#leadership

Absolutely no governance, no scope control, constantly swapping quality of releases for quantity of how much they can squeeze in.

Senthil finally got a guy on his team who knew how to fix things. He documented all of the processes, identified break points and had built a coalition between product, engineering and test who agreed on the plan and were starting to fix things.

Gues what happened next (drum roll) Senthil decided to RIF the guy who was fixing the problems, the guy who could lower Salish’s blood pressure, the guy who could restore work life balance to engineers and testers.

No one is picking up the work. Hope is diminishing that T-Life will ever be a healthy team.

Don’t believe leadership when they say they care.

AI is good but our core tech and management are managed by those old school people, non competent guys. Why?

Jon McNeill, the former president of Tesla, has released a new book, "The Algorithm," which outlines a five-step framework for Elon Musk's high-growth business operations. Which is not applicable in OpenText.

Step 1 | Question Every Requirement
Answers like "department regulations" or "it's always been this way" are not acceptable. Even safety or regulatory requirements must be re - examined for their necessity.

In OT, permissions are limited and prevented us from doing things.

Implementation method:

• Ask: Is this requirement mandated by law, safety, or physical laws?
• Find the name of the person who initially proposed this requirement.
• Requirements with no clear source are assumed to be deletable.

—————

Great article in Politico today on Frank continuing his work style and Brooklyn bully boy tactics at the IRS.

Tech bosses say AI will make us work less. So far, that's mostly meant fewer of us will be working for them full-time in the long run. So be distrustful of anything you hear from leadership.

🚨 Introducing Our New Senior Leader Management Guide 🚨
“If you can’t lead… just list.”

Why waste years developing leadership skills when you can simply do the Optum method, rules for thee and not me.

Step 1: Lead with Lists
Not sure what your team does? Perfect. You’re exactly who this guide is for.
Just make a list. Lists = leadership. It’s basically the same thing.

Step 2: Stop Meeting Your Team
Historically, leaders wasted countless hours talking to employees, understanding workflows, and building trust.
Thankfully, we’ve evolved and are 100x
As a leader, you already know what’s happening. Why verify?  That sounds like work.

Step 3: Need More Collaboration? Easy.
Create a list of people who don’t come into the office, don’t worry you don’t need to fly into town to check we can use AI to send you.
Bo-m—collaboration problem solved.

Step 4: Eliminate “Old Leadership” Habits
In the past, being effective required showing up, engaging, and making hard decisions.
Now? Just update the list, you never need to come to town, or if you are low level leader you can just stay in your fish-tank office, no need to actually meet the team.

Step 5: AI Adoption Strategy
Becoming an AI-first company is simple:

• Say “we are an AI company” in every meeting
• Tell your team you don’t computer but they will make us an AI company and AI is the future
• Add anyone who doesn’t “AI” to a list
• Do not define “AI”

And don’t worry if you can send an email or use AI to write a sentence you are the leaders we are looking for!  —
true leadership is about vision, not ability or knowledge .

Step 6: Performance Management
Forget nuanced feedback.
Just categorize people into:

• On the List
• About to be on the List
• Doesn’t know they’re on the List yet

Step 7: Communication Excellence
Why overcomplicate messaging?
Every announcement can be summarized as:
“Per my last list…”

Step 8: Strategic Planning
Q1 Goal: Make a list
Q2 Goal: Refine the list
Q3 Goal: Make a new list
Q4 Goal: Wonder why nothing improved (add self to list, just kidding leader don’t go on these lists)

Remember: leadership isn’t about people, context, or outcomes.
It’s about maintaining a clean, well-organized list.

Leaders stay safe in your offices or if we care about you remote.

This guy can go back to wherever he came from. These new policies are id--tic.

Sorry, it never works.

Define the problem first. Not the "What number what you want" first.

Id--ts.

So much nonsense from our fearless leader. Economy- great! Employment-great! We are making sure that these plebs are sitting on sidelines and begging for giveaways. We are national bank, mentioning California big no-no. This is making normal person”s blood boiled. Such a disgrace.

(An exclusive look into the thinking of our leadership)

From 2017 to 2024, a directional comparison of VP promotion outcomes relative to the Director+ feeder available population suggests non-white males were roughly 4× more likely to reach VP than white males. Non-white females show a similar pattern at roughly 4×, while white females were approximately 2.4× more likely than white males.

This pattern reflects a higher share of VP level promotions relative to representation within the Director+ population, which serves as the primary pool of VP candidates.

These differences reflect variation between promotion outcomes and underlying representation within the leadership pipeline.

Estimates and analysis are derived from publicly available information.

I am unsure if the layoff decisions were the same unilaterally across all orgs, but I was told that people knew yesterday afternoon and leadership had a say in it. In at least my organization they picked some high earners and some people who due to re-orgs were sort of put into bad spots.

Got the morning email and still have no information on whats next and we only get benefits til end of next week. How nice.

Just received an email for a sales blitz for Alpharetta, Irving and Temple Terrace. I'm not sure about Alpharetta, but I know for a fact Temple Terrace is being decommissioned within the next two weeks. Items are already being auctioned on ASI 3 auction catalog lmao. This is how bad our leadership is. They sent an email for a sales blitz for a building that won't even have any furniture within the next few weeks lol

They've proven to be incompetent again and again. Plus, they'd save much more money with fewer people. Win/win.

Energized — or at least pretending to be — by the first global People Team town hall of 2026, the leadership proudly announced it was “hosted live from 240G.” What they didn’t mention was that 240G looked like the cafeteria equivalent of a pep rally held for a team with a losing record: rows of empty chairs, a few confused junior staffers clutching branded notebooks, and a camera crew desperately angling shots to make the room look less… vacant.

The official recap described it as “electric.”
The broken elevator nearby disagreed.

A handful of interns were strategically scattered across the room like decorative houseplants, nodding enthusiastically on cue. Their job was simple: create the illusion of engagement, clap when leadership paused and avoid asking any questions that might accidentally require honesty or Non-Disclosure Agreements.

Then came the fireside chat — minus the fire, the warmth, or the chat. Leadership spoke passionately about “leading with empathy,” which was bold considering empathy hasn’t been spotted anywhere near the Executive Committee or People Team since the last time someone accidentally turned on their camera during a reorg meeting.

And here’s the part that truly captured the spirit of the event:

Even the universally likable Jose Minaya, or the company’s designated empathizer James LeGrand, or Eliza — our glitchy, ever‑smiling Employee of the Year — couldn’t generate a single watt of real or AI‑curated warmth in that room.
Not even a flicker.
Not even a screensaver‑level glow.

Still, the script marched on.

“Trust and empathy aren’t soft skills,” the speaker declared to the echoing cafeteria.
Correct — they’re missing skills.

The narrative continued:
“We must 'lean in' as one team.”
A curious statement, given that half the team was offshored, a quarter was interviewing elsewhere, and the remaining quarter was refreshing this website forum like it was a stock ticker.

The part about “keeping the human experience at the center of everything we do” landed especially well with the three employees still awake. Nothing says “human experience” like a mandatory town hall about empathy delivered by leaders who haven’t made eye contact with an employee since the last compensation cycle.

But the finale was the real masterpiece:
“Grateful for the dialogue, the challenge, and the continued partnership as we build what’s next — together.”

'Together.'
A beautiful word.
Almost poetic.
Especially when spoken in a room where the chairs outnumbered the humans 12 to 1.

In the end, the event achieved something remarkable:
It was the symbolism:
A leadership team preaching trust and empathy to an empty room — the perfect metaphor for a culture where the words are loud, the actions are quiet, and the audience has already left — truly and metaphorically.

Kurt C. Small will be taking over as the new CEO. At least I don't see anything on Google about him being known as a "layoff guy" or anything, but who knows...

Can Dan or Sam offer a VSP already! Heard people were let go last Thursday. Nothing was communicated to our group. We were surprised to hear of anything. On top of that what happened to leadership communicating additional layoffs around the business?

And we’re going to a consolidated D&C org

Hey, here’s an idea! How about we stop giving the pinnacle award to the same people year after year?! This is a massive expense for the company just to send the same people on a weeklong vacation every year.. and it’s terrible for morale. Why are they not checking the reports for previous years to see who has already received this? At the very least they should have a five-year waiting period before they could be nominated again… but to send them just about every single year is very frustrating, incredibly unfair, and lazy on the part of senior leadership responsible for selecting the pinnacle winners.

—Ensure they are putting in 8 hour days, 40 hour work weeks
—Ensure they are doing more than just attending (unnecessary for them) all day back to back meetings and not any real work
—Ensure they are not favoring some of their employees while harming others. Giving growth projects to some while starving work for others that work for them (unfairly).
—Make sure they are not just protecting their own careers but not their staff
—Check and see if they were the cause of pushing out some excellent employees within the last couple of years that had excellent work ethic.
—Check to see if they stood up for employees being pushed out that asked (even begged) for their leader’s intercession and advocacy but those same leaders would not lift one finger or one word to help.
—If these Directors and Associate Directors are not properly doing their jobs , then cut them loose!

MB out as hse!

Why does leadership expect us to be in the office if there’s never enough seating?

Why do people reserve seats everyday and never show up?

Why are we even allowed to reserve seats in the first place for weeks out??

I heard through rumors one criteria to be laid off was if you was with company less than five years
Nester Castor: 10+ years

Eidos Montreal announced 124 employee layoffs. These cuts are due to changing project needs. Studio leader David Anfossi is also stepping down. He served the studio for 19 years. This marks the third wave of layoffs since March 2025.

https://kotaku.com/eidos-montreal-deus-ex-sequel-layoffs-2000683242

With so many useless leaders under Shannon who don’t contribute to opentext success . Why are the still here ?

Remember around 2020-21 When a certain VP got fired for letting her son resell Nike shoes in bulk that were purchased on her corporate credit card... I didn't realize she changed her name and is now the CEO of Footlocker. Talk about failing upwards

Anyone in Housecalls get the gaslighting email from leadership last week? Seems in many and I'm guessing most markets, APCs are complaining of the unrealistic expectations this year and how goals are more difficult to achieve. Basically told; we hear you, metric, metric, metrics, some untrue BS, you should be grateful for your job, complete your notes while you're in this disgusting run down homes, with potential insects or parasites, cigarette or weed smoke, for the benefit of company. If you can't see all of your overbooked day, call your lazy and never advocating manager to cancel a patient. Because, as a masters degree trained professional, youh can't make you're own decisions on how to manage your day!! Oh to surely add how important boundaries and mental health are to minimize burnout. 😡 all this with less pay than last year.

Who is the most prominent bullsh-tter in the history of Walmart at the level of Senior Vice President to date?

Nike should be out of DJIA and don't mix with prima donnas.

Get out DJIA and start from bottom with hungry attitudes without worrying about trying to meet financial expectations of DJIA members.

Being in DJIA is hindrance to NIKE. Seems like Nike management is worried about it instead of strategic execution.

Every inconsiderate or illogical move, including pushing people close to retirement over to Cognizant, or making seemingly d-mb decisions about who to cut - it's all intentional. It's all about savings without one iota of respect or gratitude toward us. If they can save a minor buck by sc--wing you over majorly, they'll do it.

I know there have been several posts so just adding confirmation based upon information provided by leadership that 3/31 is going to be a horrible day for Oracle. Executives on calls are very stressed and panicked as they assess impact across their organizations. Good luck everyone.

Paradigm was the best job I've ever had. In about a years time it was turned into the worst. It's depressing.

Paradigm didn't rely on layoffs for quick number pumping. Even during the great recession, Covid, after the incident, my understanding is we never did actual layoffs. Our old leaders would hustle, try to drum up work, dig into the war chest, to make sure we kept operating and innovating and that its people were taken care of.

But we were told, times are tough. Housing is down. We have to tighten our belts to make this work.

A few weeks ago another round, only three people, but all well respected leaders, unceremoniously gone on a Friday. Then, only a few weeks later we have an all company meeting where we meet like 10 new executives and hear about their favorite condiments. Not a good look.

Now we’re told 2% raises company wide.

Meanwhile, all the actual people doing the work are seeing a dozen newer executives running around, making confusing decisions, contradicting each other, stressing people out. They pitch projects but don’t tell anyone the goal. We don’t know who the persona is, how these projects are supposed to make money. I struggle to understand what benefit they actually add.

It just seems like a huge nepotism tree. G-yatri hires all of her old friends, get the band back together. They are all yes men/women. Just do the thing, don’t ask questions.

I’m not an accountant, but they have to cost more than all the people laid off this past year.

And that expense is on top of the probably expensive AI licenses we’re paying for. Tools, that as far as I can tell, aren’t helping us. Hushed conversations in the hallway or at happy hours about how much extra work all these new “tools” are causing. But everyone is too afraid to speak up because they don’t want to be in the crosshairs for the next round of layoffs, so the concerns only bubble up so much.

And then we have to see our company’s LinkedIn page being a shameless commercial for Blitzy. Did we get a deal on our license with them? Where is the 4X development that was bragged about? Their site looks like a marketing guys idea of what AI might be able to do, but I haven't heard any of the product folks saying, "wow, Blitzy really made things better."

Maybe it is. Maybe this is making us so much faster. But we have no idea because communication has been terrible since G-yatri took over.

We’re now extremely top heavy. I don’t know what value these new executives bring. It feels like they are slumming it with us, looking at s-xier tech startups, wishing they were there instead.

And when the market crashes, and it will soon, the do-ers are going to be the ones sacrificed on the altar of “Shareholder” value. Most these AI companies won't exist and the ones that remain are going to start charging the real prices for their licenses instead of the venture capital prices they currently are at.

I don’t know if BFS and Peter Jackson know the level of talent that they have/had at a discount because the Paradigm culture was worth getting paid a lot less for. Well the culture is dying. Everyone has updated their resumes. And if the job market were any better, there would be a mass exodus happening.

We all sit here, on the eve of the financial quarter end, anxiously staring at the all company meeting on our calendars for Thursday. Never knowing what reorg, layoffs, or new executives will be announced. These used to be fun meetings where people got together, saw each other in person scheduled happy hours for after work. Now, the meetings are met with a mixture of dread and disgust.

It’s the "who you know" club all over again. We’ve got directors jumping into "AI Lead" roles who clearly haven't read a technical paper in years. They’re still pushing 2023-era prompting guides like they’re some kind of holy grail, even though that’s basically Stone Age tech for modern models.

Just sat through a meeting where a lead told us to "stay away from the newest models because they’re still learning." Tell me you don't understand how LLM training or inference works without telling me. It’s embarrassing. We’re throwing insane amounts of money away because the people making the calls have zero technical literacy. If you know anything about how this tech actually functions, you’ll see why this is destined to fail.

Note: Ran this through a scrubber to strip out my specific lingo/quotes so I don't get doxxed. You should too.

If layoffs were executed according to the following playbook Nike would almost certainly be better off.

Let go of employees at the Director level or above who:

1. Started at Nike post 2010
2. Have only worked for Nike
3. Were ‘promoted in place’ to receive their current title

While I’m sure there are a few good leaders that meet the above criteria, as a general rule this cadre of leaders are near useless in our current predicament.

Much like every stock investor is a genius in a bull market, leading when things are going well is easy. These folks have no experience managing through adversity - and it shows.

Nor do they have career experience outside of Nike to draw upon for other ideas. This means they will stick with the status quo: things that worked in the past at Nike that are no longer working now.

Lastly, because they received their titles without undergoing a competitive interviewing process, the scenario surrounding their original promotion bears little resemblance to the environment that they were re-orged into. Despite this, they retain the inflated title.

There must be a few hundred candidates that meet the above criteria, maybe more?

Serious question: is this an actual leadership change… or just another episode of “nothing to see here, carry on”?

Because if you’ve been here longer than five minutes, you’ve seen this headline before. Big announcement. Big promises. Same results. Now we’re being told the MM exit is happening in July.
July??

So we’re just supposed to sit tight for a few more months and pretend everything is fine while the same dysfunction keeps running? That the damage they did to people didn’t happen? At this point, it’s not even skepticism, it’s pattern recognition.

Let’s recap what employees have actually experienced:
• Constant churn
• Strong people walking out the door
• “Transformation” that somehow makes things worse, not better
• Leadership narratives that don’t match reality on the ground

And now we’re supposed to believe this time it’s different?

I think the real internal reaction is:
“I’ll believe it when I see the calendar hit July… and even then, I’ll give it a week.”

Also—genuine question—how much did this last year of “strategy” actually cost the company in lost talent, momentum, and dollars?

Because that’s the part no one ever addresses. If this is real, great. Long overdue. But respectfully… employees aren’t celebrating yet.

We’ve learned, we have the scars, the damage has been done and we will pray for the future org they fake their way into.

if you look at tgs, all sr dirs and vps are stuck in late 90s or early 2000s. our chances of building a modern and prosperous it org are zero unless we have new folks in these positions. that will never happen, so rest assured, things will continue to go downhill as the rest of the world accelerates change. at some point someone will wake up but it'll be way too late

How many people want to wipe that smug look of DF’s face with these sh---y corporate risk emails we get on the regular. What an a$$hat this guy is