#morale

Until I find a new job, most of my energy will be spent on that search. FIS doesn't care if you're a hard worker, it'll show you the door either way. So no point in trying. I'll give my minimum and save my energy for my next company, which will hopefully be better in treating its best employees.

it’s 2am on the east coast. I’m wide awake knowing 8am will be here before I know it.

I’m dreading another week of “hey! how are you?” “I’m good! how are you?” “let me share my screeeeeeeeen.” can we just not.

I don’t want to talk to anyone and it’s not personal. I’m too much in my own head to even think about anything outside of “okay, what do I do now?” I don’t want to discuss projects, strategy or give my thoughts… NOTHING. let’s regroup mid-August.

I feel like those of us who remain should be given extra sick days ‘cause I truly am sick of this nonsense and we know it will get worse.

I hope everyone has a good week. at least it’s a short one.

This site is often filled with responses from the jilted and jaded. Does anyone still believe the company has a viable path forward? Are the right people still in place to execute that turnaround, or is it time for employees to start planning their exit?

There is a lot of complacency abounds with people openly stating they are just hanging around for the paycheck. Does anyone have faith? I'm by no means the "Company Man", but I would like to still believe that there is a path forward.

Last year, MC and executive leadership pulled the rug out from under remote employees on extraordinary ratings and promotions: line and middle management got the news in late October, all employees in November. Only those classified as hybrid or on-site were eligible (which turned out to be largely a dud anyway), while remote staff were punished with a geo-code demotion that completely ignored cost of living. Hundreds, if not thousands, of employees who put in ten months of hard work were denied both monetary and career growth, severely degrading morale across the company.

Given that the CEO, MC, and execs are clearly pursuing a strategy of squeezing employees into voluntarily quitting (via the GCC build-out and other tactics), the question now is: has anyone heard anything about what's landing in Q4? Trying to avoid ... Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice...

To think the VSP is the morally right thing to do and the company really doesn’t want to lay off people who want to stay. Maybe because I have seen jobs dissolve and they try to place those displaced in other positions.

Until Billy and Jimmy are removed this company will keep sinking.

I truly do not understand some of the negative comments on these posts to people trying to navigate through this scary time. We are scared and stressed about what to do. We are all looking for just a little compassion and understanding depending if we take the VSP or not, but no need to be rude to people who are deciding to take it. Trust me I am struggling with the decision which I bet most of us are! A little niceness goes a very long way with people who are nervous and scared

My store has

1. Rodents
2. Lack of a/c
3. Filthy carpet and fitting rooms
4. No working price checkers
5. Tremendously understaffed
6. A disconnected, not present store manager
7. A RVP who is in the store maybe once a month if that, for like 30 minutes
8. A lack of handicapped accessible fitting rooms, isles, and restrooms
9. A parking lot with pot holes big enough to swallow your car
10. mold and mildew
11. Leaking ceiling in office
12. Plumbing issues
13. No safety and security protocols that actually make sense and help managers and leads/key holders

Vote “up” below if you agree

These are my random thoughts in no particular order.

First if you were impacted then I feel for you and wish you the best. Just understand average employees are paying the price for some terrible mgmt decisions made over the years. It’s nothing personal you did wrong. Some of the best workers I have worked with have been at this company, but they are not valued.

Today I learned the company will stop paying for home internet for certain grades. The penny pinching continues on top of job cuts. It’s not a good sign.

This year has been brutal with cuts , the employee survey scores are in the dumps. My personal opinion is things will slow down before another “right sizing” in October.

What should you do? That’s up to you. Some people say to me they are actively looking and will bail if they get another gig. Others say they won’t leave without being forced to with a severance.

The stock is up slightly but the company is circling the drain imo, the core problems have not been fixed . You should consider what boat you are in from the above paragraph. I’m not sure there is a right or wrong answer. I am happy to opine on any question you may have.

Ps. I’ve read the other threads and I can confirm management in OI is poisonous and vindictive

I used to like working at First Data for the most part. When frankserv took over it went downhill fast for both companies. There was constant frustration, ridiculous policies and mismanagement. I have been out of this place for a few months now. My wife commented how much I've changed for the good since leaving. She said I am back to being man she fell in love with. That was WOW moment!!!

Walking around the place with so much positivity and high hopes. None of them have any clue that the rest of us are bitter, angry and mostly dead inside because this company su-ks.

sick of this nasty working environment

The Oregon Health Authority is cutting jobs due to a $90 million budget gap. Nine to ten higher-level staffers are being laid off by July 31. This initial round precedes an anticipated $421 million in federal Medicaid cuts. These future cuts could cause 200,000 Oregonians to lose health care coverage. Employees express concerns about transparency, morale, and potential service reductions.

Salem, Oregon

https://www.thelundreport.org/content/oregon-health-authority-layoffs-spark-concerns

If leadership is reading this, I encourage you to take an honest look at P. Di-kerson's track record since she joined. Consider the number of people who have left the team, the overall level of dissatisfaction, and the noticeable decline in morale.

I would challenge leadership to run a truly anonymous team survey. I believe the results would highlight concerns that many people are currently reluctant to raise openly.

Her management style creates an environment of fear rather than trust. Public criticism is common, feedback is often delivered in front of others, and people become more focused on avoiding blame than on doing their best work. Instead of encouraging ownership and collaboration, it drives people to protect themselves.

There is also very little visible self-reflection or willingness to acknowledge when her own approach may be contributing to problems. Accountability appears to be expected from everyone else, but rarely from herself.

I hope leadership takes these concerns seriously, as I believe the current environment is having a significant negative impact on employee wellbeing, engagement, and retention.

Whenever we get a few weeks of peace, I still can't breathe properly. The anxiety is constant these days since I know what's coming eventually. This is not a healthy way to live.

If they try to say this is about performance, it's bullsh-t. We lost two of our best, highest performing people. I don't know why and who made the decision, but it's more than obvious by what's been happening that we're being led by complete and utter id--ts.

Does anybody else feel like the only task their managers have is to make our lives miserable? Never helping us but always there to add an unnecessary comment and complicate simple things. I honestly believe T would be a better place without the lot of them.

Good luck everybody.

Centene are you freaking serious???? Sending out surveys asking for our opinions right now??? You don’t care about us and leaving us in limbo for weeks not knowing what to do or expect and you send out a satisfaction survey. Please save your time and maybe update your staff on the VSP and if what you expected to take it has vs has not so maybe we will have a better idea of what to do. Shove your stupid survey up your butt.

Does anyone know the trick to keep teams status green, even if you are curled up in the fetal position on the floor?

We've undermined the trust you have that your specific expertise and contribution will be valued, that you will grow and advance your career, and that this will be a place where you can actually have an impact. -- Andrew Bosworth of Meta

I am so beyond fed up with all the pins and different threads or channels whatever they’re called on teams. We have a chat for a weekly call but now we have to use a completely different thread to put everything so now we have two probably even three different threads with basically the same group on the same topic.. they’re telling us you can use the chat during the call but use the channel for everything else so all our details are consolidated in one place… how does this make sense?!? I’m so tired of having 50 different places to look for what I need and having my pin go off every 15 seconds throughout the day.. it’s beyond distracting and unproductive at this point.

And I don’t even see the notifications, despite the fact that I followed all the instructions to request that I’m notified about these channels. SO FED UP WITH THIS STUPIDITY. Obnoxious!

But I'm yet to hear that anybody found it. That's how bad it is out there. And that's the main reason why not just Verizon, but most of the companies can currently get away with treating their employees like cr-p. There's literally nowhere else to go for the majority of us.

I read this forum and it seems like everyone hates this place. But I don't. I'm not thrilled with the uncertainty, but I genuinely enjoy the work. I hope I can keep doing it. Is there anyone else out there who feels the same?

We’re all adults here with careers, families, mortgages, and kids.

Yet we’re being treated like toddlers who need constant supervision, or maybe Stink just thinks we’re his prisoners.

Presence reports. Badge tracking. Attendance monitoring. Endless RTO enforcement. Isn’t it a bit much?.. All of it sends the same message, leadership doesn’t trust its employees, and once trust is gone, disengagement follows.

Seriously, why would anyone want to work in an environment like this?

The company talks endlessly about “culture” while implementing policies that actively destroy it.

The result is exactly what you’d expect, lower morale, higher turnover, and employees spending more time worrying about presence reports, FTW letters, and layoffs than innovation or growth.

When professionals are treated like they’re one badge swipe away from detention, it’s hard to feel respected or motivated. Especially when they’re blaming the masses for the faults of 1% who are no longer here.

You can mandate attendance, but you can’t mandate trust, engagement, or hard work & dedication. Loyalty and trust go hand in hand, and this CEO said “loyalty is dead”.

If you want to see bad management, look at how layoffs are being handled. One day would have been enough, but they've dragged it out for the whole week, which to some of us feels like forever. For days we wake up stressed wondering if today is the day. Why's that necessary? Outside of just being cruel for the sake of being cruel.

I'm so tired of being punished every time I take a little extra time to help a customer. We're not working in a manufacturing factory. We're not working on a conveyor belt. I need to be able to interact with people without worrying that it's going to cause problems with my manager.

Since my last post got deleted, I won't go into specifics but the Londonderry office is a disaster. Lots of managers and senior people leaving. Morale extremely low.

I have worked at 4 other places in my career and the negativity flowing through this one is the worst. Please avoid IVS.

1. Meta's CTO, Andrew Bosworth, admitted the company's AI reorganization was poorly communicated and that leadership did "an atrocious job explaining the vision."

https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/the-worst-its-ever-been-why-metas-massive-ai-reorg-backfired-spectacularly/91363370

1. Bosworth acknowledged employee morale has likely reached "the worst it's ever been."

2. The new Applied AI division left many engineers feeling directionless, unsupported, and disconnected from leadership.

3. One major problem was excessively large management spans, with some managers overseeing well over 20 direct reports.

4. Employees reported feeling like anonymous members of oversized, hastily assembled teams rather than valued contributors.

5. Meta now plans to cap managers at roughly 20 direct reports, reduce unnecessary manager changes during reorganizations, and introduce AI coaching tools.

6. Organizational psychologist Bob Sutton noted that research has long shown large teams suffer from coordination, collaboration, and communication problems.

7. Studies indicate that smaller teams are particularly important for creative, innovative, and highly interdependent work like AI development.

8. Research covering more than 50 million papers, patents, and software projects found teams with fewer than five members were most likely to produce disruptive innovations.

9. The article compares Meta's situation to Jeff Bezos' "Two Pizza Rule," which advocates keeping teams small enough to be fed with two pizzas.

10. As Amazon evolved, it shifted toward assigning a single accountable leader to large initiatives while preserving clear ownership and coordination.

11. Meta's reorganization appears to have done neither: teams remained very large without strong centralized ownership, contributing to confusion and declining morale.

12. The article warns that current trends toward eliminating middle management can backfire, particularly in knowledge work requiring creativity and close collaboration.

13. Leadership coach Beth Steinberg argues that managers with too many reports cannot effectively coach, develop, or support employees, leaving them only able to push work forward.

14. The overall lesson is that organizations seeking flatter structures should carefully balance efficiency with effective management, communication, and team size, especially in innovation-driven environments like AI.

The biggest difference between the two companies isn’t technology. It isn’t strategy. It’s leadership and culture.

At SpaceX, employees are working toward a clear mission. People know the goal, understand the direction, and believe they’re building something important. Here, the only mission we’re working on is RTO and presence reports.

At AT&T, many employees increasingly feel like they’re being blamed for problems they didn’t create.

One of the most common traits of failing leadership is scapegoating. When results disappoint, instead of asking whether the strategy is wrong, leaders look for someone else to blame. Employees become the problem. Feedback becomes the problem. Dissent becomes the problem.

That’s why the 8/1/25 email struck such a nerve and why everyone here is checked out. His message to the employee base was “You don’t matter”.

When employees raised concerns about morale, flexibility, retention, and RTO, the response wasn’t introspection. Employees were told “loyalty is dead” there “might be a disconnect between you and your current professional choice.” Concerns were dismissed as “more outliers than we’d like.”

Many employees read that and saw a leader more interested in defending their bad decision than understanding why so many people opposed it.

Another hallmark of poor leadership is rigidity. Strong leaders adapt when the facts change. Weak leaders treat every challenge to their strategy as a challenge to their authority and it damages their ego. They double down, no matter how much evidence piles up around them that they made a mistake.

Then comes the most dangerous stage, isolation.

Because of the fear of retaliation for pushing back or telling the truth, leaders stop hearing bad news. Dissent gets dismissed. Feedback gets filtered. Executives surround themselves with people who tell them what they want to hear instead of what they need to hear. “Yes men”

A bubble forms, and Inside the bubble, everything is working.

Outside the bubble, morale is collapsing, talent is leaving, recruiting is harder, and competitors are pulling further ahead.

Employees aren’t asking for miracles. They’re asking for basic respect and leadership that listens, adapts, and accepts responsibility when something isn’t working.

Instead, many feel they’re being asked to sacrifice more, commute more, give up flexibility, and then accept blame when the outcomes don’t improve.

The most dangerous thing a CEO can do is become so convinced of his own correctness that he stops hearing what everyone else is telling him.

That’s the disconnect employees have been talking about all along and why another company will soon pass us by.

Denial. Anger. Bargaining. Depression. Acceptance.
I have gone through all of them.
At this point, I am going to sit back, get myself some popcorn, and watch this sh-t show go down.
Even if I am no longer with Centene in the next several months, I will continue to follow this saga, simply for learning and entertainment purposes.

Yesterday this was posted on LinkedIn by Alice Hm Chen - AVP, Chief Health Officer at Centene

"We're looking for a cutting edge data scientist to lead the strategy, development, and deployment of advanced analytics and machine learning models that power clinical decision-making across Centene Corporation, the largest Medicaid and Marketplace payor in the country. It's an opportunity to work with a talented team (Peter Lauterbach, Marsi Kashta, Daniel J. Elliott MD MSCE FACP FAAP) with the ambition of delivering industry leading health outcomes at an industry leading cost structure. Please share with your networks! "

And this is why one of the reasons they won’t end DSD. Because at the end of every month they can pump in a lot of nonsense on all these orders, as with warehouse they’re not going to be able to do that. So now we’ll be back to pallet and backstock in a bunch of random things that we don’t need that the company is going to say we don’t want the stores to run out so it’s for their benefit same stupid sh-t over and over again.

The people in charge are a joke.

I'm not sure I'll be able to do anything today. I tried sleeping but I'm so nervous and over-stressed that I couldn't. I'm honestly not sure how I'll make it through the day, especially if cuts really do continue. My team was not affected yesterday, so if there's more, chances are we will be.

The amount of stress this company has caused in the past year to me and my colleagues is unbelievable.

They expect us to work as if everything is ok, while hearing every couple of weeks that someone is laid off.

Today has been an especially difficult day, and I can’t focus on anything. Supposed to leave on holiday on Monday, not knowing whether I’ll have a job to return to.

Not worth it.

We're always seeing more cuts, fewer benefits, managers who know they can do whatever they want, and so many other things. This place fell so far so fast.

So many shakeups among the leadership over the years and things keep getting worse. It's like we're incapable of bringing in or selecting people who are actually capable of leading.

Cesar just announced the President Club. Roughly 150 people going to Four Seasons in Sydney. What's something like that gotta cost? How many FTEs could it have saved?

Can it get any more disrespectful than that?