#management

I can't help but wonder what most of the people in management positions actually do. They check in, they attend meetings, they send emails... What else? What do they actually produce? What value do they add? We have so many unnecessary layers that just slow things down and create more work for everyone else. It seems like we'd be so much more efficient with fewer managers.

There are discussions about possible management-related layoffs next month. Has the company provided any official update on whether this is accurate, and if so, which organizations or leadership teams would be impacted? Transparent communication through official channels would help reduce uncertaint

I’m reading managers and directors. Is there any more info on which managers and which directors? What channel

What’s the name of the latest layoff initiative?
How healthy for mental health is it to run an initiative to crop 12 staff every 4 years?

Yet the management is barely affected or penalized! The only balanced thing is that their children will face a darker and harder future…

Others seeing this already... Managers running scared schmuck. There time has finally come to learn technology or retire.

Drain the swamp and focus on revenue. Hans had no plan!

As a 40 year Vz employee who was fortunate to enjoy a friendship making career at Verizon I can't help but think HBS is writing a business case for MBA students to examine.

I believe the foundational thesis will be "When meitocracy and execution failure"

To think Ivan achieved CEO status as a formet IBEW Tech and grew up in the most competitive New York Telcom Market in the World, the standard was set.. results are rewarded and winners get rewarded based on results.

Then we transition to a different CEO.. Lowell.. Ivy education, obviously bright in academics but history shows could never build a cohesive strategy and Executive Team and badly mismanaged aquistions, integration (gotta have AOL, Gotta have VODAPhone 40% at extraordinary price), stop funding fiber expansion at significantly lower CapEx that now Vz is playing catch up. You get the point.

Tben tbe huge miss... recommends Hans to become CEO... this is 49% on Lowell and 51% on Board. To hire a Foreign CEO who was removed at Erickson as a failed CFO with zero experience on execution and zero USA market experience is a signicant reason for Vz free fail in stock and market performance. As a resukt Hans biught in an all European C level team to create Marketing programs, Finance, Operational metrics and a huge fail.

Verizon then transitions to a new CEO Dan who is on a running clock with sole focus to eliminate costs vs Customer value in marketplace. Employees are eliminated without regards to performance and skills. Rather on Salary in 90 day increments. Culture is crushed.

What remains is tbe keast experiences C Suite Team in the history of Ma Bell.

Finally, while quarterly results can fluctuate, the one tbing that Verizon has lost and accerated under Hans and Dan is the strategic advantage Verizon had over 100 years... Customer And Employee Integrated culture.

This entire Summary will be the HBS business case for future generations to learn from.

The most amusing part of the article is the premise itself that IBM can re-achieve any sort of relevance after this decimation.

https://www.barrons.com/articles/ibm-stock-price-fall-sell-87657335

The blue chip’s biggest wipeout on record will force the company to reinvent itself—again.

By Mackenzie Tatananni |
Updated July 17, 2026, 4:27 pm EDT / Original July 17, 2026, 1:00 am EDT

IBM has been forced to reinvent itself many times in the past. After its biggest wipeout on record this past week, it will have to do so again.

Big Blue had been riding high. Yes, there were problems in consulting, as signaled by Accenture’s woes, and in software, tipped off by weakness in ServiceNow and its sector peers. But the stock was trading at an all-time high as recently as June 2 as investors looked at the company’s near-monopoly in mainframe computing, its quantum computing effort, and its prospects as an artificial-intelligence winner.

They were wrong. IBM stock tumbled 25% this past Tuesday, its worst single-day drop on record, following a rare pre-announcement of its quarterly results. Such a move is highly unusual for the company, which is traditionally disciplined when it comes to financial reporting. The last time IBM pre-announced earnings was in October 2008, in an effort to reassure investors it was on track to meet targets during the global financial crisis.

Investors faced a different reality this time around, as IBM posted second-quarter earnings and revenue that missed Wall Street forecasts. While there were plenty of problems—slowing software and consulting sales, a massive reallocation of technology spending by its customers to chips, servers, and other AI needs—the biggest drag on the company’s performance was its infrastructure business. That includes its legacy mainframes—the massive computers enterprises like banks and credit-card networks rely on to process billions of calculations and transactions in real time.

Big Blue is undoubtedly the dominant force in this space. A 2022 study by Celent, commissioned by IBM, found its Z Mainframe Servers line processed more than half of the world’s transactions by value. But that didn’t help the division’s performance during the second quarter. Infrastructure revenue fell, as expected, but the 7% decline was significantly faster and harder than IBM had anticipated. Not only did fewer companies buy the actual mainframe hardware, they also bought less of the high-margin software required for tasks like banking and credit-card payments.

CEO Arvind Krishna attributed the results to poor execution. “We did not adapt and move quickly enough, and numerous large deals failed to close on the timelines we expected, driving the majority of our shortfall,” he wrote in a letter to shareholders.

The 25% drop was massive—and partly justified, even as it erased nearly $70 billion in market capitalization. “The stock had become a crowded AI infrastructure winner and was trading near all-time highs, so any sign of execution issues was going to get punished,” says Dan O’Regan, managing director of equity trading at Mizuho Securities. “That said, a move of this magnitude suggests the market is now pricing in a much more prolonged slowdown than what management has implied.”

It didn’t help that analysts had set high expectations heading into the print. Morgan Stanley, for one, had predicted upside in infrastructure and software that was already priced into the stock. Oppenheimer, which downgraded the stock on Wednesday, had anticipated “no surprises in business trajectory,” making the sudden pre-announcement a true blindside.

Analysts were quick to move to the sidelines following IBM’s earnings miss, asserting that Big Blue would have to lean on major acquisitions or close deals that slipped past the quarter’s deadline to recover lost ground. Now Oppenheimer is questioning the company’s ability to achieve double-digit software revenue growth through 2027. The 5% growth in the latest quarter was sharply below the firm’s 12% estimate.

The bigger issue might be whether IBM’s infrastructure business itself is being disrupted. Even before Tuesday’s plunge, IBM stock had been lagging behind the broader market after stumbling earlier in the year as fears of AI disruption began to take hold. One of the most significant drops occurred in February, when AI start-up Anthropic unveiled a COBOL modernization playbook for its Claude Code tool, claiming it could dramatically streamline updates to the outdated programming language that runs on IBM mainframes. Historically, the immense complexity and cost of migrating off these systems protected IBM’s highly profitable mainframe business—a protective moat AI now threatens to dissolve.

IBM stock closed on Wednesday at 16.54 times 12-month forward earnings, its lowest price/earnings ratio since June 2024. But that says less about where IBM is now than where it was before. As recently as June 2, the stock was trading for more than 25 times, above the S&P 500’s 21.52—a premium valuation that might not have been deserved.

“Lower prices make an asset more attractive,” BNP Paribas analyst Stefan Slowinski says. “I just caution investors that, out of all the companies I cover, IBM probably has the lowest organic growth currently and the lowest organic growth outlook. That needs to be reflected in the valuation.”

Shares plunged 26% by Friday’s close, capping off their worst week in history. As tempting as it may be to scoop them up after such a tumble, IBM still has a lot of work to do.

In the worst-case scenario, investors fear that IBM’s enterprise clients—massive businesses with sprawling IT setups—are redirecting their budgets toward AI instead of Big Blue’s traditional offerings. At best, the company was simply caught off guard by a sudden capital expenditure shift, as Krishna asserted, and can reclaim that lost ground in coming quarters.

Slowinski is one of the most bearish voices on the Street, rating the stock at Underperform. “IBM’s strategy is to use its cash flow to acquire higher-growth software assets in order to improve its growth profile,” he says. “But it has a business in consulting, in software, in mainframe, where all of them are low-single-digit organic growers. And the prospects of that improving organically is very slim.”

As Mizuho’s O’Regan sees it, the setup from here depends less on the AI narrative and more on management proving it can consistently execute.

“The market wants proof that this is an execution stumble, not the beginning of a structural slowdown in demand,” O’Regan explains. “As a stock, the days of getting the benefit of the doubt are probably over for now.”

At least until the next metamorphosis begins to take shape.

If you work for belk don’t drink the kool-aid served by upper management and executive leadership, people of a certain age will understand this reference.

Pat Gelsinger says the chipmaker went off the rails ‘when it started to be run by business people’. (See: https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/articles/former-intel-ceo-says-chipmaker-185823655.html)

Same rule applies to EDA? A software maker derails the moment it is led by a CAE.

Q. Why did the Japanese car companies beat the American car companies ?

The answer may surprise you but this is why T is dying as a whole due to layoffs.

The Japanese car companies had eight people rowing the boat and one person steering .
The American car companies had eight people steering, and one person rowing.

When the American car company lost the race, they fire the person rowing the boat.

That is the thinking behind how management and HR and how people are picked .

So I completely understand the need to serve members, the huge queues, the need to work work work. But we are losing the human touch that case management is supposed to represent. Based on the current direction it is - treat them like cattle - find small things and peace out at 90 days. Something comes up, member has real needs welp too bad we don’t care cause other people waiting too. A case needs to stay open longer - bring it to rounds so they can tell you to keep up the good work. Plus we will ask for you input about what is working, what is not but no one cares at all in reality. Just sit there, shut up and get it done…. How we don’t care…. Mental health yeah we don’t care….
As someone who loved this job and this workplace when she started, the cracks in the wall are showing and frankly there isn’t enough stucco in the world. The rot in this place start with mismanagement and lack of direction at the top and goes down to mid and lower tier management for the most part. There are exceptions and I am grateful for having experienced the other side. Honestly if you think you can hold this place together with duct tape, baling wire and AI go for it. Just approve the VSP and let us go now. So we have the same luxury to leave you with sorry bout your luck get it done.
All I know is between anxiety and extra meeting’s to micromanage further servicing the members I am here for gets harder by the day. I can only assume this tactic is to attempt to not pay severance because it’s definitely not helping morale!
Oh but Thank freaking goodness it’s Friday!

What exactly do supervisors and managers and above do everyday? My supervisor is either in a meeting or on a call almost everyday, and seems like every 3-4 hours they have to go to a meeting or hop on a call. So my question is, for sups or whoever is familiar, what the heck exactly do these sups do everyday? No way you will have so much to say if you go on a meeting almost everyday for 4-5 hours a day?

I find it highly oxymoronic (with the emphasis on mo--nic) that we have these departments that take their work so seriously, use unbelievable amounts of academic rigor to try and solve problems and come from the highest caliber business schools and academic institutions while we see stock prices in free fall and continuous service area exits and RIFs. Maybe things need to be simplified, not iterated with more rigor and wonderfully polished vocabulary in presentations. This place is full of contradictions.

So assuming the Union Eisp will be announced soon .The summer manager riff Is over .So hopefully it’s an enhanced buyout to everyone who wants out .This is possible it could be after September riff scheduled.I just don’t understand how the management continues to operate as if the whole company is not just smoke & mirrors !!!As if the CEO actually cares about the direct reports doing the dirty work like a band of executioners!!Pretty sure the associates that are mostly union have been taking more abuse from the same managers who fear for their Jobs for years .Lets face it from gps tracking to time questioning .When most associates actually have done nothing wrong along with have given no abuse to the management.Pretty sure if I was management I would just track on thru my day as if I saw nothing .Crazy how some managers still go after associates inside and outside for no reason as if the corporation cares about them till the next riff.

An earlier thread had a long discussion about “CXO bloodbath”. Said almost all the SDs got laid off and only a few remaining. I still have a lot of friends in CXO, although a ton of them already left in previous rounds. I could reach out directly, but I honestly don’t feel it’s respectful to pry when many of them might have been laid off today. Anyone in the know willing to share details?

The more I interact with top management the less impressed I am. Conflicting guidance constantly is given. They even conflict their own stated written strategies and policies. They want everything and refuse to make decisions on trade offs instead just yelling about how they want to be top quintile in every metric even ones that are obviously in direct conflict with each other. How is it leadership to make no decisions in tradeoffs and constantly just yell about wanting it all?

All this talk about improving culture and recognition and then after three years in a group when I transfer out my supervisor can’t even be bothered to circulate a thank you card. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out is our culture. Oh but you know the chosen ones had nice good mate lunches with management thanking them and gushing over them with a nice going away present.

I heard that this time around the direct managers had an input on who leaves and who stays. Does anyone know if this is true? My understanding was that the execs are the ones who make those decisions. Does anyone know the criteria?

Leahy couldn't be more full of s!*t it she was drowning in a sewage plant

For nothing management gets the axe again. Brownosing for nothing lol bet your wishing you joined a union NOW!!!! Lol and tell me can you hear me NOW keep your service with us too DS needs a new Ferrrari vroooooooooooom.

Any idea when we are going to get these back from management? I was told yesterday quite some time ago, but that day came and went...

What about Fios managers? Are they safe and is Autullii safe?

Interested in hearing if your performance eval rating/manager comments were as expected or a surprise?
For the first time in over 18 years, I received a “less than expected” rating even though I achieved my stated goals, met deadlines.

Anyone in CM ever been put on coaching for "failing" a SOFT audit? I truly think mgmt is trying to get us to quit or fire us for "not meeting expectations" before VSP takes effect. Centene has truly turned out to be a grimy place. I will spend the rest of my days encouraging people to avoid working here & avoid signing up for their plans.

Seen this a hundred times. Massive layoffs, but useless mid manager and c-suites are mostly retained. No real stock value injection attempted.

It is a tired strategy, one used on so many brands in the past. The goal is not to bring the company back to its former glory. The goal eventually is to shop to other rising companies.

Verizon lost. T-Mobile handed us our hats.

Please tell me I'm not the only one who finds this phrasing offensive? They're plastering this phrase on every corporate email like a proud child showing off their finger painting. I think it smacks of condescension from the higher ups. Like we're not taking our jobs seriously enough or working hard enough. Also, we don't "own" anything here as evidenced by the fact that they're cutting us loose at every available opportunity. You want buy-in from the employees? Give us job security and fair compensation and benefits, not patronizing emails.

Supervisor said he has meeting 11-1230pm. We are in wireline… Cssc rep union . We are doomed

product team marketing team and multiple managers non need major impact nothing else.

What exactly does this role entail, and what product are we working with? It looks like a glorified Scrum Master position, and most of the people in it are G8s. I'm not sure how sustainable this setup is long-term. What began as a pragmatic shift to stop engineering teams from building things nobody wanted has devolved into a massive, heavily certificated industry of performative bureaucracy.
More than 95% of product managers are not required .We have projects ,We dont have products .In tech there are no products.There are product managers even in data teams .Thats level of insanity this so called "product mindset" BS has reached

Rumor of the next round aiming people leaders Sr Mgr, AD, SD, AVP, with less than 10 direct reports in September

Meeting were held with the general manager, members and union to discuss the closing of call centers in Tustin CA and Cerritos CA. Management said they will consolidate both offices into a new office space. They are pushing propellor out of the business. The union hasn’t sent out a single message to its dues payers. We really don’t know what the union does here except sit in meetings and say nothing.

Does management genuinely believe the recent PADP/MLPR changes are the best way for EM to meet its goals? If the real aim is headcount reduction, there are far less damaging approaches that don’t undermine morale. Does EM HR, the MC or board truly see these changes as strengthening the company, given the risks they introduce?

Don't spend money on paying Indian contractors to astroturf here. Use that money instead to give American workers a raise. I am not kidding when I say every post that is clearly from management or a foreign worker is a clear sign to the American workers that you are scared, and I'm using it accordingly. Give us salespeople higher base pay and activity here will begin to calm down AND productivity will increase!

I heard a rumor in November that management had no decision in the personnel that were fired and that it was all determined by AI. Can anyone with HR intel verify if that is true and how are layoffs being determined for the next round?

During my time at FIS, I observed instances where individuals with limited technical knowledge were placed in leadership positions over highly skilled resources. It highlighted the importance of having the right expertise and leadership approach in place.

Heard major surplus's in craft elimination of job titles, consolidation of job titles, 2nd & 3rd level managers cut out

Something is coming. Right before each transition or layoffs pass downs become a nightmare! Literally, they came in one day said don’t do x,y,z moves . After we did it the night before . So, next day we don’t and follow directions they come in and get upset we don’t do it after they asked us not to.
When this kind of bull starts happening and first shift and upper management starts losing their temper and minds something big is always on the way!

This is becoming quickly one of the worse places to work!

Morale is so bad
Coming in and making fuss after fuss over sometimes the directions they gave to do . Why would anyone want to do this to themselves?

This company especially this particular fab in Richardson is going to run everyone off!!!!!!

Ask questions before you start flying off the handle !

Especially if you are at the top be sure you’re setting the example!

McKinsey have been poking around on cost for years why has the T5 layer of managers not been removed. In my experience they largely work from home, demand lots of travel and are blockers to true change viewi g everything through their personal lens.

At many large enterprises like SAP, having a highly concentrated, top-heavy layer of senior executives (like the T5 band) can become a major drag on agility. While senior leadership is necessary for governance, an over-reliance on a massive executive tier often does more harm than good.
Here are some other reasons why a heavy executive management layer can be a bad idea, a waste of resources, and a massive blocker to organizational change:

1. The "Telephone Game" of Communication
   When strategic goals have to travel down from the board through T5 executives, T4 directors, and T3 managers before reaching the people doing the actual work, the original message gets distorted. Key details are lost in translation, and the boots on the ground often end up executing something entirely different from what was intended.
2. Decision Paralysis and Over-Analysis
   With too many high-level leaders wanting to leave their mark, decisions require endless rounds of reviews, steering committees, and alignments. Simple choices that should take days get dragged out for months because too many executives need to "sign off" or feel included.
3. High Compensation, Low Direct Output
   Executive-level talent commands premium salaries, stock options, and bonuses. When a company carries a bloated executive tier, a massive portion of the budget is spent on individuals who manage and coordinate, rather than those who build, sell, or support the actual product. This is a highly inefficient allocation of capital.
4. Preservation of the Status Quo
   Executives at this level have often spent decades navigating the corporate political landscape to achieve their status. Because their success is tied to the existing system, they are naturally incentivized to protect it. Truly disruptive change threatens their established domains, making them quiet saboteurs of radical innovation.
5. Silo Creation and Empire Building
   To justify their premium titles and budgets, senior managers often focus on expanding their "empires"—hiring more people under them and fiercely guarding their departmental boundaries. This breeds internal competition and political infighting rather than cross-functional collaboration.
6. Detachment from the Customer and Technology
   The higher up a leader goes, the further they get from the actual product and the day-to-day frustrations of the customer. Decisions are often made based on polished PowerPoint decks and sanitized reports rather than the raw, messy reality of the market.
7. Death by PowerPoint (The "Tax" on Middle Management)
   To keep senior executives informed, middle managers and individual contributors must spend countless hours preparing status updates, dashboards, and presentations. This "reporting tax" drains valuable time and energy that should be spent on actual execution.
8. Dilution of Accountability
   When a project involves multiple senior stakeholders, responsibility becomes diffused. If a major initiative fails, the layered structure makes it incredibly easy to point fingers, meaning no single executive is held accountable, and the organization fails to learn from its mistakes.
9. Suffocation of Grassroots Innovation
   Great ideas in tech usually bubble up from the engineers, designers, and customer-facing staff. When there is a thick layer of top-down management, these ideas struggle to get noticed. If an idea doesn't align with an executive's personal roadmap, it is often ki-led before it can even be trialed.
10. Heavy Friction for Agile Pivots
    In a fast-moving market, companies need to pivot quickly. A massive executive layer acts like a heavy anchor. Reorganizing, shifting budgets, or changing product direction requires untangling a complex web of executive egos, personal OKRs, and political alliances, making rapid adaptation nearly impossible.

MST home dispatch tech use and abuse company assets. They drive 100K-200K bucket trucks to their home and back to their home garage everyday. Big V8 6.3 L engines use a lot of gas and insurance on top. Also, with MST high pay and only have .5 job per tech a day per tech how is that saving company money and liability.
There are rules to follow when joining home dispatch program. Following the rules helps save gas and time and wear and tear on a vehicle used to drive to work and to home. But MSTs abuse this program from driving to the garage every day and dispatching at the garage. Making a stop at the grocery store to grocery shop in the company vehicle before driving home. Not closing your last job at the job site and instead, drive home and being still dispatched on your work ticket and then closing the job when you arrive home. I follow the rules, and I do not want the home dispatch program to go away because of MSTs taking advantage of the abuse. Also, MST managers are favoring many MSTs and letting the home dispatch MSTs do what ever they want. STOP ABUSING THE HOME DISPATCH PROGRAM YOU MSTs. You know who you are...

I know who I am, don’t know who you are?