#leadership

How much longer is it going to take? Apparently HP has an inflated view of who should take the job than who is actually interested in it.

Anyone notice the trends last 2 years?

Tim Cook steps down as Apple, $AAPL, CEO on August 31 after taking the company from ~$350 billion to over $4 trillion.

John Stankey steps down as AT&T, $T, CEO after taking the company from ~$215 billion to ~$178 billion.

Apple increased its market cap by roughly $3.65 trillion and AT&T lost roughly $37 billion.

Six years. Two CEOs. Completely different outcomes. I wonder why?

One led through massive innovation and growth. The other spent years making questionable strategic decisions resulting in failures of epic proportions, while simultaneously alienating the workforce with policies like 5x RTO, cutting costs and talent, and destroying culture and morale.

But I’m sure Stankey will find a way to explain how all of this is somehow the employees’ fault.

Get this l0ser Stankey out!

We do not need a stay of execution; we need certainty and security.
Leadership has lost its humanity in what was once a great company, where people genuinely came first. PayPal is no longer a company I’m proud to work for.

I would welcome the opportunity, if given the appropriate platform, to publicly and constructively critique the decisions and leadership approach that have brought us to this point. People deserve transparency, accountability, and to be treated with dignity—not uncertainty and fear.

The traditional five-day office week was sold to us for decades as some kind of sacred law of business. Executives insisted that without people physically sitting in a cubicle, collaboration would fall apart, productivity would tank, and "culture" (whatever that means) would just evaporate.

Then 2020 happened. In a matter of weeks, half the working world moved to their kitchen tables, and it turned out the whole thing was less about performance and more about control.

Here's how the forced remote work experiment kind of blew up the core myths of office culture.

1. The Productivity Mirage

The big scary warning was always: unsupervised employees will slack off. Turns out that was backwards. Multiple studies during the pandemic showed productivity held steady or even went up when people worked from home. No more open-floor-plan noise, no more soul-crushing commutes — people actually got hours of real, focused work done. Turns out showing up isn't the same thing as producing anything. Output matters, not butt-in-seat time.

2. The Collaboration Cult

Leadership loves to say innovation needs "watercooler moments" and everyone breathing the same recycled office air. And sure, in-person brainstorming has its place. But the pandemic proved you don't need five days a week of shared oxygen to collaborate well. Teams got good at async work fast — people had time to actually think before responding instead of just performing enthusiasm in a meeting room. Real connection comes from intentional communication, not a shared zip code.

3. The Real Estate Sunk-Cost Problem

When companies push hard for a full return-to-office despite everyone hating it, the stated reasons rarely add up. A lot of these orgs are locked into 10-15 year commercial leases, and an empty building is just a giant unrecoverable cost sitting on the balance sheet. So forcing people back to their desks is often less about "performance" and more about justifying an expensive real estate bet nobody wants to admit was a mistake.

4. The Illusion of Culture

"Culture" got used as a guilt trip to drag people back to their desks — like camaraderie only exists within four walls. But most people figured out pretty quick that real culture isn't free snacks and a ping pong table. It's psychological safety, respect for your time outside of work, fair pay, and people actually communicating clearly. Once the office perks got stripped away, you could see they were just distractions from bad work-life boundaries the whole time.

The Bottom Line: Outcomes Over Attendance

The whole remote work experiment showed that the five-day office mandate was more of a leftover habit than an actual business requirement. Hybrid setups are a fine middle ground for teams that need occasional in-person time, but the idea that full-time office attendance is non-negotiable just doesn't hold up anymore.

Work isn't a place anymore — it's a thing you do. Companies that don't get that are gonna keep losing their best people to competitors who actually care about results instead of just watching who's in their seat at 9am.

Our leader just hides while our company is attacked daily. This guy has no control over any situation or any type of plan. You just get 10 minutes of him reading off a script every three months on an earnings call. You can hear him flip the pages it’s so embarrassing.

NIke really needs to address its hiring and assess talent and performance culture. Business is in the sh*tier and leaders can no longer get by with keeping their friends and inner circle safe. Right now, way too many people are getting by purely on favoritism and nepotism while others carry the actual workload.

Also, trying to reach a younger demographic shouldn't mean handing senior titles to former athletes who lack business experience and corporate work ethic. We need a realistic balance of proven experience and institutional knowledge if we want the company to succeed.

Does anyone know how many VPs were let go this week in NA? I heard a U.S. West Sales VP, a Central based PUB Sales VP, and a West-Central SVP were cut. One was very good at her job.
Any other news?

Are there any real leaders that you admire in XOM?

Alert went off this morning. Good times for another executive. From publicly available information…

Chris Koster, Centene’s General Counsel:

2023: $4.84M
2024: $5.06M
2025: $6.51M

On August 18, 2026, Koster sold 47,603 Centene shares for roughly $3.11 million. $16.4M in three years. Cha-Ching sir! Here are the stock trades:

https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/insiders/koster-christopher-1108982

Not bad for the top lawyer at a company whose business is largely administering taxpayer-funded healthcare.

Koster went from county prosecutor → Missouri Senator → Missouri Attorney General → Centene executive.

So basically, decades in Missouri government followed by millions a year at one of the country’s largest Medicaid contractors.

At least someone figured out how to make Medicaid profitable. But sure, keep cutting the people doing the actual work. That ought to fix the margins. And congrats, Chris. Don’t spend it all in one place.

I get it, they will not be promoted. We don’t want them over us. But that doesn't mean they have to leave. Just take the paycheck, be quiet, and don’t ask for a career. That’s not too much to ask. Like promotes like, we only promote what looks like us, sorry…

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-news/accenture-ceo-julie-sweet-makes-a-vacation-request-to-employees-for-this-august/articleshow/133284654.cms

What is behind that Smile?

More layoffs are set to roll out in America on Monday. I'm numb. 2.48 billion dollar revenue but they still decide to layoff the people making it happen. This is beyond parody. SHAPE survey comes out and says people are unhappy and Synopsys leadership decides to keep beating the dead horse. Unbelievable

Source: Dr. Mullen

I once hired someone smarter than me. I hated how it made me feel.

→ They were sharper in meetings.
→ Faster with decisions.
→ More technically capable than I was.

Instead of feeling proud, I felt exposed.

I started wondering:

If they're better than me, what exactly am I bringing to the table?

Then it hit me.

I was competing with talent I was supposed to be leading. So I changed how I led.

1️⃣ I asked more questions than I answered.
↳ My job wasn't to have every answer. It was to get the best thinking into the room.

2️⃣ I gave credit publicly.
↳ If someone was better than me at something, I wanted everyone to know it.

3️⃣ I shared decisions earlier.
↳ People take more ownership when they help shape the answer.

4️⃣ I made disagreement safe.
↳ If your smartest people are afraid to challenge you, you're wasting their talent.

5️⃣ I admitted when I didn't know.
↳ Pretending to know everything wasn't leadership. It was insecurity.

6️⃣ I measured myself differently.
↳ Their growth became a better measure of my leadership than being the smartest person in the room.

That changed how I thought about talented people. I didn't need to outperform them.
I needed to create the conditions for them to outperform me.

https://www.reddit.com/r/IBM_Employees/s/LypsgKSMZg

Reporting to Lesher in what they are calling a strategic advisory role as a vice chair of wholesale banking. Interesting to say the least!

Stephen Farquhar has been named the new CEO of Publicis Health Media, replacing Andrea Palmer. Farquhar previously led Publicis Health's U.S. operations. Palmer had been with Publicis for 19 years and was instrumental in PHM's growth. The reason for Palmer's departure was not officially stated. Farquhar's extensive experience includes leadership roles across various markets and industries.

https://www.fiercepharma.com/marketing/stephen-farquhar-takes-over-ceo-publicis-health-media

WBAL NewsRadio has undergone significant layoffs, impacting local employees and leading to the replacement of several locally hosted programs. The station has transitioned to airing nationally syndicated shows, a move that has reportedly surprised those affected. Hosts T.J. Smith and Angelette Aviles are among those who lost their positions. Leadership from WBAL NewsRadio and its owner, Hearst, have not yet commented on the situation. These changes signal a shift in the station's programming strategy, moving away from local content.

Baltimore, Maryland

https://www.thebanner.com/community/local-news/wbal-news-radio-layoffs-HXYEFMHFEJF7RKVT4XOMEVUEBA/

Since nothing else works and they are more worried about what’s on this website? Will someone please let the leaders of P66 know that the supervisors in the control center or never at work and if they do show up it’s only for a couple hours at a time it’s been like this for past year.

The new CEO is going to be amazing! There will not be any more layoffs, the 401k match will go to 12%, everyone can work remote 5 days a week, all salaries will be increased 20%, annual increases will be 10% minimum, and every teammate will get their very own unicorn!!

Or nothing will change for us grunts in the trenches and the new faces sitting in the same executive offices will still get rich off of us just like the ones currently in those offices. It really su-ks to be us.

Ramon still going after adding $10 to our price

Let’s continue to hire multiple million salaried leadership people that need to be trained, cut Nike engineering experts and have a fake ITC office where nothing gets done yet we pay millions for.
Surely that will fix our issues. Bravo, brilliant.

Please note that none of the surveys in Synopsys are anonymous.

In last yearst Shape survey, there was a question whether you believe in CEO Gh@zi leadership. All L6/M6 and above who rated 3/2/1 have either been laid off or are in the layoff pipeline.

So, play safe and give 5 ratings to such questions, basically lick the @ss in surveys unless you are in notice period.

Just had a call with my new "leader" at Charter and was told in no uncertain terms "Move to Stamford of you are effectively resigning from the company." Nice right? Alex Taylor cared about one thing and one thing only - building his legacy within the family, regardless of the human capital losses.

What changes are expected now that there's a new president of Corporates?

Current XOM is like a skydiver that was forced to jump out of the plane not wearing a parachute while being required to report back to the Flight Crew every 10 seconds with a status update.

For the first several updates, everything is going exactly per plan and the Flight Crew, especially the Captain, pats themselves on the back, hands out record bonuses to each other and determines that everything is going so great, the other skydivers on the plane are forced to jump sans-chute too.

But that last status update will eventually come in from the Ground Crew and no one but the Flight Crew will be surprised.

Scharf is so corrupt that his c-suite continues to lie, lie, lie that work produced by AI is not the product of the employees who know the subject matter to properly use AI. I will laugh when after Scharf is done firing everyone - big Tech price gouges Wells Fargo and takes it over.

At what point do we stop calling this a “turnaround” and admit Nike’s leadership sc--wed up? The stock is sitting around $38.

That’s after years of bad decisions, losing momentum with younger customers, getting buried by competitors, and turning some of the most iconic shoes in the world into glorified clearance-rack inventory.

And somehow the people running the company are still getting paid like everything is going great.

Elliott Hill pulled in $36.3 million in 2026 after laying off thousands of hardworking people. Meanwhile, Nike’s stock is still nowhere near where it was a few years ago.

Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if VA eventually replaces EH as CEO. A lot of people senior leaders are frustrated that we still haven’t seen the turnaround everyone was promised.

EH is unable to get the business moving again, especially around innovation, product, and brand momentum, the board is going to have to seriously consider a change. VA could be a logical next choice given his experience and understanding of the company. Sad part is that we don’t have any good replacement options with our stock teetering in the 30’s.

https://www.businessinsider.com/tanium-cofounder-orion-hindawi-returns-as-ceo-leadership-shift-2026-8

Anybody notice the mid level and upper level leadership at NetApp leaving and all ending up at HP.

1st. Who can say they enjoy working at NetApp? the whole company changed, and the existing leadership ki-led it.
2nd. Its good to know Sandeep wont be going to HP, he was already tossed out like a dirty diaper.
3rd. What do the leaders that left know that we dont know. Whats up with Netapp, whats up with HP.
4th. yep, layoffs coming. they are ALWAYS coming. They layoff a title, replace that person with someone else having a slightly diffrent title, exact same job because some new leader wants to hire a friend from a former company.

5th. I talked to friend at a company like PWC. Its common talk, NetApp retention is 100% compensation focused. Leadership at NetApp knows the people are misserable and will leave at first chance.

I received no raise, while execs... including Hemsley... continues to receive mega comp packages. If employes are being asked to accept stagnant pay because of the company’s performance and financial challenges, exec compshould be subject to the same scrutiny... and sacrifice.

I have been with UnitedHealthcare for more than 20 yrs & it is frustrating to watch longtime employees feel undervalued while leadership continues to be well compensated. Folks are tired of hearing the same corp messaging quarter after quarter without seeing meaningful improvements in our compensation or working conditions.

At some point, leadership needs to recognize that employee loyalty has limits. Period... If the co wants to retain experienced people, it needs to demonstrate that through competitive pay and meaningful raises - not simply words of appreciation. Employees cannot continually be expected to absorb the consequences of management decisions while executives remain financially insulated from them.

Its sad discouraging to see news about employees receiving little or nothing in additional compensation while the company's stock responds positively. That sends a terrible message to the people who have spent years helping build and operate this organization. Please start listening to employees and appropriately compensating the people doing the work. Otherwise UHC should not be surprised when experienced employees decide they have had enough and leave.

It's only vibes and fake narratives. 0% substance or achievements.

That'd be the entire post.

The 800 nurses working under the utilization review umbrella were lied to or was it a bait and switch? The nurses were told a new work hour schedule was in the works -the nurses would be notified this week and the new hours would start Monday 8/31/26
Today in an email that was very flip they ignored the fact they LIED and said the schedule would be released next week to start 09/30/26 Humana Values Really — Golden Rule — NO
—-Team with TRUST —NO
The Leaders all need to be Fired
Morale is at all time low
Not professional

In December, CW was exited and the role was eliminated by Hill stating it was to remove layers.

Today, role is reinstated and offered to JE from Walmart and is now considered a vital role and critical to the strategy.

Optically speaking, this is horrible. Leadership never beating the allegations that they are just throwing sh-t at the wall and seeing what sticks.

EH proving he isn’t the guy and must now make moves to set up his backfill.

is it they actually live what they preach. And yhr honest truth is we know they won't and their leaders won't. Those who try will find themselves exiting the business.

Paul Taylor was named President of DXC Technology, assuming the role from Raul Fernandez, who will continue as Chief Executive Officer.

Thoughts?

https://dxc.com/newsroom/07302026-dxc-announces-leadership-appointments-to-accelerate-its-ai-centric-future

With so many executives leaving, it's hard not to wonder is Centene on its last legs, or is the company just going through a brutal restructuring?

Now we have a new CFO coming in from outside the healthcare industry. Will bringing in non-healthcare financial leadership turn the ship around, or will the steep learning curve just drive us further down?

Honest thoughts? Starting to get really worried about where we’re heading. :/

Part of the Cigna / HealthSpring acquisition here. Over at Cigna part of the business strategy was buying companies and quickly incorporating them into our BO operations. On the other hand, HCSC seems like a kid in fourth grade trying to figure out a college level manual. How are we still waiting on decisions here almost two years in? When will Igor come up with a definitive direction around AI? The townhall where he said "100 years ago, people didn't know they wanted a car, they just wanted faster horses" was a fancy little tidbit. Well, Igor, using your own analogy, we don't want a car or a horse, we just want to start moving. When are you going to get out of the way and let the team race forward?