#worklifebalance

Many years ago when I heard some of my friends had landed jobs at Cisco I thought "wow Cisco is smart to hire them". I even considered buying the stock.

All of them got laid off.

So when Cisco bought the company I worked for I already knew what was coming. The day the deal was announced I should have updated my resume and left. But I stayed anyway. I lasted longer than I expected but those years were mostly wasted.

I watched good friends and talented people get cut. After about a year I made a decision. I was done working extra hours or giving my soul to the company. If someone asked where I worked I would say Cisco but I always added that it was not the company it used to be back in the 90s. These days I even wonder if it was ever really that great.

In the end I gave them way less than my best effort. Sometimes I felt guilty about it. Then I would see someone busting their a** working weekends and late nights only to get laid off anyway. That made the message pretty clear.

Now it is my turn to be let go and I am still not sure which path was better. Should you work hard on principle even when the system does not care? Or do you push back against a machine that punishes loyalty?

I used every bit of that unlimited PTO. I never worked extra hours. Part of me is glad I fought the system in my own small way.

The other part wonders if it would have been better to go down still believing in the mission like Old Major in Animal Farm.

I was trying really hard to get laid off as my EU severance was considerable. I managed finally to get my hard earned money. I do not know what to do with it, just sitting now in bank and ETF fonds. And I have new job with 50% more salary and 20 times more work. Instead of doing minimum/nothing and have 2 hours of meetings per week, one with indian team I lead and other with American manager (who was also laid off recently), now I have to do 40 hours/week and quite often I do few more hours in evenings and weekends. No time to practice guitar anymore, while I worked at dxc I spent my working hours playing... I wish I could again have such a nice work like I had in DXC. If they are hiring, please let me know..

You think you have it bad now?
Just wait until you are expected to be on call and available 24/7 under Musk.
Oh, yeah- he loves H1-bs, too.

Will appreciate serious advice on how I can land on the list of RIF candidates without pushing it so far that I get fired.

I’m in my late 20s so I assume I’m younger than a lot of you here and I’m also assuming a lot of y'all are probably my parents’ age or even older. Reading some of your hateful words on here Im honestly embarrassed for your kids. I can’t imagine if I saw or heard my mom or dad talk the way you do about human beings and all for what ? DEI? What’s the obsession like give it a rest. Why are you so threatened by who somebody beds down with? How does that affect you in any way? Worried they’ll take your job? Maybe stop being such dinosaurs. Stop coasting just because you think you’ve made it in life because you made it to a JG 3 or above. No wonder a lot of yall are being wiped out of your careers and companies don’t want to hire you and pay you for what you think you’re worth. So entitled. If you hate shells DEI policies so much then leave oh wait you can’t because you banked your whole career on ONE company. The new generations laugh at yall and trust me yes we are taking your jobs and yes we are also making more than you are. Nothing but disgusting sad old people you should be ashamed of yourselves. I’m disgusted to know I walk the halls with you. Grow some ba--s you want to act tough why post anonymously say it with your chest let us know your alias ID, post it on teams, LinkedIn etc or even better I’ll set up a gtky and we can have a f2f chat about how you really feel. We can even grab lunch and you can cry about how you’re all being wiped out by hispanics blacks Asians females g-ys and whoever else you wanna blame for your dead careers.

Figured I’d use AI to create this since AI is our future. Thanks copilot!

A chronological descent into corporate madness.

• 06:30 AM | The Commute of Champions
  Spend 55 minutes staring at brake lights because burning gas and inhaling highway fumes is the ultimate prelude to productivity.

• 07:25 AM | The Hunger Games: Parking Edition
  Waste 15 minutes circling the concrete labyrinth just to park half a mile away, then walk to the building like a corporate nomad.

• 07:40 AM | The Hoteling Ritual
  Spend 20 minutes hunting down an unassigned, sterile cubicle and plugging in cords like you're setting up a temporary command center in a disaster zone.

• 08:00 AM | The Mandatory Weekend Recap
  Endure 40 minutes of grueling small talk about Brenda's nephew's soccer tournament and Dave’s lawn aeration schedule. You cannot escape.

• 08:40 AM | The Stealth Hydration Mission
  Take 15 minutes to carefully plot a route to the restroom and coffee machine, attempting to dodge eye contact with anyone who might ask "how's it going?"

• 08:55 AM | Actual Work (The Rare In-Between)
  A shocking, uninterrupted 60-minute window where you actually perform the tasks you are paid to do. Cherish it.

• 09:55 AM | The Pre-Meeting Packing Migration
  Pack up your entire digital life 15 minutes early because God forbid you "squat" on a shared cube while you migrate to a different floor for a meeting.

• 10:10 AM | The Disappearing Desk Era
  Lose 90 minutes of your life to a 60-minute meeting because the first 15 were spent figuring out the conference room HDMI adapter and the last 15 were "organic banter."

• 11:40 AM | The Power Lunch Sprint
  Shove food down your throat in exactly 23 minutes so you aren't late for the next round of synergistic alignment.

• 12:03 PM | Sensory Decompression Walk
  Spend 15 minutes pacing the perimeter of the building just to regulate your nervous system after surviving the deafening roar of the company cafeteria.

• 12:18 PM | The Hallway Ambush
  Attempt to return to a desk but get cornered by a manager for 20 minutes of unsolicited "brainstorming."

• 12:38 PM | The Cult of Collaboration
  Sprint to the next room because arriving late to a 90-minute slide-deck reading is a sin against the company culture.

• 02:08 PM | The 443-Minute Meltdown
  Look at the clock. Exactly 443 minutes of your waking life have passed since you arrived at the office, mostly spent pretending to care about things that don't matter.

• 02:11 PM | The Personal Hogwash Trap
  Try to use the restroom again. Get trapped for 20 minutes hearing about someone's upcoming kitchen remodel.

• 02:31 PM | The Final Stand
  Sit down and frantically work for 51 minutes, typing at 120 words per minute with pure, adrenaline-fueled rage.

• 03:22 PM | The Great Escape
  Spend 15 minutes shutting down, packing your backpack, and walking toward freedom.

• 03:37 PM | The Doorstop Conversation
  Get stopped for 5 minutes right at the exit by someone who "just wanted to catch you real quick."

• 03:42 PM | The Commute Home (Part II)
  Spend 55 minutes crawling back home in gridlock, contemplating every life choice that led to this moment.

The Hard Truth Math
Total Time Invested: 10 Hours (600 Minutes)

Actual Time Spent Working: 111 Minutes
>
Total Time Wasted on "Culture": 8.1 Hours

If this day happened at home, we all would have finished actual work before lunch, attended the meetings while comfortably and wouldn't need a stiff drink just to survive the evening once you got home.

But hey, at least management got to see your face in a cubicle. Culture!

I worked for other large companies in the West and the Midwest prior to joining GN&T in the Northeast. My Western and Midwestern bosses were friendly and would greet me, ask me how things were going, make small talk etc…

My Verizon GN&T were the complete opposite. Hardly ever greeted me, didn’t make conversation about work or anything else. One ED wouldn’t even answer if you said good morning if you happened to be riding in the same elevator on the way to the office. This silent treatment makes for a pretty unpleasant working environment.

I’m curious what other people’s experiences are like. Is this a Northeast thing? A Verizon thing? Or what? I’m an introvert and I’m not seeking to start long conversations but greeting someone back is basic courtesy.

Management thinks they're being smart by continuing to replace older workers with younger, cheaper ones. But they're overlooking that young people have boundaries when it comes to work. They won't work nights and weekends or answer your emails 24/7. Productivity is going to take a hit, and I'm here for it.

Be truthful.

I know it's tempting to wait and see what happens, but finding work is way easier when you're not desperate. This place is going nowhere fast, so why stick around?

Sleeping well these days? Doubt it. Who could when you're always looking over your shoulder for the next layoff?

Thought I couldn't make it without my Humana salary for most of my two decades at the company. Finally mustered the courage to shed them and can't believe how happy and stress-free my life is now.

How much is enjoying life worth to you? Truly enjoying it, not just putting on a happy face while dread and uncertainty haunt your thoughts. Haven't seen anyone posting "Wish I'd stayed at Humana" here have you? That's because they're finally free and happy like me.

I’ve learned more about ExxonMobil’s policies and the unwritten, dirtier rules outside the office than inside it. I’m sharing what I’ve picked up so far. If this helps even one person who walks blind. Feel free to add to it and keep it a live threat:

1. Be friendly, but don’t trust anyone. EM is not the place to build deep friendships. Surface level professionalism is safer.
2. Keep your academic network alive. You never know when you might need an adjunct role, consulting, or a fallback path.
3. Don’t share your goals. People we-ponize information here. Your ambitions become someone else’s leverage.
4. Don’t share anything personal. Many people cannot tolerate seeing someone else happy or progressing. Protect your privacy.
5. If you’re underutilized, speak up formally. Do your best, document it, and clearly inform management you need a project. Silence gets interpreted as complacency.
6. If you’re paired with a senior person in your area of the same skill, set boundaries immediately. Define your tasks, your ownership, and how credit will be split. Otherwise, your work becomes “their contribution.”
7. In team meetings, don’t rush to speak first. Read the room, understand the tone, then contribute. But don’t stay silent. You don’t want to leave labeled as “the one who didn’t participate.”
8. Document every idea in writing. Don’t let anyone “zoom call” your idea away and then repackage it as theirs. Put things in email, timestamp them, and confirm ownership clearly.
9. Don’t over acknowledge or admire people. The moment you over praise someone, they start acting like you owe them something. You don’t. Keep compliments minimal and neutral.
10. Never let them think you’re desperate for the job — even if you are. Desperation is blood in the water. If they sense it, you become the easiest person to throw under the bus.

IMO. These days, the company pays no importance to retention. The majority of XOM employees in the US will likely have a maximum of 5 years at the company before they finally realize that they are better off somewhere else. 10 years maximum if they are a glutten for punishment and think they are going to make it to retirement eligibility. Considering RE being 55 with 15 years of experience. Who in HR has the statistics of the last 5 years of attrition with the why they were separated, for Campus hires and Experienced hires? What are the breakdowns of left on own will versus MLRP?
My prediction for the future employment longevity in the US for MPT for someone based upon when hired is the following:
Age of hire: 22 - 25, probability of lasting 30+ PA cycles 3-5%.
Age of hire: 25 - 30, probablity of lasting 25 - 30 PA cycles 5-7%.
Age of hire: 30 - 35, probability of lasting 20 - 25 PA cycles 2%
Age of hire: 35 - 40, probability of lasting 15 - 20 PA cycles 0.5%
Age of hire: 40+, probability of lasting 15+ PA cycles 0%

HR does not care about retention. People are a commodity to them and they have sources of cheap labor outside of the US that are going to run the company.

I wonder how many of us will institute personal boundaries when we go back 100% in September? I will not be working remotely at all - this means I won't be doing anything outside of 9 AM - 5 PM EST. If you can't be flexible with me, then I am not going to be flexible with you Fidelity. Why should I be getting up early to have a meeting with offshore, struggling to get my kids on the bus, and then have a long commute just to take calls with people on zoom?

What are some unhinged things you get away with when working remote? Something on the keypad to keep you active on teams? Never opening teams/ email all day? Taking a maternity leave every year?
For those who have quiet quitted drop your tips below

Anyone have experience negotiating your exit from a HQ role? Not getting laid off. Leaving on your own terms when you and your leader agree the work has changed enough to not fit. Open roles are scarce for my intended trajectory.

I joined USAA as an intern few months back, hoping to build my career here. After hearing too many good thinks on the web. Unfortunately, the experience was disappointing enough that I decided to leave for another bank last week.

The biggest issue was the constant organizational changes. Teams and priorities kept shifting, making it difficult to focus on meaningful work or feel any sense of stability. On top of that, budget constraints seemed to impact every decision, resulting in limited resources and frequent compromises.

The work culture was heavily driven by micromanagement. Every story and task required excessive oversight from the product manager, leaving very little room for engineers to make decisions or take ownership. Instead of being trusted to deliver, it often felt like every small detail had to be monitored and approved.

The return-to-office policy made things even worse. Employees were expected to be in the office four days a week regardless of personal circumstances. It didn't matter if you had been on an overnight production call and barely slept—you were still expected to show up in the office the next morning. There was little flexibility or consideration for employee well-being. The work life balance is zero here. Its strange that USAA is still claiming themselves as best companies to work for and misled the future employees

To sum it up, the environment felt rigid, exhausting, and not conducive to learning or growth, especially for someone early in their career. I eventually decided to move on and accepted an opportunity at another bank that offers a healthier work environment, better trust in employees, and a much more sustainable work-life balance. Felt like a titanic to me and only course of action was to jump off before it sinks.

I go on vacation tomorrow and my manager wanted to make sure I had my phone with me. "Why? More layoffs", I asked.

She confirmed yes. I told her if I'm hit, just call me in Japan and rip the band aid off.

Happy vacation to me!

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/economy/2026/07/09/why-americans-leave-workforce/90826379007/

All they need to do is come to this forum. Corporate America is abusing the workforce and then going overseas where abuse is more tolerated.

Things will not improve, they will not learn, there is no greener grass elsewhere.

The best you can do is learn to detach from all this - accept and embrace the sh-t show.

It’s been almost a month since we were required to return to the office in the name of "collaboration," and all I have seen is people including leaders finding different ways to minimize their time in the office.
Leaders have families to take care of too, so many leave after just a few hours because they need to pick up their kids from camp or school. It’s a reminder that everyone is balancing work with personal responsibilities.
Meanwhile, I haven’t seen any meaningful increase in collaboration. What I have seen is hours lost commuting, searching for parking, walking to and from the office, and dealing with all the extra logistics. It feels like a significant waste of time and energy that could have been spent doing actual work.

I have been in a legally protected status, but now theyre after my job. been in this place for 5 years and this is what they do. if you tote work life balance, where is the example. hikes are dismall, childcare is so darn expensive and if you make changes according to the employee handbook, they decide to drop you with a hot potato.. new parents be damned! product and innnovation group and digital assets is a horrible place. stay away. ive gotten a lawyer

Someone was saying they heard that the FL Regional center was going back to on-site 1 week a month, seems strange as most sites are going to full time on site. Probably just a wishful thinking rumor.

JVB demoted because she couldn’t meet target in MM sales. Now Shelly Goodman ‘retiring’ because she couldn’t unravel the destruction JVB left behind. For those of you outside of sales that complain about RTO, sales has the most valid reason to complain. Sales is forced to office 5x just like everyone else. Think of the time on the road we could be in front of customers. Instead, we have to come to office daily to meet an in office badge swipe quota while sales attainments circle the drain. We can go into the field to meet customers and try to sale fiber and mobility but the hours we lose daily by commuting instead of acquiring revenue is astounding. Yes, we are in the field but the hours commuting eats up some of that time and we see it in quarter after quarter revenue decline. When sales is set up to fail, we all will.

Curious what your locations are like around the use of flex office space. As we know these offices should be used for private conversations or meetings as needed and not to be used for a full day of work. Is your location like mine where anyone with an SVP officer title are all self absorbed and have turned these spaces into their own personal offices and not allowing fair access to them? Extreme ego maniacs, you’re not that important!

Fun fact before I forget visiting this site (got a better job elsewhere); my friend did high end catering in San Ramon area. He did a private house and told me “hey buddy, I think I did an event for your company”. Sure enough I opened website to show him leadership and he said it was them. They all have zombie personalities behind closed doors. That politician personality is not just for us, its who they are. Lol imagine that act non stop.

Everyone: one day they will kick you out, get advanced degrees licenses, do projects you want (in 6 months you will get a new supervisor and can lie about your responsibilities). There is a flaw in system, dont analyze it to death here: exploit it. Good luck.

Clocking off at 3pm Fridays is a good thing for employees. The email says flexible working which implies that we are expected to have worked 40hrs by 3pm, which is fine, but it is not clear, especially as hourly staff get a paid day off in lieu.
If we are allowed to clock off at 3pm regardless, that’s a mess, if someone starts work at 8am and a colleague starts at 10am do they both still finish at 3, can we change the day if workloads prevent an early Friday finish?

I don't hate my life anymore!

Stop putting AI meetings during lunch hour. We already know AI is coming for our jobs because you’re forcing it down our throats! Now you want to take my lunch too!!!!

When people say “be grateful the company is paying you”… please remember:

• you are trading skills and time for pay
• you don’t owe a billionaire a thing

Happy a happy week.

I've been here eighteen years and I'm watching everything I valued about this place disappear. The good people are leaving, projects are dying, and what's left truly isn't worth staying for.

I keep seeing people expect this to be over soon and that things will go back to normal. It's hard not to pity them. Normal is so far behind us it's barely a dot on the horizon anymore. There's no "over soon." This horror is the new normal.

I know that asking when the next round will happen is probably pointless because nobody really knows, nut I can never stop myself. It used to be that layoffs were rare events, but now they feel like a regular occurrence. That's not acceptable and I refuse to pretend it is.

Any inspiring stories here on how you made the move to the big city leaving comfort zone to save your own job? What sacrifices you had to make and how did you decide to be mentally tough for the family to do so?

I usually love this time of year, but I couldn't get into it this weekend. The constant stress of this job has just su-ked all the happiness out of me.

I know of no one that has ever been written up or chastised for not coming to the office though. If you are an individual contributor you did your job fine during COVID and there is virtually no reason for you to come into the office anymore. I mean the office is louder, more chaotic, food is as expensive as anywhere else. People are more likely to stand around and socialize than do actual work. The commute time of the individual gets baked into the work day more often than not because they only have so many hours before they need to take care of the household. It is abhorrently inefficient. To top it all off very few teams are fully located in one office. So you are effectively coming in to simply jump on conference calls with teams from all over the world literally. I can understand a once a week requirement just because we are social animals and there is genuine need for socialization with one another. Outside of once a week though it is strictly suboptimal working conditions. Also just imagine the savings if VZ truly sold off all its offices and cancelled all leases.

Perfectly stated, @jb+1kv47wr3d.

I've come to realize that no matter how hard you work or how much you care, you're just a number to the people running this place. It took me a while to accept that, but once I did, I stopped taking things so personally. It's actually liberating.

Can we at least agree on that?

I keep asking myself that same question over and over again. Why do we bother? People work so hard, they sacrifice so much, and what do they get in return? They get treated like they don't matter, walked all over, and eventually discarded. The people who actually care about this place, the ones who genuinely give a damn, they're all leaving. And who can blame them? There's no point anymore.