#culture

Has anyone else noticed or heard about ongoing ethics and leadership culture issues in Nike’s Sports Marketing group?
There’s been significant turnover at the senior levels over the past couple of years. Some current and former employees are saying the ethical standards and decision-making in the group still need real improvement, even with new leadership in place.
Wondering if others have seen similar issues or if things are actually getting better.
Appreciate any honest takes.

Hello, how is the culture at these locations? How does pay compare for the local cost of living? Any of these sites union? Have seen fairly frequent job postings both internal and external the last few years with positions I could qualify for. Would like some insight to these locations if possible, thank you

With all the gloom, I'm wondering if there's anyone who actually still enjoys working at this place. Not just tolerates it, but actually likes it.

If you had to describe Citi in just a couple of words, what would they be? I've got a feeling I know what the majority will be.

It's awful seeing coworkers lose their jobs, and I wouldn't wish that on anyone. At the same time, this place has had serious issues for years that leadership never bothered to fix. Looking back, almost everyone who's left has ended up happier somewhere else. I'm starting to think the people who walked out last week may have gotten the better deal.

Hey Jeff, can I make a t-shirt request? Can you make me a t-shirt that says:

"I worked at Dell for 20 years and all I got was this stuupid t-shirt."

Thanks

I was laid off roughly a year ago and it felt like the end of the world at the time. Now I'm in a better job with better pay and significantly better culture. Hang in there.

IBM has a major gap in its product portfolio. We don’t make and sell devices that have GPUs. This is what enterprises are clamoring for AI training and inferencing at scale, which is way more powerful than the accelerators we have on IBMZ and Power. And IBM Cloud can’t compete against the hyperscalers, which are expensive, however ideal for running AI use cases at scale. We have a strong AI product portfolio, although so do a lot of companies. We’ve acquired a lot of companies that complement our core products and have a massive ecosystem. But most days, I wonder -
What does IBM even stand for? Where do we even belong in this rapidly evolving world?

I don’t believe IBM will fail. However we all, especially our Senior Leaders, need to really think about what we actually stand for. Not this BS hybrid cloud leader statement. It’s about crafting a real vision that inspires the world. It’s about culture change to invigorate low morale at the ranks. It’s about picking up this company and giving it a really good shake. If we don’t do something drastic, then the free fall will continue.

The local dimwits seeing their replacements arrive with all expenses paid relocation pack and a dwindling stock, are still wonder why they didn't offer themselves as tributes when they got the chance.

Well, because they thought they were equals when they treated everybody else with disdain. Funny, isn't it?

Kinetic Business is thriving like never before. The group here now is quite simply the best there is, was and ever will be!

The street loves the “mass layoffs, benefit cuts, zero merit increases, have AI do everything” story. I wonder what the reaction will be a year or two from now?

https://fortune.com/2026/07/14/c-h-robinson-ai-success-secrets-dave-bozeman/

As I was browsing through LinkedIn today I couldn’t help but noticing how many P66 employees have what appear to be just made up positions. These are not necessarily highly paid positions but it does seem certain people are being “taken care of”.
In too many cases it not what you know or what you can do but rather what connections you have.
This is happening while Go-Go and Tractor Man are laying off legitimately good employees.

Heard some senior folks talk about our high performing teams in terms of sports teams. It made me think about genuinely high performing sports teams - the ones who are given time to develop and train, given the best equipment, given support, given trust and empowered to perform and then I thought about XOM, the team on the field is despised by their managers, trying to perform with worse equipment each year, no support and a performance system that pits teammates against each other. I realised the sports team analogy is a pile of bullsh-t.

when are the drones at Larry's sweatshop going to do the same?

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.

Best example I have seen is the small plastic sculpture that has replaced the previous nice bronze sculptures on wooden bases.

Gunjan has a new video out with that title. That psycho really has no sense of self awareness or shame posting this garbage while destroying the American dream for so many by putting them out of work while sending their jobs to their other side of the world. What load of hogwash.

1) Bill Rogers
2) Ken Thompson and everyone else at Wachovia
3) Kelly King
4) Ken Lewis
5-10) let’s hear who else is bad?

I have been thinking of things I would like to say or do to show my appreciation for people like Cameron or Laurent. They have given us so much. So last night I went and got a whole bunch of taco bell gift cards and I will send one a week to them. This way these two can keep sh-----g on us for the rest of the year. There is not enough toilet paper in the world for the two. Frenchy should go back home and cameron, you may want to consider just resigning, the stockholders have lost more money on your decisions than they will ever recover. I promise if you two do leave, we will have a proper send-off. We could either bring in some pizza or maybe do another one of those virtual happy hours we all loved. Dont worry about the expense. We can use some of the money you saved on raises this year by canning people right before the merit increase. Nice move dou--ebags. Have a great weekend and make sure to ask for extra lettuce when you order your lunch. My hope is I will be the one waiting on you when you come in to order. I'll hook you up with an extra chalupa.

In this week's blog post we dive into the Around The Table's look at Optimism with Brendan Mooney, the CEO of Kainos
https://underthetable2026.blogspot.com/2026/07/episode-5-optimism.html

The acquisition of Comerica by Fifth Third Bank has generated significant local discussion. While the disappearance of a long-standing financial institution is noted, the controversy has escalated due to a perceived slight against a beloved local food item. This has drawn unexpected attention to the cultural impact of the merger. The public's reaction highlights the deep connection between community identity and local businesses. The situation has become a talking point beyond the financial implications of the deal.

Detroit, Michigan

https://www.freep.com/story/news/columnists/neal-rubin/2026/07/16/fifth-third-comerica-bank-purchase-american-coney-island-cincinnai-chili-tim-spence-grace-keros/90908987007/

Quite the pivot for a rudderless ship

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.

Look around. We see the same story repeated daily: broken lives, shattered families, and a machine fueled by corporate greed that crushes anyone in its way.

And yet—people still believe a heartfelt post will fix it. "Dan, look into this." "Board, address that." As if they haven't already made their decision. As if they're waiting for our input.

Let's be honest: that hope is delusional.

You don't reason with a system that profits from your pain. You don't negotiate with people who got to the top by ignoring empathy. They wear human faces, but they operate like machines—cold, calculating, and utterly indifferent to your suffering.

They monitor these forums? Yes. They have teams reading every word. But not to help. To laugh. Or worse—to ignore you completely. To them, you are background noise. Ants on a highway. Insignificant.

So stop wasting your breath. Stop begging for mercy from people who have none.

The only thing they respect is pressure. Visibility. Disruption. Organize. Build a movement that makes them uncomfortable. Make noise they can't ignore. Get media attention. Force the conversation into the open.

Wake up. Not tomorrow—today.

Because while you're typing another plea, they're counting their money. And time is running out.

At what point do we get to give real feedback on Teams and M365? I’m ready to let them know IT SU-KS! I’ve never felt so chaotic, unorganized, constantly interrupted, and overlooking messages (I’ve never done that!).

I don’t even open the silly group pings at this point (whatever they’re called).. our team has created 5,428 different group chats with similar acronyms- how the heck can we keep this straight!?! And the 500 training decks that they share are useless if you don’t have time to spend days reading and learning this insanely chaotic platform (please STOP sharing “helpful decks”.. it’s not helpful!).

And don’t get me started on the fact that we’re encouraged (forced) to put everything in a “group chat”.. so now nobody can find the documents and they keep messaging asking you to forward it to them again. What’s the point!? Just send it in an email!!

This is ridiculous and we need to let them know it’s not working!

Mike Lyons has a Glassdoor approval rate of 70, while Takis has a 41. Takis, our new ceo, has a rating lower than most other CEOs. Is he this bad? Thoughts? Need to plan for my next step if he’s indeed so much worse than Mike Lyons…

Could an employee that was impacted come back to VZ in another role or are there blockers? Please no smart answer's.

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 .

13.8 days required this month, so you need to be in 14 days or get talked to.

I plan to just go in 12 days and let it be. It’s freaking 95 degrees where I am at and now the air quality is bad, way too dangerous to suffer in extreme heat and hazardous air just so I can sit by myself and talk to my co workers on team.

Anyone just going to say f it or are you doing 14?

Dear EMHC Team,

After several site visits, I have identified a recurring operational concern: an alarming level of cranial uniformity among the male population.

At this point, I am no longer confident that there are multiple individuals involved. It is entirely possible that EMHC employs one bald gentleman who simply changes safety glasses and shirts throughout the day.

For safety and identification purposes, I propose the following corrective actions:

1. Mandatory name tags with large font.
2. Optional mustache differentiation program.
3. Assignment of unique call signs (e.g., Bald Eagle, Bald Eagle II, The Chrome Dome, Captain Reflective Surface).
4. Investigation into whether baldness is an unofficial leadership competency at EMHC.

Please advise whether this phenomenon is due to genetics, stress, or prolonged exposure to refinery air.

Respectfully,

A Concerned Observer

Another reorg. Sold as agility, felt as whiplash. Leadership didn’t even wait for the planned date — they tore up a structure barely a year old and rebuilt it mid-year, with zero regard for what that costs the people living through it. The stated reason: “boost software deployment.” The real reason is simpler and darker.
IBM has spent years buying growth instead of building it. Every quarter, another acquisition gets folded in, rebranded as “software strength,” and used to justify the next reorg. Strip out the acquisitions, and the growth mostly disappears. This isn’t a strategy. It’s a treadmill, and shareholders finally noticed — the stock just had its worst single day in the company’s history.
The money to keep buying is running out. Debt keeps climbing. Buybacks have been frozen for years because the company is still “digesting” its last purchase. Cash meant for growth is quietly being redirected to service the last deal, not fund the next one. When a company can’t return money to its own shareholders, it’s telling you something about how thin the cushion has gotten.
And the sales playbook is exhausted. For years, big renewals were “won” by reshuffling the same contract — discount here, markup there, call it a signing. Do that once, fine. Do it a third time on the same account, and there’s nothing left to move. Customers aren’t d-mb. Many are also sitting on mountains of software they were sold and never deployed. Asking them to sign another restructuring on top of shelfware gathering dust isn’t selling — it’s asking for patience that ran out a while ago. That’s the real story behind “large deals failed to close.” It was never about speed.
So here’s what a summer reorg actually buys: nothing, fast. Territory changes take a quarter just to stabilize. Real deals take six months to a year to close. Launch a reorg in July, across a holiday season when half of Europe is offline, and demand results in Q3 — and you’ve built a machine engineered to fail on schedule.
Except failure doesn’t cost everyone the same. IBM books the reorg as a clean, one-time charge and moves on. Sellers absorb the real cost: quotas that don’t shrink to match a broken calendar, commission checks that quietly get smaller because targets were unrealistic from day one, accounts inherited mid-relationship with no memory of what was promised or already burned. When the numbers come up short, it won’t be called “the reorg cost us a season.” It’ll be called underperformance. The same event, blamed upward as strategy and downward as failure — a strategy that costs nothing on the way in and everything on the way out, just not for the people who designed it.
That’s the pattern worth naming out loud: a company that has run out of things to buy, running out of ways to reshuffle what it already sold, paying for both by quietly shifting the bill onto the people closest to the customer.
Another reorg won’t fix that. Only shipping what was already sold will.

Since there is a post around location strategy, what about groups having to be together?

Any news or updates for co-location strategy?

Is "cribbing" a new US Bank slang? What does it mean?

With such major org changes of VCG, will VCG safe for some months?

So they are just assuming everyone will take the job at the indirects ? Regardless if anyone does Verizon still needs to own up to the thousands not 500. BTW how many fraud transactions are going to get pushed through if the rep is leaving ? I can’t believe how Verizon handles layoffs when so many will be there for another month. What a shrinkage nightmare !

"Managing 100 calls a day—as required for care managers at Centene’s Sunshine Health—is an unsustainable expectation. One has to question the quality of both those interactions and the resulting documentation. Requiring such a high volume of calls, effectively placing quantity over quality and metrics over genuine member care, is fundamentally abusive to both staff and patients. Does CEO Sarah London truly understand the impact of the mediocre leadership culture that thrives on bullying those on the front lines? It seems unlikely, as she appears primarily concerned with her own $20 million annual compensation, regardless of the operational reality on the ground."

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.