#worklifebalance

I wonder how many of us will institute personal boundaries when we go back 100% in September? I will not be working remotely at all - this means I won't be doing anything outside of 9 AM - 5 PM EST. If you can't be flexible with me, then I am not going to be flexible with you Fidelity. Why should I be getting up early to have a meeting with offshore, struggling to get my kids on the bus, and then have a long commute just to take calls with people on zoom?

What are some unhinged things you get away with when working remote? Something on the keypad to keep you active on teams? Never opening teams/ email all day? Taking a maternity leave every year?
For those who have quiet quitted drop your tips below

Anyone have experience negotiating your exit from a HQ role? Not getting laid off. Leaving on your own terms when you and your leader agree the work has changed enough to not fit. Open roles are scarce for my intended trajectory.

I joined USAA as an intern few months back, hoping to build my career here. After hearing too many good thinks on the web. Unfortunately, the experience was disappointing enough that I decided to leave for another bank last week.

The biggest issue was the constant organizational changes. Teams and priorities kept shifting, making it difficult to focus on meaningful work or feel any sense of stability. On top of that, budget constraints seemed to impact every decision, resulting in limited resources and frequent compromises.

The work culture was heavily driven by micromanagement. Every story and task required excessive oversight from the product manager, leaving very little room for engineers to make decisions or take ownership. Instead of being trusted to deliver, it often felt like every small detail had to be monitored and approved.

The return-to-office policy made things even worse. Employees were expected to be in the office four days a week regardless of personal circumstances. It didn't matter if you had been on an overnight production call and barely slept—you were still expected to show up in the office the next morning. There was little flexibility or consideration for employee well-being. The work life balance is zero here. Its strange that USAA is still claiming themselves as best companies to work for and misled the future employees

To sum it up, the environment felt rigid, exhausting, and not conducive to learning or growth, especially for someone early in their career. I eventually decided to move on and accepted an opportunity at another bank that offers a healthier work environment, better trust in employees, and a much more sustainable work-life balance. Felt like a titanic to me and only course of action was to jump off before it sinks.

I go on vacation tomorrow and my manager wanted to make sure I had my phone with me. "Why? More layoffs", I asked.

She confirmed yes. I told her if I'm hit, just call me in Japan and rip the band aid off.

Happy vacation to me!

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/economy/2026/07/09/why-americans-leave-workforce/90826379007/

All they need to do is come to this forum. Corporate America is abusing the workforce and then going overseas where abuse is more tolerated.

Things will not improve, they will not learn, there is no greener grass elsewhere.

The best you can do is learn to detach from all this - accept and embrace the sh-t show.

It’s been almost a month since we were required to return to the office in the name of "collaboration," and all I have seen is people including leaders finding different ways to minimize their time in the office.
Leaders have families to take care of too, so many leave after just a few hours because they need to pick up their kids from camp or school. It’s a reminder that everyone is balancing work with personal responsibilities.
Meanwhile, I haven’t seen any meaningful increase in collaboration. What I have seen is hours lost commuting, searching for parking, walking to and from the office, and dealing with all the extra logistics. It feels like a significant waste of time and energy that could have been spent doing actual work.

I have been in a legally protected status, but now theyre after my job. been in this place for 5 years and this is what they do. if you tote work life balance, where is the example. hikes are dismall, childcare is so darn expensive and if you make changes according to the employee handbook, they decide to drop you with a hot potato.. new parents be damned! product and innnovation group and digital assets is a horrible place. stay away. ive gotten a lawyer

Someone was saying they heard that the FL Regional center was going back to on-site 1 week a month, seems strange as most sites are going to full time on site. Probably just a wishful thinking rumor.

JVB demoted because she couldn’t meet target in MM sales. Now Shelly Goodman ‘retiring’ because she couldn’t unravel the destruction JVB left behind. For those of you outside of sales that complain about RTO, sales has the most valid reason to complain. Sales is forced to office 5x just like everyone else. Think of the time on the road we could be in front of customers. Instead, we have to come to office daily to meet an in office badge swipe quota while sales attainments circle the drain. We can go into the field to meet customers and try to sale fiber and mobility but the hours we lose daily by commuting instead of acquiring revenue is astounding. Yes, we are in the field but the hours commuting eats up some of that time and we see it in quarter after quarter revenue decline. When sales is set up to fail, we all will.

Curious what your locations are like around the use of flex office space. As we know these offices should be used for private conversations or meetings as needed and not to be used for a full day of work. Is your location like mine where anyone with an SVP officer title are all self absorbed and have turned these spaces into their own personal offices and not allowing fair access to them? Extreme ego maniacs, you’re not that important!

Fun fact before I forget visiting this site (got a better job elsewhere); my friend did high end catering in San Ramon area. He did a private house and told me “hey buddy, I think I did an event for your company”. Sure enough I opened website to show him leadership and he said it was them. They all have zombie personalities behind closed doors. That politician personality is not just for us, its who they are. Lol imagine that act non stop.

Everyone: one day they will kick you out, get advanced degrees licenses, do projects you want (in 6 months you will get a new supervisor and can lie about your responsibilities). There is a flaw in system, dont analyze it to death here: exploit it. Good luck.

Clocking off at 3pm Fridays is a good thing for employees. The email says flexible working which implies that we are expected to have worked 40hrs by 3pm, which is fine, but it is not clear, especially as hourly staff get a paid day off in lieu.
If we are allowed to clock off at 3pm regardless, that’s a mess, if someone starts work at 8am and a colleague starts at 10am do they both still finish at 3, can we change the day if workloads prevent an early Friday finish?

I don't hate my life anymore!

Stop putting AI meetings during lunch hour. We already know AI is coming for our jobs because you’re forcing it down our throats! Now you want to take my lunch too!!!!

When people say “be grateful the company is paying you”… please remember:

• you are trading skills and time for pay
• you don’t owe a billionaire a thing

Happy a happy week.

I've been here eighteen years and I'm watching everything I valued about this place disappear. The good people are leaving, projects are dying, and what's left truly isn't worth staying for.

I keep seeing people expect this to be over soon and that things will go back to normal. It's hard not to pity them. Normal is so far behind us it's barely a dot on the horizon anymore. There's no "over soon." This horror is the new normal.

I know that asking when the next round will happen is probably pointless because nobody really knows, nut I can never stop myself. It used to be that layoffs were rare events, but now they feel like a regular occurrence. That's not acceptable and I refuse to pretend it is.

Any inspiring stories here on how you made the move to the big city leaving comfort zone to save your own job? What sacrifices you had to make and how did you decide to be mentally tough for the family to do so?

I usually love this time of year, but I couldn't get into it this weekend. The constant stress of this job has just su-ked all the happiness out of me.

I know of no one that has ever been written up or chastised for not coming to the office though. If you are an individual contributor you did your job fine during COVID and there is virtually no reason for you to come into the office anymore. I mean the office is louder, more chaotic, food is as expensive as anywhere else. People are more likely to stand around and socialize than do actual work. The commute time of the individual gets baked into the work day more often than not because they only have so many hours before they need to take care of the household. It is abhorrently inefficient. To top it all off very few teams are fully located in one office. So you are effectively coming in to simply jump on conference calls with teams from all over the world literally. I can understand a once a week requirement just because we are social animals and there is genuine need for socialization with one another. Outside of once a week though it is strictly suboptimal working conditions. Also just imagine the savings if VZ truly sold off all its offices and cancelled all leases.

Perfectly stated, @jb+1kv47wr3d.

I've come to realize that no matter how hard you work or how much you care, you're just a number to the people running this place. It took me a while to accept that, but once I did, I stopped taking things so personally. It's actually liberating.

Can we at least agree on that?

I keep asking myself that same question over and over again. Why do we bother? People work so hard, they sacrifice so much, and what do they get in return? They get treated like they don't matter, walked all over, and eventually discarded. The people who actually care about this place, the ones who genuinely give a damn, they're all leaving. And who can blame them? There's no point anymore.

Is anyone else struggling to find any drive to keep going here?

I got out and my life changed overnight. You have no idea how much of your anxiety is caused by this place until you leave.

Is moonlighting ok during notice period?

But knowing how many of our jobs are being offshored - and not just at HCSC - it's a bit hard to feel all that patriotic.

It's a new week, layoffs are behind us (at least for now), but the atmosphere still feels heavy. I have a feeling productivity is down as well. I certainly still can't concentrate fully on work. You can only push people so much before it starts influencing their performance.

I'm not saying we should accept how things are at Walmart, but I've been looking around and I can't find any retailer that actually treats its employees well. Even the ones that are performing better financially are just as bad to their people. It seems like the only way to get out of this is to leave retail entirely. Otherwise you're just moving from one bad situation to another.

I can't shake this feeling of dread even though logically I know nothing major is happening this week. I guess Fiserv finally broke me.

A few days off used to be enough to reset, but now it's not even close. I don't think any amount of time away would make me actually want to come back here.

It's amazing how quickly things can change. I used to genuinely love my job. I was excited to do it, and I felt good about what I was doing. Now I spend most of my time thinking about how to get out. I just want a way out.

I've been thinking lately about how I feel about the possibility of layoffs, and I realized something that surprised me. I'm not scared anymore. In fact, part of me is actually kind of hoping it happens. I genuinely like what I do, but Honeywell has gone out of its way to make everything harder, more complicated, and less satisfying. If getting laid off is what it takes to get out of here, I think I'd actually feel relieved. What does that say about a place that some of its employees feel that way?

I'm trying to understand how this works. When someone gets laid off, do they leave that same day or is there a period where they're expected to stay on? New here, if it's not obvious, and nobody on my team was affected this time, but I know it won't last and I'd like to know.

Rep for Chicago suburbs here. I’m getting phone calls from 5 different Jewel stores today looking for service. F that. I’m not picking up and leaving my phone on for sh--s and giggles.