#leadership

In January 2026, after I raised concerns about two years of workplace abuse and discrimination, three leaders retaliated against me by falsifying the record and signing a written warning built on a fabricated narrative.

For two years, I repeatedly asked for one thing: to no longer report to the person whose conduct I had reported. They said no every time.

Then, after I raised the issue again, I was disciplined. My bonus was taken away. My career mobility was frozen. And a written warning was placed in my personnel file to justify whatever comes next.

I kept the underlying record. It speaks for itself. A leadership title does not make evidence disappear.

For the Cloud program, we hired significantly from JPMorgan Chase and Amazon, largely because members of the leadership team came from those organizations. This contributed to substantial budget consumption.

Now, with the new AI budget, we appear to be seeing a similar pattern within Technology—hiring senior leaders from Discover Financial at GL17 and above, while simultaneously increasing pressure on existing U.S Bank employees

What are the benefits of having him represent AT&T?

There’s been this huge crackdown on my team within care management recently on performance and policy compliance. We’re all getting flack for our idle time, call avoidance, taking lunch too late, and on and on. Used to be no one ever checked Verint unless there was some concern about metrics, but now everyone is in the hot seat. Lots of formal coaching and PIPs all at once for objectively very minor offenses. Is it some directive from senior leadership? Maybe they’re trying to thin the herd of less productive associates before AI implementation increases our productivity expectations?

Let’s be honest, most people aren’t staying because they’re happy here. They’re staying because the job market hasn’t given them a good enough reason to jump ship yet and they still need income to survive.

But also be honest about what that means. That’s not retention. That’s a fu--ing ticking time b0mb.

The second the job market really opens back up, all those people who have been quietly putting up with 5x RTO BS, sh---y morale, constant cuts and pointless bullsh-t are going to start walking…. And AT&T is going to be completely unprepared for it.

In the next 3-5 years, you’re going to have massive numbers of people retire, get surplussed or leave voluntarily. A ton of institutional and systems knowledge is going to walk out the door at the same time. Who’s replacing them?

You can’t gut and abuse the workforce for years and then magically find experienced people when you suddenly need them. And you sure as he-l can’t replace decades of knowledge with some new hire and a fu--ing training deck.

AT&T needs to stop obsessing over who it can cut and who sits where, and start figuring out who it absolutely cannot afford to lose.

Especially the non-pension employees. They aren’t tied here forever. When the market improves, they can leave, and they absolutely will.

The “leadership” team seems to think people will tolerate anything because they have nowhere else to go. They think they have a hostage situation created by a bad job market.

When that changes, we’re going to see just how many people were actually choosing to stay.

Tick-Tock, John…

There’s a point where “culture” stops being what a company says on LinkedIn and becomes what people actually experience when they work there.
You can post all the polished messages you want about people-first leadership, growth, transparency, and culture—but saying those things doesn’t make them true. Culture is reflected in who gets listened to, who gets protected, who gets developed, who gets held accountable, and ultimately, who chooses to stay.
If leadership continues asking the same small circle of people whether everything is okay—and those people are the ones benefiting from the current system—of course the answer is going to be yes. But that is an incredibly narrow way to measure the health of an organization, especially one that desperately needs to right the ship.
At some point, leadership has to get uncomfortable enough to actually listen. Not just to the loudest voices, the favorites, the “yes” people, or the people sitting closest to power. Talk to the people who left. Talk to the people who stopped speaking up. Look at retention. Look at engagement. Look at production beyond the surface-level numbers. Look at what happened to the travelers and relationships that were handed off to people celebrated as “top performers.” Did those relationships grow? Did those travelers stay? Were those desks actually nurtured—or were they simply inherited?
And if the same people have been sitting in leadership seats for three years while the same problems continue to surface, it is fair to ask whether the problem is no longer the circumstances—it’s the people in the seats.
Leadership should not be a talking head. It should not be gossip, cliques, politics, favoritism, or protecting the people you personally like. Leadership means fighting for your people, advocating when it is uncomfortable, holding everyone to the same standard, and having the courage to admit when something isn’t working.
Stop fluffing certain desks while demanding everyone else prove themselves over and over again. Stop celebrating numbers without examining how they were achieved or what happens after the handoff. Stop confusing loyalty to a leadership circle with loyalty to the company.
Three years is enough time to make meaningful change.
At some point, continuing to do the same things, empowering the same people, protecting the same behaviors, and expecting a different outcome becomes exactly what we all know it is: insanity.
What makes this particularly sad is that this company once talked so passionately about being different. About putting people first. About creating something better than the corporate environments so many people had experienced elsewhere.
Somewhere along the way, it started becoming the very thing it said it would never become.
Profits matter. Performance matters. Growth matters. But people have to matter too.
And when good people continue walking out the door, leadership shouldn’t be asking how to improve the messaging around culture.
They should be asking what happened to it.

The further we get past the pandemic, I wonder if anyone in the entire company has 2 brain cells to rub together.

Abby is a joke and promoted her biggest and loudest adversaries as direct reports. Like how hasn’t a corporate takeover not snuck under her nose? That alone is mind blowing

This is what leadership and success look like! All bow down to greatness!

So much for cost savings in technology. Everyone from Europe and NA in May lost their jobs to pad this guy's payroll.

Hey man we just want to let you know ELT how we all feel about you. If you are truly like Ted Lasso then you should open your ears and eyes and actually hear what we are saying and how we feel about the company right now. You all are the most hated ELT in the history of the company so from all of us:

🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕

Obviously many of these posts are coming from employees or former employees. With that being said, the company is gravely in debt.
Which positions are unnecessary to continue the operation of the business?
Please list them in response. Maybe just maybe upper leadership will wake up instead of continuously bleeding money to unnecessary employees with unnecessary job titles.
Decrease your liabilities boys!

I wonder, if eventually, this forum of associate honesty would inspire change by the top 4 or 5 leadership positions. Change that they would claim as their smart thinking, and result in a bigger compensation, bonus, reward.

So the new thing for execs to post on LinkedIn is “…..spent time on the ground with xyz team”. Where do these mo--nic sayings come from? Two leaders this week have used this line on LinkedIn. Do they think anyone is impressed or cares? Not as bad as Iris saying she enjoys stepping away from the boardroom to meet with teams.

Will SMS deliver on its targets with the new SMS president?

Laid off yesterday after 15 years in retaliation for not wanting to take on even more work after basically taking on the work of three other people with no consideration for my capacity at all. It was definitely retaliation though I can't prove it. It su-ks that senior executives promote the global culture especially providing psychological safety but it doesn't actually exist and in fact toxic environments thrive. Don't know what my next steps are but there's freedom in not being stressed out about being behind in everything because you're overwhelmed with an ever-growing list of responsibilities and a leadership that doesn't care. Hopefully another division will scoop me. Nowhere to go but up from here

Now that AI and Big Tech are officially falling out of favor on Wall Street, how long until Jim pivots and claims his "big bet" on AI was just a victim of bad timing? Place your bets, but historically, he usually clings to a fad for about a year before quietly shuffling away.

What amazes me is how he always gets away with it. How many trends does this guy have to chase just to sit at the cool kids' table on Wall Street? Why doesn't Bill see through this? Sometimes chasing the shiny new thing doesn't pay off, to the tune of $20 billion.

First, it was autonomous vehicles Argo taxis, because every American loves to rent their car. "They'll be here tomorrow!" Then it was subscriptions. "Wait, no, energy, were an auto battery supplier now! Wait no one wants them, how about energy storage, anyone? !" And now? "Data centers and defense! That’s the ticket!" Affordable, sorry guys, that was Mr. Trump, which Jim referred to as the "return of common sense", after cursing him for stripping the EV dream no American wanted.

Does anyone remember the genius of the scooter or the inflatable bike? We're growing they exclaimed, we went from 5 employees to 500, that's progress!

We've had the worst now the best ! A bit of positivity . The only one for me is probably BG president SIBG CG. Seems to actually know whats going on in biz and doesn't look like he has a huge ego

Anyone else see the instagram post where MW claims to be inspired by Lasso? Cause that tracks.

Why senior bank fraud leadership change? I hear scandal?

It's the leadership. It's always been the leadership.

Look at recent performance and it's obvious. Absolutely poor leaders who only speak in PowerPoint prose and can't think beyond a bullet point. Leaders who go above and beyond to keep themselves apart from their "subjects."

DTC wasn't a bad idea. The execution was a sh-tshow. Inept supply chain. Cr-ppy tech. Marketing leadership that thinks we're a fashion company. Innovation that does... actually, not sure what Innovation does anymore. Poor people management. Lack of transparency.. look at the fact that we bury. annual survey results when they are unfavorable. Internal transfers are rarely fair. Finance/procurment.. enough said. Smh

And it all flows from the layers at the top. If EH wasn't good enough to be CEO when JD was appointed, what made him better a few years later? Same for our CMO .. did her experience really grow that much from “co-founding a minority-owned agency”. Our supply chain was so great we gave VA a bigger remit, lol… Can’t make this stuff up.

You can't cut and outsource your way to growth.

We need new leadership.

It gets really exhausting to feel the need to post in reply to je-ky type people on here.

I think there are basically two camps of people, those who have lesser positions of control and know just how lousy this company and the leadership is.

Then, you have those delusional folks who because they were graced with being put in some relative position of power make the incorrect assumption that they will never find themselves in the first camp so they defend the company absurdly thinking that their loyalty will always protect them.

Well, news flash to the second delusional camp, you mean very little to the company as well and will some day be thrown away like a dirty used kleenex.

CDW and McKinsey & Company have both faced scrutiny regarding their DEI practices (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) and ESG frameworks (Environmental, Social, and Governance), many referring to these programs as "woke," while company leadership defends them as sound strategies. Who is paying the price for these programs?

The rot has been allowed to set in at the management level. High performing individual contributors are leaving every week! Frustrations with the Presales team now boiling over as opportunities don’t have any support and management clueless to what is going on in the field. GA looks like a fool thinking RL is a capable leader.

Drew Asher
Susan Mills

by going direct and dump all the distribution channel who were loyal to them for long time.
And found best possible human being in this world to run company, JD.
The guy has no soul, no imagination, no leadership, no personality and bona fide total a@@hole.
To make long story short, sh-t did not turn out they way PK imagined to say the list.
And not sure if company will be full before he is no longer in this world.

With EH's performance until now, I don't think anything good will come out under him.

Let me just say that EH makes JD look pretty good. LOL

J

The F*** CFO is now holding 20K shares in this company, that is $3M. He has no skin in the game anymore and he does not care. His insider trading pattern shows that he has no confidence in the business. For a company of that size and this behavior of CFO, he has to be immediately replaced.
Typically CFOs hold millions or hundreds of millions in their companies stock.
He is a mo--n that ran the company downhill with teh CEO. Fire both !

Title says enough. Company is in the death grip of the CEO/Chairman of the Board/Supreme Leader, Dave Schaeffer. He runs the board how he see's fit which is how he managed to crater the stock price and still maintain control of the company. Everyone from CEO to sales managers just yells to work harder with no real direction or ideas of how to improve. Cogent is being sued left and right by both shareholders and shorted employees. This company is dead in 5 years, 3 if the current leadership stays.

A recent report highlights a significant disconnect in how organizations prepare managers for difficult workplace conversations. While HR professionals largely believe managers are adequately trained for layoff discussions, a substantial majority of managers themselves disagree. This gap suggests many companies are underestimating the support needed for leaders navigating increased workforce uncertainty. The report advocates for continuous development and a culture of psychological safety to equip managers effectively.

https://sea.peoplemattersglobal.com/amp/news/performance-management/managers-struggle-to-navigate-layoff-conversations-as-workplace-uncertainty-grows-report-51489

Is it more likely that I'm getting promoted or fired?

Can we request to change our date. I have seen some comments that suggest dates moved up or requested a change as well as withdrawing, no information like this has been shared in my department by our leadership. TIA

Did you ever wonder how some of these shiny empty suits ( make and female) got their positions? They are always on unlimited pto, don’t do the work and avoid the first sign of conflict? I would like to know how to get these skills.

def Webster: an unduly fearful person

def Oxford: an informal, disapproving, and often childish word for a person who is easily frightened

def Dell: a middle manager

Two senior executives have resigned from Pace Gallery following significant staff and artist reductions. Chief Communications Officer Amelia Redgrift and Senior Sales Director Danielle Forest have both secured new positions in the arts sector. These departures occur after the gallery laid off 50 employees and dropped 50 artists earlier this year. CEO Marc Glimcher acknowledged the contributions of both executives, noting Redgrift's role in shaping the gallery's culture and Forest's dynamic presence. The gallery indicated it would work with Forest in a new capacity.

New York, New York

https://www.artforum.com/news/two-pace-gallery-executives-resign-1234757150/

VP's will fall this time

Hehehe. OMG, what a bunch of 🤡🤡🤡 at the helm...

have u seen that linkedin in post - lol - an svp was bragging how her flight got cancelled but she got all strong and mighty, was able to overcome the challenge and persevere. what an amazing times to be alive - how much more deranged and fake can we become. makes me sick.

The STCB experiment has run its course. After a disastrous tenure at STCB, the time has come to bring it back to STCH and restore the academic standards, stability and direction that have been lost.

An initiative is now in place to reunite STCB with STCH and put education and academic leadership back at the heart of its future.

Does our "leadership" have any other ideas other than obsessive cost cutting? What is with MKW's addiction to laying people off non stop? No one should enjoy doing it so much. How did he get in the position as he's as toxic as you get.

L3Harris ousts CEO Kubasik over conduct violation: The investigation found conduct inconsistent with company values but unrelated to financial reporting or operations.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/l3harris-ousts-ceo-kubasik-over-conduct-violation
This guy just can't seem to be helped at any level or by any employer