#leadership

Any word on Value layoffs? I have heard about a reorganization of people. But, no specific details on how people will shift around in the DK organization. I suppose with the departure of Ken this was inevitable, and with the serious reduction of resources and capex we have alot of “strategist” and product managers not really doing anything.

I wish leaders would remember how this anticipation made them feel. Please comment anonymously. Do the right thing.

The most productive thing you can do today? Embrace JOMO. We’ve all been raised on FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), but in the corporate world, FOMO is just a polite term for a bottleneck.

If you feel the need to be in every 30-person meeting to "stay aligned," you aren't leading; you’re hovering. If you need to be CC'd on every email thread to "feel informed," you aren't empowering; you’re slowing the engine.

At Verizon, we are architecting an AI-enabled ecosystem to eliminate "the mundane". But tech alone won't give us speed. We need a cultural pivot from "Agreeable to Accountable".

JOMO - The Joy of Missing Out —is the ultimate leadership flex. * It’s the joy of trusting your team to take "Total Ownership" of the talent lifecycle without you in the room.

When we stop trying to be everywhere, we finally give our leaders the space to be innovative and quick. Speed doesn't come from more eyes on a project; it comes from fewer, more decisive ones.

Let’s stop rewarding "presence" and start rewarding "impact."
Who’s brave enough to decline that 4:00 PM "update" meeting and trust the team to handle it? That’s the BOLD standard.

#Leadership #JOMO

In past layoffs, does anyone come to you with a list of names and you give your feedback on who you can let go? Do they look to performance reviews? Something I was informed of led me to believe that feed back from PL will be applied in this layoff.

This will be a giant black (or brown in his case. . .) mark on the AK regime. Thankfully, there's no way they can keep AK in-charge for much longer after this historical disaster.

https://www.wsj.com/finance/stocks/ibm-shares-sink-18-on-earnings-warning-d115d564

Weakness in infrastructure arm was worse than anticipated, as clients shifted spending to hardware and memory

By: Robbie Whelan and Robb M. Stewart |
Updated July 14, 2026 10:52 am ET

International Business Machines shares sank as much as 25% in morning trading after the company issued a profit warning citing a shift in customer spending from software to AI hardware and memory chips.

IBM said the performance of its software and infrastructure business fell short of expectations in the second quarter, and the company didn’t react quickly enough to changing market conditions. Tuesday’s share decline was the largest intraday percentage decrease for the company on record.

Chief Executive Arvind Krishna said in a letter to investors that the weakness in IBM’s infrastructure arm was worse than anticipated, driven by a shortfall in demand for the z17, the company’s flagship enterprise mainframe designed for the artificial intelligence age. The company expects infrastructure revenue to fall 7%, after previously anticipating a low-single-digit decline.

The rapid rise of AI caught makers of memory chips, especially the building blocks of high-bandwidth memory known as DRAM and the short-term flash memory known as NAND, off guard. That led to a capacity crunch that has pushed up prices on a wide variety of products—from laptops and gaming consoles to AI data-center servers—as much as 20% to 40% over a short period of time.

Big enterprise customers like banks—a core customer base for IBM—are particularly susceptible to fluctuations in chip prices because they buy an enormous amount of computing power from cloud companies to run in-house tools.

Consumer-facing companies are also feeling the crunch. Apple CEO Tim Cook recently said price increases for its devices, including the iPhone, were unavoidable. “There’s less supply at a time when consumers want devices and the memory guys are passing along huge price increases,” Cook told The Wall Street Journal in an exclusive interview.

IBM said it plans to report revenue of $17.2 billion and adjusted earnings of $2.93 a share for the June quarter. Both figures are short of analysts’ expectations of $17.9 billion and $3.01 a share.

Its pretax income margin is expected to have contracted 90 basis points, to 14.4%.

IBM is scheduled to release its official second-quarter figures next week.

Krishna said that in the past few weeks of June, clients shifted their quarterly capital expenditures toward servers, storage and memory to secure supply-constrained infrastructure ahead of anticipated price increases.

“While we anticipated some supply chain-related impact in our expectations, we did not anticipate the magnitude of the capex reprioritization,” Krishna said.

“These conditions require our teams to execute perfectly, and this quarter we faltered,” Krishna said. He explained that IBM didn’t adapt and move quickly enough, and a number of large deals failed to close on the timelines expected.

“IBM got hit with a triple whammy,” Emarketer analyst Jacob Bourne said in a note to clients Tuesday. “The AI buildout is concentrating capex in hardware like memory chips and diverting spend from software and services. Markets are going to punish legacy players showing signs of losing ground in the AI race.”

Bourne predicted that as more customers shift away from software as a service to more enterprise AI, investors could see more quarters like this one: “But I think it’s a disruption story, not necessarily an extinction one for legacy software companies. Spending patterns will shift from the present focus, and the vendors that adapt their products to the changing market will stay competitive.”

I have had many great years working for Target but I think that Target is well past being able to return to what it was during its "glory" years. The culture has shifted in a negative way, well-respected leaders have moved on and there is more work than people. Target culture was always a bit of a double-edged sword. It could be difficult to infiltrate, especially if you weren't from the midwest, or weren't a Type A extrovert. That being said, the pride and positivity that people felt in working for Target consistently drove the team to go above and beyond to exceed requirements.

Yes, workload continues to be a problem but it is a symptom of a bigger problem. The biggest issue continues to be Target leadership. You have leaders within Target that (A) Don't understand the work that is associated with the roles on their team or (B) Do not know how to inspire/support their team to address workload or (C) Give the appearance of not caring.

Leaders have been hired from outside Target who did not have either the business skills or people skills to manage and inspire a team. For example, the VP of my area was an outside hire who previously managed a $25M business with 1-2 direct reports for a small, but aspirational retailer. Target put her in charge of a $6B+ business and she is ill-suited to lead people or strategy. She has been a failure and until recently, there was no accountability for bad team surveys or poor sales. The team was blamed and the ex-SVP allowed this to happen. There was finally HR intervention this year but guess what? She the VP is still here and sales are still declining!

My whole point in relating this story is that why should anyone work extra hard, beyond required hours and responsibilities, for a company where you aren't respected? I would have worked around the clock for a few of my past leaders who are no longer with Target because I respected them and they respected me. Hiring a "leader" who belittles her team in meetings, doesn't appreciate all the work being done and has driven team members to seek mental health treatment does not drive productivity or sales.

Bumped from @zy+1kx1vvht4.

3M leadership, listen up. You’ve let go most of the experienced, knowledgeable employees who built this company, stripping away decades of institutional know-how. You’re bringing in outsiders for top leadership roles while longtime insiders get pushed aside. And “Everyday Excellence” looks a lot like a system designed to weed out the overworked people still carrying the load after all the layoffs. On top of that, the new CEO is sitting with weak employee approval ratings around 47%.
If you don’t change course quickly, the risks are real and severe. Innovation will dry up without the people who actually know how to create and solve tough problems. Top talent will keep walking out the door, leaving a hollow operation behind. Quality will slip, mistakes will multiply, and liabilities will grow even worse. Culture and morale are already tanking, which ki-ls execution. Competitors who keep their edge will start eating your lunch in key markets. Short-term margins might look fine for now, but the long-term damage to performance, reputation, and shareholder value will be brutal.
Time to stop the bleeding. Respect the experience that built 3M, fix the disconnect with your people, and make real changes before it’s too late.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

I'm tired of leadership acting like Verizon is a great place to work when we all know the reality is completely different. The facade is going to crumble sooner or later.

Curious, if any other people leaders have been informed on those that requested the VSP yet. And if so, how is that process going?

To Humana upper management….
The recent communication encouraging employees to use our time more efficiently to better serve our members was discouraging to many of us. While I understand the intent may have been to improve efficiency, the message came across as though our efforts are not valued or that we are not doing enough to meet our members' needs.
Many employees are already working under significant pressure. We were required to work mandatory overtime to meet organizational demands, did not receive merit increases this year, are closely monitored in nearly every aspect of our work, and face disciplinary action if chart audit scores fall below 95%. These expectations create an environment where employees feel they are constantly being measured but rarely recognized for the work they are already doing.
Those of us on the front lines genuinely care about providing high-quality care to our members. We understand the importance of efficiency, but efficiency alone should not come at the expense of employee morale. Communications that acknowledge employees' hard work, recognize the challenges we face, and express appreciation alongside performance expectations would be far more motivating than messages that imply we should simply be doing more.
I hope leadership will consider how these communications are perceived by employees. Feeling valued and supported is essential to maintaining engagement, retaining experienced staff, and ultimately providing the best possible service to our members.

One of the last rats off the ship or is he sick of leading the rudderless ship? Almost nothing from the c suite and every major position has left the last six months.

No wonder it feels like no one’s driving this ship, except the CIO lighting money on fire with all these new applications and projects that have gone nowhere

but does anyone ever see Kate J come right out and address the many layoffs over the past few weeks, or just continue to RIF more workers every month until she feels the time is right to sell off the remaining parts ?

Funny how “Impostor Syndrome” keeps trending on LinkedIn, as if the real impostors aren’t sitting comfortably in the executive suite polishing their mission‑statement buzzwords. Our Lake Mary Site Lead waxes and wanes almost daily on LinkedIn about personal growth and his random musings on overcoming self‑doubt, meanwhile TheLayoff.com reads like a Greek chorus calling out leadership that’s overstayed its ethical visa. But sure—let’s all meditate on our inner saboteur while the EC perfects the art of staying in the room long after the moral fire alarm went off. Let’s focus more on our personal shortcomings while leadership turns up the midyear gaslighting campaign to identify a new collection of layoff victims.

It’s interesting, really. Employees twist themselves into pretzels wondering if they’re “worthy,” while the folks steering the ship can’t find the compass, the map, or apparently the exit.

If impostors are defined by those who shouldn’t be in the role, the syndrome isn’t in the rank‑and‑file—it’s upstairs in 240G, thriving, well‑compensated, and oddly immune to self‑reflection.

But hey, personal growth is important. Just not that personal, apparently. Give it a rest, James.

CEO at Zayo

Oracle is very poor in its operations. The management is filled with oldies who don't know how to steer . Every one travels like they boarded a flight or train rather than sitting in driver seat. Need lots of layoff at the top. All EVP's, VP's, Senior Director roles need to be evaluated for transformation they did for the company in past 3-4 years and be removed if not.

https://www.jeremylegg.com/

G.K. wrote “Expectations may change. Experiences may evolve”. Such a passive aggressive tone. We get it G.K., you hate your employees. We’ve know that since day one. You’re going to push people to leave, lay people off and make the survivors as uncomfortable as possible.

Have a cookie 🍪

How long will leaders realize they cannot keeping pushing the terrible GES scores under the rug? Why is HR keeping them so close?

You ruined my life Bill. I HATE you.

Did anyone else here this? The board was doing the same for Sampath before Dan sacked him.

If Stinky’s goal was to convince younger employees to stay, publicly taking shots at Gen Z over wanting flexibility wasn’t exactly the way to do it. His comments came across as dismissive, disrespectful and completely out of touch.

Here’s what this pre-computer dinosaur fails to understand. We grew up online, made friends online, had relationships online. We learned online, collaborated online, and even went to school and got degrees online. We don’t need a five-day RTO mandate to know how to be connected and productive.

Nobody is asking to never come into an office. People are asking for flexibility. Instead of trying to understand that, leadership keeps acting like it’s a work ethic problem.

Then they wonder why younger employees don’t stick around.

Maybe stop blaming the workforce and start asking why the workforce isn’t buying what your so called “leadership” is selling.

Impacted Band 5 leaders were notified today. Anyone heard any particular department being hit?

This regime tried nothing and is all out of ideas. MFN would have stayed in Washington and fought for not only us, but also everyone on ACA so they woulld have affordable healthcare.

F5 just appointed a new CPO who was in charge at Wayfair, a company who said employees are like paperclips and has had dozens of layoffs, US office closures in just a couple years.
I wonder what F5 is prepping for...

Q2 sales will lack both plan and the latest exec forecasts. Substantially. SVP of sales and several Director / Sr. Directors in sales will finally be fired in August. Not for missing the target, but for missing their own forecasts now several quarters in a row.

ARR in the current quarter will shrink vs end of previous quarter (for the first time). That will be the catalyst for the bigger changes:

KKR will continute to re-shuffle the board to drive more accountability.

CEO still believes that "product is fine, everything else is the problem". He'll be fired, too. Timing just depends on interim and long-term succession plan. Nobody will miss him as he's been over-promising on outside investment / recapitalization / acquisition and under-delivering.

Once that happens, the power center of gravity will shift away from product groups. Don't need as many PMs and engineers if the goal is no longer just growth (which has been embarassingly lacking). PE firms are happy with high profitability / low growth or lower profitability with higher growth (rule of 40). Any combination works for them long term and the company will be reconfigured to set and maintain the direction.

All of this will be disruptive, causing more internal power fights. Good people will leave for better opportunities (which exist for them) why others will be RIF'ed in certain areas. That will leave the company with lower cost, but also understaffed in important areas. That imbalance will prolong recovery time.

In short - long term (18 months+), Omnissa will be fine.
Short term (12-18 months), it's going to get ugly. Opportunities for smart people to navigate the disruption.

You read it here first.

Something that executives probably are not telling you is their concern as to the unexpected costs by AI providers (vendors) for AI tokens.

AI is today actually more costly than human beings workforce performing the same tasks.

Now I know they have been telling you that their goal for AI is not to replace anyone but rather to assist them in their daily work to focus on higher learnt daily tasks. Well, that is simply an outright lie (or fabrication if I am to be more civil in my wording).

They most definitely want to replace you!

Unfortunately for them, they probably had to ramp up letting persons go before AI had “learned” everything simply because AI is costing large corporations way more monies than they anticipated. So, to keep stock prices up and shareholders happy, they have had to earlier than anticipated had to layoffs folks to offset tje high AI costs.

Notice nothing has been said yet about the true customers (aka the members) as to how things will affect them. That is because members are not even in the equation (the thinking mindset) of the executives, as to their decision making.

The function I work in had a global team call today. It was framed as an update about the reorganization. Leadership did not have ANY new information. They literally said what was previously announced in an email, then did 20 minutes of Q&A that mostly consisted of responses like “We are early in the process. We don’t know that quite yet, but we’ll tell you when we have more information”. Waste of time.

One of the biggest mistakes this “leadership” made was creating a 5x RTO policy for everyone because of the actions of a few.

The understanding has always been that the push toward 5x RTO was driven, at least in part, by concerns about a small number of people who weren’t meeting expectations under the 3x8 policy. Whether that’s true or not, those people are largely gone. The ones paying the price today are everyone who complied and remained.

Instead of holding poor performers accountable, leadership rolled out a blanket policy that treats everyone like they need to be monitored. High performers, average performers, and low performers all get the same treatment. That’s completely a$$ backwards.

Good people managers manage performance. They don’t replace performance management with one size fits all policies that punish the majority because of the minority.

So, the unintended consequence is the new 8 & skate culture.

People who used to go above and beyond now focus on just checking the box. Badge in, sit for eight hours, badge out. Time that once went into extra work is now spent commuting. Discretionary effort has simply been replaced by compliance.

The irony is that the policy intended to improve accountability has actually reduced it. When you stop rewarding results and start emphasizing attendance, don’t be surprised when people optimize for attendance instead of outcomes.

If someone isn’t doing their job, you deal with that person. You don’t build a policy that discourages the very people you should be trying hardest to keep.

Yes it is true there is a meeting on the 16th of july looks like its with the entire department….idk what its about but yes something is happening shows 10am-11am, anyone else shows meeting on there Google Calendar? When i ask my leader they are absolutely clueless never know anything…

Hey everyone. Through all the myriad of changes at AT&T since John Stanks reign of incompetence he is still underperforming terribly. His ego has him delusional and he speaks like he is the smartest person to walk the earth. The company will flourish when he leaves. John you haven’t been doing well !

Anyone else sitting through leadership calls wondering why we’re discussing business as usual while avoiding the question that’s on everyone’s mind?

Truist employee here. Anyone at BoA around long enough to have scoop on Mike Lyons before he becomes the new CEO?

Whatever happened to the VLC shadow board? I was energized and excited by the LinkedIn posts and game changing thought leadership. It’s clear that it made a real difference in the company, and I hope Dan and what’s left of his leadership team continue this tradition as we play to win for our customers and communities!

With the former Head of Cloud Migration no longer with the organization, many employees are questioning why the same leadership structure and operating model continue unchanged. This includes leaders such as Hewitt, Orella, Kaul, Lucero, and other program management leaders. These are highly compensated leadership roles, and employees naturally expect clear technical strategy, strong execution, measurable outcomes, and accountability. If these roles are not delivering the expected value, there is an opportunity to redirect those investments toward higher-impact engineering initiatives.

This company should change its name now. Walgreens is gone, it was destroyed by R0z and her wrecking crew - Tracey Clown, HS1OWW who was her CIO/CCP, and several others. It's an embarrassment now, and simply needs to go away. And the Board who let it happen - Jan, Val, Ginger....should be removed from any board roles. Criminals...all of them.

Sounds like the CIO needs some additional funds to furnish his new lake home from Accenture and Infosys so he needs to send more money their way

Honestly-the uncertainty of this company will greatly improve with new leadership who already know our clients, products and technology. I loved ML but I don’t think he had the tools to manage such a complex environment from a technology perspective. I never knew Dvy but was excited and petrified of her AI roll out plan, she was only here 6 months so not much time to make any meaningful changes. I’m glad we can now roll out AI with a little more thoughtful approach internally. I believe we finally have the right C suite in place -they are far from perfect, But having the understanding of internal Fiserv is a huge knowledge bonus! These guys now have the authority to make the necessary changes Fiserv clients have been looking for in breaking down silos within the company. Clients need to know that this is a really a good thing! Moving forward truly as one Fiserv! Finally!

Does any one work in this team - wholesale/ MVNO? I am hearing about crazy things going down there since last RIF. Looks like that business is nose diving and the new leadership is completely clueless and apparently their morale is rock bottom. I always thought that was a quiet business living in its own corner and constantly delivering. Sad to hear if this is true.

First I'll say that I genuinely enjoyed my small team at AT&T with whom I worked the last 20 years of my career there. I have no resentment to the time I spent there, so this isn't a complaining post, just some perspective after some time away. I was in management, doing technical work and app development for sales support.

Most of my team, about 80%, was laid off for not moving to Dallas (most of the rest were already there; one or two moved there). We were in various focus cities supporting our local sales teams, but the senior leadership didn't understand that and did not make exceptions. I found another position doing similar work for another company and started 3 weeks after my final day at T. The new company has fewer than 1000 people, for comparison.

So here are some of my takeaways, in case someone with a long career at AT&T might be thinking about making the jump, or who might have it forced on them.

1. Surprising that this is the first one, but honestly it's such a difference that I wanted to call it out: I have not opened Powerpoint once since I left T. At T, powerpoint was basically the language of business. We wasted so many cycles "making a deck" to try to communicate to the ever-changing field of senior leadership that I probably spent the plurality of my time in Powerpoint vs. any other program. I got a new laptop at my new job, and realized as I deleted the pre-placed icon from the desktop that I've never once used Powerpoint. We use Teams, sometimes demos, sometimes a mockup or diagram...but I've never had to "make a deck."

2. It really hit me just how many people at AT&T did literally nothing of value. This is not a dig against most colleagues, but rather just that significant subset who didn't have discernible skills, so got placed into positions to just spin their bureaucratic wheels but otherwise stay out of the way. I recall two dozen names off the top of my head that were just there to make people jump through hoops, document workflow (for no followup reason), design a new process that was jettisoned as soon as they moved somewhere else, or just attend meetings and throw in their two cents without really contributing. Outside of T, there are people of various skill and contribution levels, but nobody whose job is simply to fly under the radar. When I read stories about T employees logging in and leaving their laptops in lockers, or sitting in the cafeteria watching TV, it makes me glad to know that where I'm at now, everybody is giving a fair day's work without making work for others.

3. Leadership at AT&T is toxic. I'm not just talking the Stankey/Stephenson types, who, yes, have ruined the company through unfathomable incompetence. I'm talking the people in the mid-level, director-like positions and above. Almost all (not all) of them at T seemed like they got there based on the Peter Principle or otherwise nodded their head enough. Only in the beginning of my career in the late 1990s did I feel any executive director or above at T (SBC at the time) was there due to being a practitioner of their craft, for being respected, or for being a good manager. And that class began to dwindle as time went on, replaced by hollow, empty suits who could spew buzzwords and claim empty victories by cherry picking their numbers. It's like an ever-shifting field of grifters.

4. The hiring process at ATT is irreparably broken. I was a hiring manager, and trying to get someone competent in the door was inexplicably difficult. HR gatekept candidates and had no concept of the hard and soft skills we needed. We got sent batches of candidates who faked their resumes, faked their interviews (even before AI was big), faked their legal ability to work in the U.S., and so on. There were times that it took 9 months to find an entry level programmer because HR kept whiffing. HR gets a lot of flack everywhere, but at T, I believed they were truly a cesspool of rejects.

Maybe I'll think of more but these hit me just this week. There are things I miss about T, mostly dealing with colleagues, but these are definitely things I do not miss! The day-to-day stress and friction they cause isn't always evident when you're in the middle of it. Only after the ATT shackles are thrown off do you realize how bad of an environment it can be!

For a section 16 officer to be able to negotiate an "out clause" based on the CEO's employment status is totally unheard of. Fiserv Director's will receive several "no votes" on say on pay at proxy time. The Fiserv lawyer and the CHRO who agreed to this must be also be on eggshells.