#performance

https://www.zerohedge.com/ai/was-amazons-tokenmaxxing-fiasco-behind-claudes-500m-mystery-bill

That's great. That's great.

Seems like the sort of thing that could happen at MetLife as they try to measure who is "doing" AI.

Any rumors for next round and where it’ll be focused?

I received exceptional ratings but zero RSUs which is atypical to years past. A bit worried if this lack of long term comp incentive implies anything.

So many people out on paternity and extended maternity leaves. Why isn't their work reassigned? Can't get anything done because their piece is an input. Irritated that this is impacting my ability to deliver upon objectives.

Has anyone ever seen/have had experience with termination due to performance outside the annual PA process, i.e. not talking about safety or ethics violations kind of events

Im sorry i dont mean literally but i have to question whats happening there because not many people i work with have a damn clue how to do their job and have no freakin work ethic what so ever. And its getting worse with each new recruit brought on board. That location has always been known as an issue so very shocking when it was announced a growth location but something has got to give. There are way too many of you that are just a red flag so what gives seriously

They always have an excuse on earnings calls. Covid, Presidential elections, war, gas prices, etc. When will analysts call their bluff? They’re so far off from paying off their debt. If they don’t do sell offs, they will continue to cut expenses (headcount) every quarter to make the numbers look better.

@e2+1kr1f5ck0 said it perfectly.

Nike's turnaround effort has not been a quick pivot, to borrow a basketball term. It has been more like a wobbly slide on a dusty gym floor. The stock price peaked at over $170 in late 2021. It was down to $79 in October 2024, when company lifer Elliott Hill returned from retirement to take over and set things right. Now it is $46, a price investors could have paid nearly a dozen years ago.

There are two more problems. First, although shares are cheaper than they were, they are not trading at a deep and obvious discount, at 24 times projected earnings for the company's fiscal year ending May 2027. A bounceback in earnings would help, but estimates for the years ahead have been slipping.

Second, Hill is already doing the things investors are demanding: refocusing the company on performance shoes after years of shuffling along on casual designs, and repairing relationships with stores after an arrogant move online. There are pockets of success, like a modest rebound in North American sales in the latest quarter. But it has not been enough.

It is a tempting buy when one of history's great growth stocks has fallen so much. A 3.6% dividend is a sweetener. But investors should first consider the possibility that Nike's problems run deeper than they appear.

A plunge in demand from China is clearly a key concern, but there are also questions over whether Nike has lost its marketing edge, amid what might be a shift in the phenomenon that brought it to dominance to begin with: basketball stardom. It may be wise to wait for more progress before buying shares.

## Shoe Drop

An investor who held Nike from the start would have no regrets. Shares sold for 18 cents apiece, split-adjusted, at the initial public offering in 1980. But the price had dropped to 12 cents by Oct. 26, 1984. That was the day Nike gambled a then-unheard-of $2.5 million on a five-year shoe deal with a college basketball star who had not yet played a day in the pros: Michael Jordan. The pact was so transformative that Ben Affleck made a 2023 movie about the executive who landed it, called Air, starring Matt Damon.

It was not just that Jordan won six championships with the Chicago Bulls in the 1990s, or thrilled fans with soaring dunks. The 1990s were the twilight of monoculture, when consumers watched the same television shows and read the same magazines, before the internet splintered audiences.

The 1992 Olympic "Dream Team" showed Jordan off to an adoring world. In marketing, there is a proprietary measure of celebrity reach and popularity called the Q Score. Anything over 20 is excellent, and 40 is a rare pop miracle. In the 1990s, Pope John Paul II, a celebrity pontiff if ever there was one, is said to have scored in the low-to-mid 40s. Jordan hit 56. Everyone knew him, and everyone liked him. He made Nike the place to be for top athletes.

In Nike's fiscal year ended May 2025, its Jordan brand did $7.3 billion in sales, or 15% of the company's total. But that dollar figure was down a painful 16% from the year before.

For years, the brand generated hype through limited releases and instant sellouts of retro shoes, which "sneakerheads" traded on secondary markets. During the pandemic, Nike flooded the market, creating an easy boost for sales and profits, but also suffocating its hard-won hype.

Two disastrous things happened around the same time. Nike's Consumer Direct Acceleration strategy under previous CEO John Donahoe involved cutting ties with middling shoe retailers and reducing allocations to longtime partner Foot Locker, while pitching more shoes online for a higher cut of profits. Meanwhile, consumer preference abruptly shifted away from bulky basketball silhouettes toward running aesthetics, especially dad shoes and tech wear. New Balance, Hoka, and On surged, and stores that had been spurned by Nike were happy to give them shelf space.

## The Skeptic

If there is a measure beyond Nike's stock price that captures its slump, it might be operating margin, which averaged around 13% over the decade through May 2024, and is projected to dip below 6% for the year through May 2026.

Part of the decline is necessary medicine. CEO Hill has pulled back on Jordan retro models, along with an oversaturated basketball low-top turned lifestyle shoe called Dunks. He is also making amends with retailers, which has involved accepting humbler economics. The bull case on Nike - less than half of Wall Street analysts say to buy the stock today, versus more than three-quarters at its 2021 peak - is that margins will revert to normal once Nike regains its footing.

Jay Sole at UBS is not so sure. For one thing, double-digit margins for sneaker giants are unusual. Adidas (ADS) had an 8% margin last year, and it led Puma (PUM) and Under Armour (UA). Also, it is unclear how much Nike needs to shrink to grow. Sportswear, including apparel, has recently been half of sales, Sole reckons, even though the company once said it should never be more than 30%. This risks spending down brand equity that was built with performance shoes, and cultivating a customer base of trend chasers, not brand loyalists.

Stepping back, Sole wonders whether Nike has lost what he calls its superpower: the ability to be all things to all people. "Most brands have some sort of limitation," he says. "They are footwear only or they are apparel only, or they are one country only, or they are one sport only, because that is sort of what they are known as. And it is hard to be more than that."

Lululemon Athletica (LULU, +2.90%), for example, attracts primarily women, and Under Armour attracts primarily men. In past UBS surveys that asked respondents which brands are for them, most topped out at 60%, but Nike hit 95%. It sells to men, women, young, old, suburban, urban, and participants in just about every sport, or no sports.

i’m in finance. My SD lives well over two hours away from BR. He has multiple Asso. Directors on the team who also live over two hours away. he calls into meetings from his kids atheltic events.We’re required to go into these office but these fools are cheating Verizon by leaving early on in-office days (and showing up late. maybe work from 10-2 with a long lunch?), not working, shoving work down on lower employees, and other selfish acts that hurt the company. why would someone be hired who lives in a city over 2 hours away?

I get it for EVPs. but for a lowly SD? our SVP also lives 3 hours away from her home office. this is why Verizon’s performance has been suffering for YEARS and maybe DECADES

I have seen this happen to several people I work with. They are so good at what they do that management refuses to move them up because filling their current role would be too hard AND they make them look good. They're basically being punished for being competent.

At Bolt, Breslow said, the HR team “was creating problems that didn’t exist,” as part of “a culture of not getting things done and complaining a lot.” “The problems disappeared when I let them go.”

https://nypost.com/2026/05/26/opinion/bye-bye-hr-lets-hope-bolt-financial-ceo-ryan-breslow-starts-a-trend/

Here are some of the largest and most prominent companies currently sitting near the bottom of their yearly range:

Do you remember a few years ago when the bank changed multiple procedures surrounding deposit migrations for major risk and compliance reasons where people were manipulating incentives? At that time, branch managers lost the ability to initiate or process them directly, and regional leadership could no longer broadly approve deposit migrations without reviewing supporting documentation. Managers also previously had visibility into tracking deposits moving to and from their centers and had to agree to it.

That level of transparency no longer exists. Branch managers are now unable to view the underlying details, while area and regional leadership still appear to have the ability to add deposits to certain branches’ goals and remove them from others — all with little visibility or oversight. Unless someone knows how to navigate obscure reports, they may never even notice these adjustments taking place. Even then, managers can only see the dollar impact per week, not the supporting account information or documentation that justified the monthly deposit area/region migration, as was available years ago. These detailed reports are only visible to area managers and above now. If your area manager chooses to not disclose to you anything, you’ll never know what’s going on behind the scenes. If you do find out from your own research, you’ll never know why and they may never answer you with a direct answer if you caught some funny business.

This has become increasingly concerning because many strong-performing managers feel like they are working hard without seeing results reflected fairly. Some who investigated further discovered that their branches had unfavorable deposit migrations applied against them with no clear explanation provided. When questions are raised, responses are often vague, evasive, or framed as “for valid reasons” without identifying the accounts or rationale involved to the effected branch or manager.

What makes the situation more troubling is that some of the branches seeing repeated goal increases through these regional or area-level deposit migrations tend to be branches that have strained relationships with leadership due to the branches having a low appetite to engage in unscrupulous behavior. Meanwhile, pawn branches viewed more favorably by leadership have reportedly received repeated goal reductions through the same behind-the-scenes process. These changes can apparently be made quietly with a few clicks, without disclosure, communication, or accountability to the affected branches. When clarification is requested, there seems to be little transparency and few direct answers.

We were informed that in situations where a previous branch held deposits in December but later lost them, credit can shift between branches based on where the client previously maintained balances. For example, if you bring a client’s funds to your branch by selling them another product at a different branch, the credit for those deposits may be reassigned to the other branch depending on prior year balances regardless that those balances were lost earlier in this year.

We were also told there is no formal distinction between “new” and “existing” money in certain tracking systems, and that current reporting tools may not fully reflect these scenarios yet. As a result, even if a client transfers funds from an existing account at another cost center into a newly opened account, those new money funds may still be added back to your goal by area and region because the system doesn’t recognize new money in the rules yet, if it was spent in the first few months of the year and you had an actual new money event with your client.

In practice, this also means that even when new funds are deposited into an account opened with transferred balances—and those balances are used immediately—the full amount may still be credited back toward the originating branch’s goals under current accounting or reporting rules and added back as a goal to yours, meanwhile you already had it reduced when it left days after the account opening.

time to replace our good old CTO. He is old and not performing optimal. He should be fired!!!!

The only consistent message quarter to quarter is revenue declining faster than forecast. The stock price falling into the single digits says everything. If you’ve listened to this company’s analyst calls long enough you know management just pivots to whatever narrative works in the moment and they’re running out of narratives faster than revenue streams. Easily the worst management team this company has ever had.

Exactly what @aq+1kr2bpeh6 said.

I had to laugh.

"AI produces gains where tasks are structured, feedback is quick, and performance is measurable. It does not magically fix bad management, muddled processes, or poor judgment. "

Sooo...who is going to tell Derek Flowers?

https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/5892858-ai-workplace-divide-careers/

I'm watching this happen right now with a person on my team who got bumped up two levels in less than a year. On paper, he looked great, lots of years in the industry, confident in interviews, talked a big game about process improvement. In practice, he doesn't understand the basics of what we do, he's broken two different workflows because he changed things without asking, and the rest of us spend about five hours a week quietly undoing his mistakes. The person who promoted him clearly didn't do any real checking. Now the rest of us are paying for it, and the guy himself is clearly stressed and embarrassed. It's a failure at every level and it happens here constantly.

Morningstar Percentile Rankings Through 5/23.

Fund Name Percentile Rank
MoA Intermediate Bond Fund 98
MoA Retirement Income Fund 94
MoA Clear Passage 2020 Fund 93
MoA Core Bond Fund 90
MoA Clear Passage 2050 Fund 85
MoA Clear Passage 2055 Fund 85
MoA Clear Passage 2060 Fund 84
MoA Clear Passage 2045 Fund 83
MoA Clear Passage 2070 Fund 83
MoA Clear Passage 2065 Fund 81
MoA Mid Cap Value Fund 80
MoA Clear Passage 2040 Fund 79
MoA Clear Passage 2035 Fund 77
MoA Clear Passage 2030 Fund 76
MoA Clear Passage 2025 Fund 75
MoA International Fund 74
MoA Conservative Allocation Fund67
MoA Mid Cap Growth Fund 62
MoA Catholic Values Index Fund 56
MoA Small Cap Value Fund 55
MoA Moderate Allocation Fund 54
MoA Aggressive Allocation Fund 52
MoA Balanced Fund 49
MoA Small Cap Equity Index Fund 45
MoA Mid Cap Equity Index Fund 38

The higher the percentile rank, the worse the performance. MOA funds have tanked. how is overpaid capital mismanagement going to spin this

time to sell Capital Management to raise revenue & get better returns

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-05-20/ceos-at-novo-nestle-push-work-cultures-into-results-mode

I'm the only person cut from my entire group, and when I asked my manager why, he couldn't give me an answer. He told me I was a top performer, that my skills were exactly what the project needed, and that the project itself is a priority. None of it adds up, and I don't understand why this happened.

Wow. It's about time.

Was asked to persue this. What are the real upsides? I read 15-20% base pay jump based on quartile (I’m in top already)? Seems slight for the order of magnitude of workload increase I may see. If offered has anyone negotiated up, and to what? (30% was my gut)? To what %? And beyond base pay what perks are LL5 to offset the (seemingly) minimal pay bump?

Anyone else at BTC surprised to receive a mid year raise? My supervisor said that I had earned it with my performance and also due to the rising inflation here in India. I thought raises were only in January so this is a nice surprise as a new hire that my salary is increasing already.

Oracle has just scratched the surface with its 10% layoff and showed some positivity with its operational performance in layoff. Its operational performance is still weak.
Its trying to show the investors that it is high tech or growth stock. But it is not. Oracle has history of losses. Just market hype has increased and made it safe for now.
June earnings numbers will show it all

An internal corporate audit is in progress with new CFO and if she is really good there will be heavy cutdown of heads in upcoming qtr. Lots of products will be trashed.
Prepare for your best ... Jump the ship before its too late...

It's what...nearly two years since he was brought in as the technology executive management team member to fix Citi's age old problems. What/How has he delivered so far? Considering what his directs (forget the whole team) costs Citi? What's the ROI?

Biggest question to answer - Would Citi ever be in a position to exit the CO had it not been some other administration in place (either Republican different than Pres. Trump or a Dem Pres.)? If the answer is no, then is it not clear that Tim Ryan has failed misreably at his job? 2 years is a long time at that level. Then again....CO was issued under Jane's watch and her total comp and position has only climbed higher and higher every year, despiteg Citik having paid nearly half a billion dollars in just fines since the 2020 CO. She's costed Citi more than that already...she ain't in any position to hold Tim accountable for anything

With Cisco losing market share, the responsibilities of that are squarely on the portfolio leaders, AVPs, SEDs, ODs, SSEMs, RMs, and SEMs. They have failed to hold their people accountable. Due to the failure of these so called leaders, good people have been impacted and will continue to be impacted. The answer cannot be to just add portfolio AEs and SEs. It is time to LR the portfolio leaders with real leaders that can lead the business and hold people accountable.

It is incredible that Dell could hit $300 a share. Inconceivable!

The performance matrix they use is setting employees up to fail so they can terminate workers in order to off shore jobs. They target employees with tenure, accommodations, and fully remote employees. They are trying to cut people to save a buck

:(

I feel so bad for these people they worked so hard to get to where they were and we’re all very high performing branch managers. Hopefully a lot can find a spot and be retained.

The role just wasn’t deemed to be profitable from an ROI standpoint seems like which isn’t shocking.

R2Bs meeting was lack luster. They want them going door to door 5-6 hours a day and only increased at risk by less than $500 a month. They did not increase base pay or offer a vehicle stipend.

Business Sales On Demand will be a big failure for Verizon and Verizon Business will keep taking the blame for lack of performance. I would caution business owners to stay away from Verizon Business till they find themselves, if ever, again.

Listed SS as one of the top companies to work for. LinkedIn has SS as the best workplaces to grow. Well...there you go. We all know the truth.

The Barbie bump didn’t last long and MOTU isn’t seeing a bump at. Maybe the Barney movie will do it…..

How are shareholders not demanding a change?

Just heard our AUA had grown by 33% since 2021. Does anyone know that the S&P500 is up 77% over the past 5 years?

Down 4% already today , a big gap down

Up days were on low volume, fund managers are getting out of this stock

OT won't be in existence in it's current form in 12 months. At 15 bucks it will be taken by PE

It seems that now our bonuses are also calculated with the WHAT and HOW scores. My manager created easy goals for a couple of colleagues who are her friends and asked them to copy paste them in the system. But with me, we used AI and my my goals are almost impossible to achieve. I don't think I shall get a good WHAT or HOW score even if I try too hard. And because the success of my goals is dependent on others, I am finding it hard to show that I am working harder than the colleagues with easier goals. Long story short, it feels like the new performance management makes it super easy for managers to give more bonus and salary appraisal to their friends. Is moving into another team my only choice? Are they really planning layoffs by giving bad scores? Some colleague was saying that a PiP means you don't even get severance and they can lay you off anytime. I can't ask my manager yet because she is very politik and cares more about networking than about our work. If the culture is only going to get worse I may even look for a job outside but there aren't many opportunities right now. I am based near Heidelberg in case that matters.

Audit just did a “shark tank” or “performance elimination.” The Pitch, The Cut….Wow!!!

Nike only lays people off when changing the organization structure, not when someone is doing a really cr-p job or royally sc--ws up a business.

Why doesn’t Nike fire people more often for poor performance?

While not totally indicative, Glassdoor rankings of CEOs are used by Elliott and others in assessing how real employees feel about CEOs and their performance. Looking at Glassdoor, here is how Phillips 66 stacks up in the industry regarding approval rating, senior management rating, and the other number is would employees recommend to a friend:

CEO approval rating / Senior Management Rating (out of 5) / Would Recommend Company to a Friend (%)

Phillips: 56% / 2.8 / 63%
Valero: 71% / 3.6 / 80%
Marathon: 77% / 3.5 / 76%
PBF: 50% / 3.0 / 60%
HollyFrontier: 77% / 2.8 / 61%
Enterprise Products: 83% / 3.6 / 75%
Williams: 85% / 3.2 / 66%
Targa: 87% / 3.8 / 75%
LyondellBasell: 60% / 3.2 / 66%
Dow: 67% / 3.4 / 73%

Notice anything? PSX is PBF and HollyFrontier. Let’s stop pretending.

Surprisingly the share is +10€ today
Anybody knows the reason ?

Sell or Wait ?