#attrition

Especially with gas prices climbing. And since raises don't keep up with actual inflation, the rumored 5-day RTO would fit perfectly with their plan to push out as many of us as they can.

Leadership is clearly on an attrition drive, and making people quit on their own has been a main goal of RTO from the very beginning.

Seriously? We keep losing people, the amount of work stays the same. Mgmt just keeps asking for more and I am at the point where giving up is the only option I have.

In the last few months, there's been a mass exodus in HI, and sales. Just in the last two weeks HI lost two tenured directors (leaving on their own). Either something is on the horizon I'm not privy to, or people are just tired of the layoffs, poor salary increases, decreased bonus plans, constant re-orgs and enough is enough. It seems there's plenty of other options out in the market right now for people in the same space.

For decades people and culture has been the strength of AT&T. I was 33
when I started at T 14 years ago. Probably the longest employment I have. The folks who were in their 40s and 50s when I started are now retiring. I lost many people already to age and RTO and supposed this trend continues. Barring some directors, my team largely is full of college kids and TDPs. At this point, I feel like I am that soon to be 50 year old in an environment which is more toxic than my predecessors started. The circle of life continues and I now contemplating to start fresh elsewhere.

I joined this company 20 years ago and it is no longer the company I joined.

When DWW says people are the most important asset, he is not lying but he is not painting the whole picture. He needs to add the qualifier that people are a necessary asset and thus that makes them important because the company can not run without them. However, that doesn't mean he cares about the people as individuals with emotions and actual lives outside of work. When DWW says people are the most important asset he says it in the same way Egyptian Pharoahs said it while constructing the pyramids or how cotton plantation owners said it about their slave populations. DWW says it the same way Scrooge McDuck says it about his money. People, like overall wealth is important to him, the individual pennies and dollars are not - those are interchangeable.

I highly recommend employees under 40 look for new opportunities now. I recommend employees 55+ retire now rather than be shown the door via PIP. I recommend new hires do not join this company unless you are willing to give up your soul.

The promise of a 30 year career at this company is no longer true. It has truly become a job. There is no sense of family, no sense of being a technology company, no sense of fulfillment beyond a paycheck.

Let’s face it - senior management have their own agenda, and what staff actually want or need rarely makes the cut, especially if it costs money. Clients don’t want to hear they’ve bought into something that isn’t working, and somewhere along the line, feedback just stops going up the chain. I think it's at my line manager, who's also given up.

Feels like most of us end up posting here just to check we’re not the only ones seeing it this way. The company is too big. It will continue to lumber on quietly shedding staff until there's nobody left. It could take a while!

It's actually mind boggling. Those who can find another job more easily always leave first. Most attrition drives end up disproportionately shedding talent and skill.

I once heard PP say in private that one of the the firm's biggest problem is over retention of underperforning associates. Did ER solve this? A lot of talent has walked out the door and im still surrounded by id--ts.

I've been here long enough to see this play out multiple times. A mediocre person gets promoted. I don't know if they interviewed well or they're friends with someone important. Then they get put in charge of a team of talented people and within six months, the best people on that team are gone. They quit, transfer, find something else. The mediocre manager is the one who stays as the work gets worse and the team gets weaker. And the company acts surprised. Promote the wrong people and you lose the right ones. It's not that complicated. It's just cause and effect. But they never seem to learn.

The good ones are either laid off or leaving. Not that I blame them, considering what Schwab turned into in recent years.

RTO was designed as an attrition playground from day one, that was always the point. It was obvious they'd keep tightening the sc--ws, and turn up the heat if not enough people quit on their own.

That's what this is all about. It's as simple as that. They want you to quit to keep the actual layoff numbers smaller on paper and significantly cheaper.

Tata Consultancy Services faces high senior-level attrition. Exits from top ranks surged to about 16%. This is significantly higher than its historical 4-5% rate. Around 12,000 employees were impacted by workforce reduction. Senior leaders also received low variable pay.

https://www.ndtvprofit.com/business/tata-consultancy-services-faces-high-senior-level-attrition-amid-restructuring-and-compensation-challenges-report-11317142/amp/1

Some roles seem to get harder by design until the person eventually gives up. I've been noticing this more and more, and recently on my own skin as well. Is this the new money-saving strategy?

And it's climbing rapidly. The number of goodbye emails I've received lately says more than any official update.

Lately I've seen more and more people getting put on PIP, most with zero prior performance issues.

They want 50k employees almost universally making less than 6 figures. That means everyone making more than that and over 40 years old need to be made as miserable as possible until they quit. Performance and knowledge DO NOT MATTER. Leadership believes all this work can be done for pennies by AI and offshore. There are plenty of H1Bs out there to replace you in their little slave commune in Frisco, TX, right next door to the new campus. The more of you that leave on your own, the less of you they have to fire. That is how they sleep at night - they think they are doing you a favor by letting you leave on your own terms instead of just firing you outright.

Exactly what @aj+1kn7ewyd6 said.

It seems BNY is preparing for its next round of layoffs by trying to make people leave voluntarily (shock horror). I’ve been a people manager here for several years now and was told last week I will no longer be a people manager because I’m not senior enough (need to be Sr Dr or above), my staff are in a different location and there aren’t enough people in the team. Every time I hired I wasn’t able to hire in my location because it was ‘too expensive’, whilst at the same time new MDs and Sr Dr’s were being hired at ease. The team I’m in has reduced from 32 to 18 FTE over the last 18 months and we’ve not been allowed to replace anyone. This is a clear tactic by the company to get people at my level to leave by making us all utterly miserable, and if that fails they’ll just use it as an excuse to give a lower performance rating. They do something like this every time a layoff round is coming to get people to leave voluntarily and save them paying out. Got to hand it to them though, they really have created the most toxic and intolerable workplace that ever existed, so they are meeting their metrics in that regard and we all know how important metrics are at BNY.

I’ve never seen this many people leaving at once. This isn’t normal turnover. This is a mass exodus, and everyone knows exactly why.

You forced a five-day RTO that nobody wanted, layered on tracking that feels like a maximum-security system, and created an environment built on fear instead of trust. People held out hope it would get rolled back to something reasonable. The notorious 8/1 email ki-led that overnight.

Since then, it’s been a steady stream of exits with a significant ramp in 2026. And it’s not random. The people leaving are the ones with options. The ones who actually drove results. The ones you can’t replace.

Who replaces them? Not “top talent.” It’s the bottom quartile of talent, whoever is willing to accept a five-day, heavily monitored, in-office model in 2026. That’s a much smaller and much weaker pool. That’s just reality. It’s the most desperate undesirable people with no other options. Nobody is choosing this model if they have a better option.

So what you’re left with is predictable. High performers check out or leave. Everyone else learns the game. Swipe in, sit down, do the minimum, go home. Because that’s what you’re measuring now. Presence, not performance.

This is a direct result of the decisions being made in the c suite. And it’s hollowing the place out in real time. Congratulations stink, you’re going to be the chairman of nothing. Your legacy is tarnished and getting worse by the day. Tick tock, time is running out.

Sabrina’s out. Jordan gets promoted, takes a vacation, and then just… doesn’t come back. No explanation, nothing. And we’re just supposed to keep rowing like nothing happened.

Here’s what nobody’s saying out loud: there’s no consistent VP. No one at the helm long enough to learn the people, the work, or the direction. Just a revolving door of “we’ll figure it out” while the team down here actually figures it out.

And the AVPs we do have? Uneven is generous. One of them runs the floor like a queen holding court — he decides who’s in favor and who’s invisible. Favorites get favorites treatment. Everyone else gets managed by his mood. And his mood? It’s a full weather system. Sunny for the chosen ones. Everyone else checks the radar before they speak up.
This isn’t a talent pipeline problem. This isn’t a process problem. This is a “who is actually leading this organization and do they even want to” problem.

Good people are leaving. The ones still here are doing the math.

Fix the roof or stop being surprised when it leaks.

Tracking participants count #general Slack channel in Oracle One workspace, as the fastest available proxy indication of ongoing layoffs.

• mar01-mar31: 12446 layoffs, and 844 additions (based on Slack regular tracking)
• feb01-feb28: 943 layoffs, and 1143 additions (based on Slack regular tracking)
• jan01-jan31: 1604 layoffs, and 1834 additions (based on Slack regular tracking)
• dec01-dec31: 1031 layoffs, and 844 additions (based on Slack regular tracking)
• nov01-nov30: 1614 layoffs, and 1327 additions (based on Slack regular tracking)
• oct01-oct31: 2504 layoffs, 1762 additions (based on Slack regular tracking)
• sep02-sep30: 6275 layoffs, 861 additions (based on Slack regular tracking)
• aug14-sep01: 733 layoffs (based on Slack very few data points)
• aug01-aug14: ?2900 layoffs in IDC (based on media reports)

Regions outside IDC and NA usually have a significant delay when laid off people are disconnected from Slack (e.g. 1 month in Pacific regions, perhaps longer in some EU countries), so this is a floor estimate with additions reflected immediately, but reductions lagging behind on average.

What is called "layoff estimates" are partially part of normal attrition, limitations are covered in details in comments.

I will post daily in comments on the count change and running current month total while this post is still on the first page.

They just keep coming up with new ways and intensifying the efforts.

How many of you all are having associates go to lunch and not come back? It’s been a tremendous problem this year

Tracking participants count #general Slack channel in Oracle One workspace, as the fastest available proxy indication of ongoing layoffs.

This round of mass layoff started on Mar24-25 according to Slack totals and it's sustained. I have to start a new thread, because our resident troll started counterfeiting Slack totals and trends again on the first page.

• mar01-mar28: 1618 layoffs, and 746 additions (based on Slack regular tracking)
• feb01-feb28: 943 layoffs, and 1143 additions (based on Slack regular tracking)
• jan01-jan31: 1604 layoffs, and 1834 additions (based on Slack regular tracking)
• dec01-dec31: 1031 layoffs, and 844 additions (based on Slack regular tracking)
• nov01-nov30: 1614 layoffs, and 1327 additions (based on Slack regular tracking)
• oct01-oct31: 2504 layoffs, 1762 additions (based on Slack regular tracking)
• sep02-sep30: 6275 layoffs, 861 additions (based on Slack regular tracking)
• aug14-sep01: 733 layoffs (based on Slack very few data points)
• aug01-aug14: ?2900 layoffs in IDC (based on media reports)

Regions outside IDC and NA usually have a significant delay when laid off people are disconnected from Slack (e.g. 1 month in Pacific regions, perhaps longer in some EU countries), so this is a floor estimate with additions reflected immediately, but reductions lagging behind on average.

Layoff estimates are partially part of normal attrition, but the other part of normal attrition is already hidden due to additions and removals compensate each other when they happen at the same period of time. Strictly speaking what is called "layoffs" here are just "reductions" in totals.

I will post daily in comments on the count change and running current month total while this post is still on the first page.

Because I sure as he-l won't.

We've been losing experienced, well paid employees for years voluntarily. That's the exact demographic the company would want to reduce. So why do we need to do formal layoffs when so many people are leaving on their own? Are they not leaving fast enough?

Conestoga College recently laid off nearly 400 employees. This included 181 faculty members and 197 support staff. Some staff were also forced into part-time roles. Declining international student enrollment is a primary cause. The college is also undergoing a leadership transition.

Kitchener, Ontario

https://www.seekyoursounds.com/news/kitchener/another-round-of-layoffs-conestoga-college-400-full-time-staff-cut

This isn't ending anytime soon. They've been cutting consistently through the last several years and that seems to have turned into a business strategy. They're not even trying to hide it anymore. If numbers need to look better, why bother with trying to come up with something long-term and business related when you can simply cut people and have it all align nicely on that spreadsheet?

DXC promotes a poor performance culture.
If you do a great job there is no benefit to you. That then encourages the person to either leave or wind down their performance.
The poor performer only has to avoid a poor 3 rating. Just do enough... They will never leave.
You are left with a pool of poor performers..

The North Thurston Public Schools board approved a resolution for a potential reduction in force. This action follows a projected dip in student enrollment for the next school year. Superintendent Troy Oliver cited lower kindergarten counts and rising operational costs. The district also anticipates difficult state K-12 funding decisions. Cuts will initially target attrition, with staff notifications by May 15 if needed.

Olympia, Washington

https://www.theolympian.com/news/local/article315175127.html

After our team was hit in January, everything landed on the rest of us. Same deadlines, same expectations, but with half the people. I'm exhausted and every week it gets harder to keep up. When I say something to my manager, I get told to prioritize. Prioritize what? Everything is urgent.

I went to see how much the workforce has shrunk over the years due to layoffs and I found this:

2025 162,000
2024 159,000
2023 164,000
2022 143,000
2021 132,000
2020 135,000
2019 136,000
2018 137,000
2017 138,000
2016 136,000
2015 132,000
2014 122,000
2013 120,000
2012 115,000
2011 108,000

With the constant cuts, how the he-l do we have more employees than almost ever before?

In the last five years, we went from nearly 120k employees to just under 90k. When is it going to stop? Is there a goal to reach or do they just plan to keep cutting indefinitely?

The main relocation dates align nicely with the PDC timeline for 2H. As those slated for relocation decide if they are relocating or not, they will be replaced in the PDC? What is the enterprise expecting in attrition?

Another reason to add for employees to quit, on top of several toxic reasons that AT&T created for the employees is the increase in gas prices. This is a goldmine for AT&T execs who want employees out. You'd think they'd come to their senses, noooo, they are very happy that the increase happens, because it will expedite the quitting. AT&T is not interested in retaining employees and customers. They recently announced to increase the plan of those grandfathered accounts. They do not care. They are hoping that you are TOO LAZY to move out of AT&T plan, and even if 20% do leave AT&T, they still get money from those 80% that are paying more.

So expect more RTO enforcement, even if gas prices reach $12 in CA or $8 in the SE.

I'm watching team after team get carved up and wondering when this becomes unsustainable. They keep cutting deeper, and everyone left is just expected to absorb the rest. No one's asking if the work still gets done, or who's going to be around to do it. I keep waiting for the breaking point, but maybe we're already there and nobody's willing to say it.

So how do they decide who is laid off vs who stays? I was laid off a couple of years ago (and then came back to a different role, lower pay grade) and there were 2 of us laid off from our team of 5 - I was 48, she was in her 50's; I'd been with the company 17 years, she'd been there 9 years (1 team member that stayed was older than her, the other 2 were in their 40's but younger than me but all had been there at least 7, with 2 of them 20).

With yesterday's layoffs, there were 25 HDP pharmacists let go. I've only gotten 5 names, but of those 5 all of them are in their 50's and closer to retirement than not. 1 of them has been with the company 10 years, the others all at over 18 years.

So are they trying to get rid of older people and/or those with tenure?? And if so, isn't that ageism?

The layoffs are CONSTANT. They keep them small so they don’t have to be reported. But they are happening ALL THE TIME.

This is something people need to realize and accept. There's no point in asking when we'll be having more layoffs when layoffs never really stop.

I hope I just get laid off in these next rounds. A layoff is a band-aid ripped off with severance. PIP is torture. You still try, because some stupid part of your brain thinks you can beat it. So you exhaust yourself 'improving,' only to get fired anyway, just without the severance. What other tricks do they have planned?