#employeerelations

Pretty much completed ALL training in my area that AT&T offered, great reviews every year exceeded expectations, many special purpose assignments completed successfully, Just all got me laid off..... F U Stankey and AT&T

Ever wonder what it feels like to work inside a corporation that’s shrinking, expanding, consolidating, offshoring, rebranding, cost‑optimizing, culture‑eroding, “thriving together,” recharging, refreshing, and “strategically transforming” all at once—while leadership insists everything is BAU and perfectly normal?

It’s like watching a building burn while someone in a branded polar fleece calmly assures you it’s “just a controlled enhancement to long‑term stability,” right before the ceiling collapses behind them.

And because it’s a new year, leadership has prepared a cheerful continuing resolution —delivered with the warmth of a broken space heater and the sincerity of a captured strongman awaiting arraignment for crimes against humanity:

“Expect increased toxicity, more layoffs, more offshoring, and steady gaslighting to brighten and warm your spirits.”

Truly inspiring. Afterall, nothing says fresh start like a forecast of cultural decay wrapped in corporate confetti and lightly dusted with the faint aroma of smoldering ethics.

But wait—leadership wants you to celebrate.
Yes, CELEBRATE!

So plaster on your best “I’m totally fine” smile and go take a few selfies and post on social media.

And don’t forget to hashtag your favorite EC member—you know, the one hiding behind “strategic pillars” like a kid playing corporate hide‑and‑seek. Extra credit if you catch them mid‑pose for their next phony empathy post, those perfectly curated LinkedIn masterpieces where they pretend to care about employee well‑being while quietly checking their bank statements and discreetly approving the next round of “optimization.”

Because nothing captures the modern corporate experience quite like being told to “embrace the journey” while knowing your organization is in a sharp nosedive.

Tray tables up, folks!

so the 2026 benefits book is now available and as expected, nothing has changed in terms of severance benefits, still 8 weeks up to 4 years of service then 2 weeks per year of service until it maxed out at 52 weeks for 26+ years.

SAP has money for share buybacks but no money for giving employees salary increments and benefits. SAP has money to increase executive board bonuses but no money for giving employees salary increments and benefits. SAP has money to invest in AI products that have no future but no money for giving employees salary increments and benefits.

In addition, Joule and other AI slop added to flagship products do not have a good adoption rate. Customers are not willing to pay a premium price for AI features that are unnecessary or downright bad and only increase costs. So they will look at alternatives for one or more products within the SAP ecosystem.

And every single discussion regarding these exact points is derailed by unsavory comments. I sincerely believe that SAP does not need any layoffs but they are doing so simply to instill fear and use this as a bargaining chip to pay less money to employees while the executive board maximize their bonuses. Every good comment here is followed by some bad ones that force the topic to be derailed.

And the only way to fix this is to highlight the real reasons why Dominic Asam, Christian Klein and others want layoffs.

We need to stop the infighting. Because the only people benefiting from this are the executive board and highly paid area heads and VPs and managers who don't add value but have very high salaries. And the losers are ALL SAP EMPLOYEES if we keep fighting between ourselves.

On that note, can someone please share more details about the reorganizations in 2026 Q1? And if there are any more details about any potential 2026 layoffs.

2 weeks notice or quiet quitting?

Hybrid Creep ! We had WFH. We had RTO. Now, meet "hybrid creep," - The idea is that a combination of carrots and sticks will encourage people to gradually increase their in-office time without explicitly telling them to do so. That means tactics like basing promotions on office attendance, or increasing surveillance of employees or Increasing layoffs.
There’s a meaningful difference between saying “we believe we’re better together” and secretly counting phones in a building.

• One is a point of view, whether it’s right or wrong.
• The other is surveillance dressed up as management.
  Don’t be surprised if corporate culture collapses when leaders stop trusting adults to behave like adults.
  The combination of factors seems to be working: Office attendance rates are rising steadily, even as many firms take a step back from mandates.
  https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/workplace/hybrid-work-return-to-office-creep-af5a62b5

I am seeking clarification on several concerning rumors circulating internally.
It has been stated that Infinite employees are not required to work overtime. Is this accurate? If Professional Services Teams have been transitioned to Infinite, what teams are now expected to cover these additional hours?
There are also rumors that these employees who travel onsite to banks will have their corporate cards revoked, requiring them to pay thousands of dollars out of pocket and wait for reimbursement. This would create a significant financial burden regardless of how fast the reimbursement. How are these employees expected to operate under these conditions, given the realities of today’s economy?

i was part of the old EMC Corp before it merged with DELL. It had nasty culture of its own so I do not think DELL is some unusual company in that regard. At EMC there was a distinct bro and ol' boys club culture + substantial bias emanating mainly from one very specific ethnic group which is well known for its intolerance of those who are not one of their own kind and lacked powerful connections. As soon as I moved from EMC Corp I saw a different world out there especially after i moved to a different industry. Feel very happy now, these nothing but distant memories - relics from a past I do not miss in the slightest.

Never not met my 40 hrs, wondering if this is really that serious?

The HR excused me of forging the note. I responded saying HR Karen, I don't like being excused or forging a doctor's note, therefore have your HR manager call my doctor and verify the note. The HR Karen got in a huff about my referring to her as a Karen and told me she was going to have me written up by my manager for it. I talked to my manager before the start of break, and he told me not to worry about it because he's not going to take any orders from a Boeing HR Karen demanding I be written up.

As engineers supporting highly complex programs worry about potential 2026 layoffs at L3Harris, it’s worth remembering that has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on AlixPartners over four years on a failed attempt to roll out a simple reporting tool.
The money exists. It could have been invested directly into programs—staffing them properly and supporting frontline teams with real expertise. Instead, it was wasted.
Executive leadership should never allow this level of misallocation while employees are asked to do more with less. Defense work is hard enough; it becomes impossible without company support.
It’s time to invest in the people actually delivering the mission.

I've been in the accommodation process for some time (going on 2 months now) to get some workplace flexibility and I feel like HR is just dragging this on to try and make me give up on the whole process. Not only have I had my primary care professional provide a letter with their medical recommendation but they have also completed Truist's assessment form (redundant questions at that) - all saying the exact same thing justifying a medical accomodation. Now I'm hit with a "we need some more information in order to process this request."

Is this normal for those who have gone through this? This seems like such an unnecessary, painfully drawn out process for something fairly straightforward.

The company seems willing to bring back older employees, but only at a pay cut. A former coworker applied and was basically offered his old role from about a year ago (he was laid off), just with much lower pay. Unfortunately, he’s thinking about taking it since his current job is even worse and pays less. It’s hard not to feel humiliated by how this all plays out, and it makes me hate this place even more.

It’s crazy to see that someone who knows the company inside and out and has years of experience can be let go just like a newbie. How did we get to a place where tenure and expertise don’t matter at all?

Chris: “we’ve had another stellar year. Recording breaking. Our strategy is firing on all cylinders.

Merit increases thus year will be 2.5%. Inflation is 6%. Yes, I know that your standard of living decreases every year you stay at TransUnion. But I’m not the chump. You are. Because you stay.

Sorry about that. All these first class airfares to fly around the world for dubious business benefit sure do add up. “

It’s become rather clear what’s happening. The company is deliberately creating a hostile and miserable environment to pressure people into quitting on their own. Between impossible workloads and a culture of constant fear, people are breaking. If you’re feeling this pressure, know that it’s a tactic, and you’re not alone.

Joined BNY as a senior associate full stack developer in the collateral area in February. My recruiter told me bonuses at that level are around 10%. My VP coworker said she gets 10%.

I've seen some posts saying because I got 10 RSUs in November/December that I won't get a cash bonus. Is that true?

Welcome to BNY Mellon, the corporate funhouse where the future is offshored, the present is gaslit, and the past has been quietly escorted out under a PIP engineered by someone who couldn’t explain your job if their bonus depended on it. If you’ve ever wanted to experience a workplace that feels like a psychological thriller written by a committee of auditors with no moral compass, congratulations—you’re already included.

Let’s begin with the crown jewel: the 1.4‑million‑square‑foot Pune facility, a gleaming monument to cost‑cutting and the executive fantasy that geography equals talent. Walk inside and you’ll hear it—the cha‑ching of budget wins echoing like a slot machine that only pays out when a U.S. employee vanishes from the payroll.
Real estate consolidation? Cha‑ching. Offshoring? Cha‑ching. RTO badge‑tracking designed to catch you missing a swipe? Cha‑ching. Eliminating work from home so you can sit in a ghost‑town office lit by flickering fluorescent lights? Cha‑ching.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., seasoned employees are being funneled into the Performance Improvement Program Funhouse—a place where your accomplishments are reinterpreted as “concerning behaviors,” your loyalty becomes “inflexibility,” and your manager suddenly develops selective amnesia about every positive review you’ve ever received. We are told it's business, not personal; it’s “People Optimization.” Or, as everyone else calls it: age discrimination with a corporate mission statement.

Your replacement? Already hired. They’re either a contractor, an H1B, or a freshly minted state college grad whose primary qualification is generating tax incentives. Nothing screams “strategic workforce planning” like swapping a 25‑year veteran for someone new who still puts “proficient in Outlook” on their résumé.

And then there’s leadership—RV and Dermie—delivering explanations so vague they might as well be fortune‑cookie messages. “Secular headwinds.” “Strategic acceleration.” “Industry realignment.” These phrases translate directly to: We cut people because it was cheaper, and we hope you’re too demoralized to question it.
They’re corporate illusionists, pulling rabbits out of hats while quietly sawing the workforce in half, all while congratulating themselves for their “courageous leadership.”
But the real horror isn’t the layoffs—it’s the cultural decay and phony empathy. Not a dramatic collapse, but a daily drip of rot. Policies drafted by people who have never met an employee. Decisions that feel like they were generated by a malfunctioning ethics simulator. And the atmosphere? Imagine a place where hope goes to file a ticket with HR and never returns. You are told to recharge, yet you quickly realize your battery no longer holds a charge.

Employees describe it as a slow‑motion freefall: one day you’re standing on a cliff, the next you’re knee‑deep in gravel wondering when the ground gave out. Every new policy feels like it was written by someone who only vaguely understands what the company does. Every leadership message arrives wrapped in jargon, dipped in legal review, and delivered with the emotional warmth of The Grinch who has no integrity and has lost their soul.

And if you’re wondering where ethical concerns go—well, they don’t go to RV. They simply vanish into corporate legal and a maze of executives who nod solemnly while approving fake performance reviews to support a visa‑driven displacement model. There’s evidence everywhere for those willing to look, but the official stance remains a polished shrug.

The downstream effects are already here: institutional knowledge evaporating, teams hollowing out, and the remaining employees expected to train their replacements while pretending everything is “energizing.” Engagement surveys now function mostly as a cry‑for‑help collection system.

But don’t worry—leadership wants you to feel valued. So check under your seat. If you’re lucky, you might find a BNY keychain in a swag bag. A small token of appreciation for your loyalty, your decades of service, and your willingness to participate in the grand experiment of replacing experience with cost efficiency.

In the end, BNY’s transformation story is simple:
Cut enough people, hide enough truth, and eventually even the spreadsheets start believing the fairy tale.

Happy New Year! Enjoy the feeling while it lasts.

I realize this post only applies to employees who were hired before 2008, because they've changed the way our pension is being calculated going forward. I just got around to looking at my new pension estimate for retirement and it decreased 57%. My pension was the one last thing I've been holding on to; really the only thing that was truly keeping me here. Now seeing my new pension number, knowing that giving 20+ more years would only add a measley amount - I have no reason now. Cheers to a new year and hopefully a new job!

The Working better, together Amplify article has been out for three weeks and has 6 total likes. I wonder if anyone making these decisions takes note of how wildly unpopular the new policies are. Does anyone know who really pushed for this policy? Anybody part of those meetings?

“Sprinkles, the iconic California cupcake company, has announced a ‘winding down’ of operations at its remaining 15 retail locations, blindsiding employees last minute with the not-so-sweet news,” the New York Post reported. “Salty employees got the notice on Dec. 30, saying Sprinkles would start an “orderly wind-down” of the company beginning Dec. 31.”

https://www.thestreet.com/restaurants/crumbl-competitor-shutters-all-stores-with-little-notice

Crazy thing is it didn't used to be this way. In the days of yore when we were all happily remote little worker bees, we were content if not happy. Dell felt like a people-focused organization, at the very least. We were given latitude to do our own thing, expectations were normal and not overly ambitious, and the individual contributors had a certain degree of confidence in leadership.

Sure, Dell had the very-normal corporate issue of constant change, but the change was navigable. Then suddenly, everything began to change and the water began to boil. It started slowly-people being "encouraged" to use the office. The remote activities quietly disappeared. Does anybody remember the May the 4th Zoom AHOD in 2021 where a bunch of leadership dressed up as Star Wars characters? Stuff like that was objectively fun, and made work feel a bit less like work. That sort of fun just up and disappeared to be replaced with increased unreasonable expectations like suddenly everybody had to commute 10 hours a week to sit on zoom calls that they were perfectly content with and capable of sitting on at home.

Then, the layoffs began, as did a constant state of employment anxiety that has persisted to this day. Then we all received a total of 24 business-hours notice that hybrid was going away and we were all full-time onsite, or face the consequences. Except, there were none really. The layoffs continued to be completely random across the board, if anything affecting the in-office folks more than those that persisted with staying remote.

The result? Everybody who is left (and smart) has quiet quite HARD. I'm personally remote, and work maybe 2 hours a day and still get everything done. The rest of my workday is spent at the gym or with my laptop open while I play video games. And my numbers have never been better.

The thing that objectively takes the most of the time out of my day is trying to come up with 5 stupid questions to ask this stupid chat bot we're training to take over our jobs eventually, because if I don't that's the only thing that actually gets me in trouble with leadership. It's not my Teams' status being yellow for 5 hours a day, or my quote output, or my lack of desire to pursue cUlTuRe and CoLlAbOrAtIoN by driving 15 hours per week, it's my lack of desire to justify Dell's stupid investment into incompetent AI tools that add no objective value to anybody.

I know it sounds like hyperbole when you hear about folks talking about "Dell has changed." Though in reality, Dell actually has changed in a lot of ways, and every, single, one of those changes have been for the worse. And they get away with it because we flipped from an employee's market to an employer's market with the post-Covid tech crash in 2022ish that we still haven't recovered from.

It just really su-ks.

This needed a thread of its own. The OP is @ez+1kdne2h4c.

If you are thinking of quitting Xerox wait a couple of weeks, they are announcing new layoffs with enhanced payoffs.

Everything at my location has slowed down so much that tasks which took an hour now take two. To make it worse, the new hires we're getting don't seem to want to learn how things are done. I'm not trying to blame anyone, but I'm curious if this is a general problem across the company or if my store was just unlucky. Is this what it's like everywhere?

I'm part of this middle-aged surplus they've created. I'm too young to retire and too old to feel like I can start over. The future I planned for my family (the security, the college funds, the stability) is gone. I feel like I've completely failed them. I'm honestly feeling like I'm at my lowest right now.

Happy new year everyone hope yall have a successful year getting out of OT and landing an actual job in a better / good company. I would say great but even good is better than OT. I will be interviewing over next two weeks. Good riddance OT. They don't know what's going to it them in next week or so. Good luck OT "leadership" trying to fix this.

In 2026, what companies are letting people go this year? 🥳

Please share whatever news 📰 you have.

Hopefully 2026 will be a better year.

To all of those who are treated like cattle sitting in small stalls all day while the elites sit in their offices with their doors closed…emerging once a day to say hi to the little people while deciding who to layoff off (mainly based on politics) God Bless You.

To all of you who sit in those offices who have never been laid off thinking you’re better than the rest filled with entitlement, arrogance and ignorance for not knowing how your decisions hurt others and the smugness of thinking you’ll never be laid off because you are somehow so invaluable…may 2026 be the year you yourself experiences this for the first time.

A layoff damages and impacts people in ways you can only know if you experience it first hand. It’s your turn.

2026 will be the last year of AT&T employment for many. Make the final weeks count.

I got deposit today on my account , but like half of what I normally get.

I understand 2026 payroll makes it difficult for 26 payments.

I am still confused

I’m putting in my notice Feb 13 after bonus drops. I see there is now a 30-60 day mandatory notice period for most employees, enforced mainly by a clawback provision in recently vested RSRs. Any way I can stop working sooner without incurring that penalty? Up to managers discretion? I can’t work more than much beyond the 13th without splattering my brains onto the front of 550 tryon

Anyone look at their upcoming paystub yet? The way they calculated their fuzzy math on 27 pay periods is they reduced the wage Rate. Is this legal? It’s like we all got a demotion. Unless you survive to 2027 to get the catch up payment. I’ve never seen a company handle things like this before. Usually, they catch you up in the same year and do it in a month that has five Fridays. I’m sorry there is zero way you could make it make sense except that this is a way to leverage our money for their pockets. Completely demotivated to ever go that extra mile again at this company,

“We are continuously evaluating our business operations to ensure alignment with long-term strategic goals,” CRL spokesperson Amy Cianciaruso, said by email Dec. 26. “A key part of that strategy is evaluating our workforce to ensure we have the right people, in the right place, at the right time. We are working with impacted employees to provide the necessary resources to help them through this period."

https://www.lowellsun.com/2025/12/31/140-layoffs-between-two-wilmington-companies/

Now they've graduated to firing people and forcing everybody out without severance by creating a toxic atmosphere that nobody with any options wants to stick around for. Those who were laid off with severance were among the lucky ones, if you ask me.

They are looking at them and writing employees up for non-work related content. No jokes, no whitty banter, nothing personal. Always use your cell to communicate.

We're already covering two or three jobs each. What's the plan? Do they expect the remaining few to do four or five people's work until everyone burns out? What happens then?

I can no longer access the Severance Portal from my personal computer following my last day worked (it worked prior to 12/19). It also won’t let me reset my password. I sent an email to the address I located with no response as of yet. We’re supposed to have access to it for 6 months. Is anyone else who was impacted also experiencing this? If so, any tips on how to get access again?

It's not by choice, trust me. There are a few good reasons why some of us are still here. The job market is tough right now, so it's not as if it's so easy to leave. Having a job, any job, is a big deal. I also appreciate the health benefits because I can't afford to be without medical coverage for a single day. Expecting that people who're not happy here would just up and leave is incredibly naive and not in touch with reality.

Employees describe shock, demotions, and a rapid overhaul following Advent’s $2.5 billion takeover.

“Sapiens was a very family-friendly and pleasant company for many years. CEO Roni Al-Dor was a people person. Employees went through fire and water with him, which is why everyone is so surprised now, and deeply hurt,” says one employee.

https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/r1illfbebg

Wondering how many folks are seeking mental health services for the last 2 years of rolling massive layoffs to now end with performance management to reach the final HC. At least with Pat, there was compassion and empathy with the reorganizations.