DB2 database knowledge.
Experience documenting legacy applications and business processes.
Ability to explain technical findings clearly.
Nice to have: retail or high-transaction industry experience.
Nice to have: system integration or data migration exposure.

I know every team has that one person who somehow helped ruin WPE for everybody.

So instead of actually dealing with that person, we changed the rules for everyone and just collectively took it up the a-s.

And the funniest part? That person is still gonna find a way around the new rules.

They’ll come in at 11, walk around talking for 30 minutes, complain about being there, make sure enough people saw them, then disappear and somehow still count it as compliance.

Why didn’t we just create a way to report the actual problem employee and handle it directly?

Because now everybody gets punished, productivity gets disrupted, morale gets worse…

…and Captain Loophole is still doing exactly what Captain Loophole does. 😂

Enough people around Stankey have finally gotten in his ear and policy changes are in the works. Senior HR leadership is preparing to roll it out in the next 6-12 months.

It will be presented as a "change to presence report requirements."

It will most likely involve quarterly presence requirements instead of weekly, with some (probably not a ton) of leeway for occasional work from home.

The biggest factor motivating the change is problems attracting and retaining new hires - especially younger workers.

Nobody will tell Stankey directly that he was wrong, but it's being couched as "You've done an amazing job transforming our culture! We're ready to take the next step now."

He's bought into that.

The rumor is that, although they have been on the walls offering antacids, ibuprofen, band aids, etc for a decade, it seems there has been an influx of new people that seem to think they can steal all of the single serve medicine packets and supplies every time they restock the supply boxes, so they have just decided we can no longer be trusted and they are removing them entirely...
Thank you thieves and exploiters... this is why we cannot have nice things!

For the last two or three years we’ve had so many RIFs, and I cannot figure out why. I’ve been here for almost 17 years and this is just so unusual. We are walking on eggshells feeling like it could be us any day. There seems to be no rhyme or reason, and we seriously wonder if the company is just falling apart. Does anybody have any insight into why we’re having so many RIFs?

I couldn’t be more queasy about that whole boondoggle circus in Vegas — dragging out the new execs like show ponies, trotting them around in some desperate song‑and‑dance routine for clients, flogging “new products” that any serious person would laugh out of the room. Absolutely stomach‑turning watching those mercenaries Mike and Takis hauled in strut about like they’re the future of the company, when half of them will be gone before the dust settles, leaving the wreckage behind like it’s someone else’s problem.

And honestly, the LinkedIn boot‑licking from the SVPs is even worse. Reposting every blurry moment from Forum like it’s some historic global summit, all just to kiss MC backsides and prove their undying loyalty. Pathetic, the lot of them — parroting whatever the latest corporate catchphrase is. “Double‑click on this,” “finish the swing,” all that drivel. It’s like they hop online every Monday to see what the biggest su-k‑ups are saying so they can copy it word for word. Watching from a distance and having a good laugh. Have some self‑respect, for crying out loud.

And you ever notice who these people are? Divorced, middle‑aged blokes and women, or married but outsourcing the raising of their kids — yet they never forget to post that one annual holiday photo with the children to pretend everything’s normal. What a life.

Let’s not even start on how much this Vegas stunt cost. I’m sure it’ll have the same impact as Investor Day and that Town Hall where Takis bragged about going to the NBA Finals the night before — as if he could pick a basketball out of a pile of sports gear.

Funny how when I was giving my supervisor advice on crypto and trading strategies we were the best of friends the second money stopped coming in my audits picked up and that “friendship” faded and I was switched off the current team

Be mindful that some employees are carrying undercover cameras on them and recoding workplace infractions. Belk can be liable for these workplace violations.

The recent documentary about Boeing is an interesting watch.
How those at the top exercised rampant cost cutting, destroyed trust in a company and lined their own pockets at the expense of everyone else

"In 2009, Boeing opened a facility in North Charleston, South Carolina—a non-union state—to produce the Boeing 787 “Dreamliner” plane as cheaply and quickly as possible. The majority of the plane structure was outsourced from cheaper suppliers rather than being assembled in-house. The facility was soon full of shoddy engineering—ill-fitting pipes were sledgehammered into place, holes were found in aft body fuselage sections, and tiny metal slivers that were liable to cause massive electrical problems were found in the planes.