#worklifebalance

Just pastures that haven’t been left to dry out and die. It took a while to find something else, but I gave it a real go. Staying here wasn’t just unbearable, it felt reckless. Months of layoffs with no end in sight, and the company’s future obscured, to put it mildly. The pay is about the same, there seems to be some semblance of work-life balance, and most importantly, there’s no amount of money that can buy peace of mind.

I was laid off a couple years ago from at Schwab. And I admit that at the time I was pretty worried about my future and aLeo angry at the sleezy shenanigans that went down in my management chain that got me on the list.

But you know what? It, honestly, was the best thing that could ever have happened to me.

It turns out, laying me off from the worst employer I’ve ever had
In my career, gave me the motivation to go over my finances with a fine toothed comb and push me hard enough to actually try the “semi retired “thing and I have been living the high life ever since! I’ve taken a half dozen trips, started some new hobbies, spent more time with friends, taken some freelance work on occasion when I decided I wanted to not because I had to… I am a much happier person overall than I ever was when I was working at Schwab.

So I guess, in a way, I’d like to THANK Schwab for being such a miserable place at work that it forced me to think of other possibilities I might not have considered otherwise.

So my advice to you, if you are in a similar position and can make it happen, maybe it’s something you should think about!

After all, why your remaining years of full time employment working for mo--ns? Just something to think about.

I’ve seen friends and colleagues develop serious health problems because of the pressure here. Stress seems to be the norm and the leadership couldn't care less about balance or wellbeing. Watching people struggle like that makes it hard to stay motivated and makes me think twice about sticking around.

If MW and company want to continue destroying morale and this company then if anyone out there is still working hard for Chevron should stop now. Put in the bare minimum. If we have to go into the office 4 days a week, then no late night or early morning meetings with India. S crew them. Collect your paycheck and do nearly anything else. For those saying "have a work ethic and self respect", having self respect is taking back your time and life from a company who obviously hates its employees so the right thing to do is bare minimum work!

At some point you realize the job is just a paycheck. All the talk about loyalty, impact, and family is a sales pitch. Do your work, keep your boundaries, and stop believing that going above and beyond will save you when budgets tighten. And you'll be much happier for it in the end.

I’m investing in my own skills because clearly no one else is going to. I feel like this place is intentionally pigeonholing us into positions so we don’t have too many options to leave unless they’re the ones to kick us out. Anyhow, if there ever was a time to start expanding your skills people, it’s now.

The world is more unpredictable and dangerous than ever, yet corporate America is dragging people back into offices. At a time when safety, flexibility, and family should come first, pulling people farther from home makes no sense. If something were to happen, being close to loved ones and communities matters most. Forcing rigid return-to-office policies isn’t leadership — it’s reckless. Real leadership means empathy, foresight, and moving forward, not clinging to broken traditions. When does the next pulse survey go out?

The company will extract every bit of effort you can give while offering almost nothing in return. Eventually, the abuse will end when the company collapses, but by then, the damage to your sanity and personal life will already be done. Just some friendly advice from somebody who's been here for way too long.

Just a reminder to get up, take a break, get away from your computer regularly. Take 5 or 10 minutes every hour to focus on yourself. The clown Robin can afford it, and they're going to mark 25% of us as not meets anyway :)

Corporate life can drain your enthusiasm, no matter where you're at. I joined from a small company and even there, the experience of cursing bosses and endless bureaucracy ki-ls your excitement. You’re basically always choosing between two unpleasant extremes.

Four years here is what it took for me to be done. The toll this place takes isn’t worth the paycheck anymore. I dread logging in every single day, and I can’t imagine ever feeling any different. The whole system is built to grind people down until they finally break, and I guess I did.

• US employers are hiring fewer workers, and some are looking to get rid of existing ones.
• Business leaders cited RTO mandates as one way they're able to reduce headcount without layoffs.
• The acknowledgment confirms a piece of what some observers have long suspected about the RTO push.

https://www.businessinsider.com/rto-mandates-driving-workers-quit-helping-employers-avoid-layoffs-2025-9

I’’ll start:

Yearly pay raises close to or exceeding inflation
Accepting salary based on 35hr/wk, flash forward, management expectation of 40-50, no adjustment
Pressure to ignore benefits paid by lower salary like RFC for “azz in chair” time

I keep seeing more companie rolling out unlimited PTO policies and I’m curious what people here think… Some say it’s a game changer, others argue it’s just a sick scam to avoid paying out unused vacation…..unlimited PTO sounds amazing. No accruals, no use it or lose it deadlines, and more flexibility for employees to recharge. It can also be a big draw for talent in competitive job markets, plus it cuts down HR headaches for employers…flip side. A lot of employees actually end up taking less time off because of workload pressure or guilt. Some people worry it’s just a way for companies to save money on vacation payouts. And without clear guidelines, it can feel like a trap rather than a benefit.

So, what do you think? Does it feel like a genuine benefit, or more like a scam?

It is not worth it! I have seen professionals work until they died and what is the point of that? The stress will ki-l you. Take some time for yourself as you near your golden years. You will also have time to hone your investment skills and manage your investments yourself. Pursue your hobbies while you have plenty of energy and never stop learning.

I’ll never understand the mindset of people who think their job is validated by swiping into an office instead of actually producing results. Walking past a turnstile doesn’t make you valuable. Sitting in a cube doesn’t make you productive. And bragging about being “present” doesn’t make customers any happier.

The real measure of worth here is what you deliver — the problems you solve, the customers you help, the value you create. That used to be obvious. But now we’ve got folks acting like their contribution is measured in commutes and cube hours. That’s not work, that’s theater.

AT&T doesn’t survive on badge swipes. It survives on results. The sooner this company remembers that, the sooner we stop bleeding talent to competitors who already figured it out.

I've been back at full time office for almost 2.5 years. I saw the writing on the wall and decided to do 5 days even before that mandate came out. Loved the initial months of WFH but the days became longer and longer. I was averaging 53-55 hours per week. Now I do a straight 40 and leave. When asked about working additional hours I cite an after-work obligation I need to attend to. I continue to receive good reviews, decent bonuses and team awards. The quality of life improvement in taking back those 13-15 hours a week is amazing. I get the downside of RTO for the masses, but I'd like to know if others have recaptured the additional hours they were giving away for free before 5 days a week in-office was mandated.

"...consistent with Verizon ways, I paid millions to the big 4 consulting firms, hired an internal transformation team, brought in the data & analytics teams and pitted them all against each other to develop an AI prompt. I changed my mind constantly so that the cross functional group would be aimless and confused while I hoarded power. After months of back to back meetings causing divorces, parents missing their kids activities, massive burnout and more - I just did the prompt myself in 2 minutes. I then blamed everyone for wasting so much money, did a reorg and promoted myself. Proud to be a transformation vz leader pushing forward the art of the possible!"
5 hours ago by Anonymous | 2 reactions (+2/-0) | Reply
Post ID: @aq+1k4ay94vk

When my husband was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer my FA told be to look after my husband and my family, that my job would always be there for me. He had arrangements for me to work from home when things were bad after treatments and boy were they bad. I still signed every day and returned phone calls. I never missed a thing to be completed for our clients. I even returned phone calls from a private spot in the hospital. My FA was completely satisfied with the work being done. I was working from home and office since last December. Never heard from HO once. July I get a phone call from HO stating that I was committing time sheet fraud. Never once was I told from them to complete one and was fired right then. No warning, nothing. My FA was as devastated as I was. I did what I was told to do and got fired. Edward Jones does not care about their staff, Only BIG PROFITS!!!.. I worked 15 years for them and had Outstanding Reports since I started... I am heart broken. A sick husband and no income.. The public needs to know all about EJ and their abuse of staff...

Bad enough that every day feels like a punishment for a choice I barely remember making.
And if I dare complain, Ernest’s voice echoes in my head: “You self-selected for this role.”

The expectations?
They are not expectations. They are shackles.

Seven days a week. Twenty-four hours a day. No pause. No mercy. No life. And still “You self-selected for this role.”
Four jobs crammed into one because people burn out and leave, and replacements never come. Their absence becomes my burden. And still “You self-selected for this role.”
Forced into company charity work, even though my own family barely remembers what I look like. And still “You self-selected for this role.”
Begging for scraps of budget, even with a team of a hundred souls. Every dollar has to pass through Ernest, because we are all assumed to be thieves stealing from his bonus. Because God knows, we will never see one. But of course “You self-selected for this role.”

I missed my son’s entire summer of sports. Every game. Every smile. Every memory.
Gone. Because I was chained here.
I leave home at five in the morning, return after seven at night, and collapse into bed only to wake up still exhausted.
I have fallen asleep in the bathroom at work. I have fallen asleep driving to work.
I confessed this once to my colleagues. You know what they said?
“Do not say anything. Do not make Ernest angry. He does not care.”

And he does not.

We cancelled the VIA because Ernest did not want to hear the complaints.
The job market is brutal, and he knows it. He wears it like armor, like permission to treat us all like dirt. Like criminals. As if respect is too expensive a luxury to waste on us.

Quarterly reviews? Forget it. My boss literally told me to just get AI to generate something. Promotions? Not a chance. Ernest fills jobs from the outside, proudly waving the diversity flag, while those of us drowning here never get pulled from the water.

Every single person in Supply Chain hates their job in Spring.
We are exhausted. We are broken. We bleed for this place, and in return we get nothing. No bonuses. No stock worth anything. Just the knowledge that Ernest collects his fat paycheck on the blood and sweat of our backs.

And the Fire Side Chat?
God. Two hours before, you will hear someone calling this place what it is, a shithole. But once the cameras roll, suddenly it is smiles and empty words about how great it all is.
It is pathetic. It is tragic.
We are so dysfunctional it hurts.

RTO really boils down to two drivers: control, and the financial interests that CxOs hold in commercial real estate companies. The more employees are physically in the office, the more those properties stay profitable. It has little to do with productivity and everything to do with money and power.

On a personal level, RTO has increased my monthly costs by about 25% compared to working from home. Between gas, parking, meals, and other daily expenses, the difference adds up quickly. On top of that, I’m losing about 90 minutes a day to commuting - time that could have gone into either more focused work or simply maintaining some balance at home.

So while companies frame RTO as being about culture or collaboration, for workers it often just means higher costs, less time, and no real improvement in output.

I’ll never understand the people on these threads who equate working from home with not working. It’s frustrating that even the ELT has started to adopt that attitude. We’re three rounds of layoffs in after three years, and it’s not because people were slacking off just because they weren’t physically on site. In my group we were almost entirely WFH, regularly putting in 50-hour weeks.

Ironically, WFH actually makes it easier to work longer hours, since the project is always right there in the next room, waiting to be picked up again in the evening. Now, to drive attrition, the ELT wants me to give up an hour and a half of my day to commute. I’ll still end up bringing work home, but I won’t be able to put in the same evening hours or keep up with household responsibilities once the commute is added on.

I left without any sense of guilt, because I knew I needed a job that didn’t consume my evenings and weekends. At first, I worried about letting my team down, but honestly, no one wins when you’re burned out and running on fumes. Moving to a role with a healthier balance has reminded me how much better life feels when work isn’t draining every ounce of energy you have.

Left the dump recently. Took me a few months to get an offer. After a month, I cannot think of a single thing that is worse about new company. Very eye-opening.
This makes me wonder: has anyone else left U.S. Bank and realized just how bad of an employer it was?
The bank also appears to have slashed the salary range on the backfill listing.

Anyone else hear rumors that unlimited PTO is going away next year?

HCMs can’t take off work for anything but we have managers and ADs who are taking off every week for any opportunity- either blaming sickness or other endeavors and are not available when needed. The work life balance is not there. Maria J needs to pay more attention as a director before she loses her best performing HCMs

So how are folks handling it when they have children or their the caregivers to the loved one. Are they placing them in child care facilities while they're working the 8 hours. Or hiring workers to stay at their house. That can be quite expensive I mean what's the going rate for 40 hours of child care or caregiving

You know work life balance it’s called. While working from a stinky unventilated office 5x8

Longer you stay rustier you become.
And they treat you bad and may let go any day.
Even if you make it to MR75 no benefits and even harder to get out.
Cash out your meager pension on the way out. Better use it to get debt free.
Explore options to buy your own insurance.
Live below your means, get debt free , update your skills, invest in indexed funds and get outta here.

Careful with how much time you are spending in the office.. They are watching and firing people who arent in the office "enough time". Keep in mind there is NO policy which outlines time in office but they will still fire you!

Specifically, what policies, benefits, or programs does Nike offer to support work-life balance for married employees with young families, such as flexible scheduling, parental leave, childcare support, or family-friendly workplace initiatives?

Just started recently and I found that my team is made up of people with “partners” and/or dog owners that don’t seem to want nor care about a future in family. I push myself hard at work and make concessions to be present for off-site work but after a week, I usually need/want to go home to my family. The people I work with seem to obsess over the job, no work/life balance, so not ask for help, and are fine with not progressing personally (none of my business but I find it odd). I don’t understand it and wonder if this is the case with other departments. This work culture is unlike any I have been around and it’s discouraging to never feel like I am doing enough.

This job is a joke! Again we have the most expensive healthcare in the world but we deny the basics for our seniors! HUMANA you stink! Why are your “ cherished old” nurse NOT eligible for ERP??? We deserve better than this!

Anthem expanded rapidly and with each acquisition decided who to keep or dump, but instead of keeping those with true subject matter knowledge or leadership skills they selected based on favoritism, self-promotion and the ability to take credit for the work of others. The current state is an extremely top-heavy royal court of tone deaf “leaders” who in my opinion, add little to no value. Because they are in over their heads, I believe they relied on overpaid consultants who sold them on a dysfunctional and elitist business agile model.

Senior leaders were to identify their subject matter experts and make them a grade 15, with stock options after 3 years, higher bonuses and unlimited PTO. But instead of choosing the most worthy, they chose their glam squad, the people who make their PowerPoints and make them look good.

Now that they believe they’ve secured their “brain trust” phase 2 appears to be a business strategy where they replace current experienced employees with a) cheaper on shore hires, b) offshore employees, or c) will completely eliminate positions and replace with AI. If you are still working long hours and weekends trying to bail this sinking ship, just stop. There is no place for you in the lifeboats and there never was.

If you are a grade 15 category and one of the, I’d estimate 40%, who are carrying the other 60%, who use their unlimited PTO all the time, I would put in to take the month of September or October off and see if your peers step up; spoiler alert- they can’t so they won’t. You should plan to leave the minute you get vested.

Agile philosophy means you learn and expand your role; it doesn’t mean you take on the workload of three people. Collaboration in Agile is organized, it isn’t just random in office time to check a box. Return to Office mandates will result in others leaving, when collaboration has the people who work witness first-hand the lack of knowledge and work output among others who are paid much more and do far less.

Elevance has now created an organizational caste system. It used to be if you worked hard, you succeeded, the company succeeded, and everyone reaped the benefit; even if some were better compensated than others. Under this new methodology, there is a largely unworthy noble class that does very little, other than attending meetings where they assign out work to the small minority of grade 15’s who work and to grade 14’s and below. It takes no skill to say something is broken, it is fixing it that requires knowledge and effort. As shown last year, when bonus time comes around the pie is sliced so that those who do less are rewarded more.

With recent layoffs the royal court is scrambling to find peasants to pick up the slack; don’t fall for it. Let the favorite children who still get decent raises and bonuses finally do real work and fix things; if they can. Do enough to keep your job and your sanity until you can find something better. Set an alarm and work an 8 hour day, but when the alarm goes off if you think about working one minute more, remember that there is a VP that is taking 6 paid weeks to climb Everest and will return and still have more PTO, while you are neglecting your friends and family. Don’t overexert during upcoming peak and before you ever consider working a weekend realize that Elevance must be well staffed since they’ve yet to revoke unlimited PTO.

This is the logical conclusion of Elevance policies. Almost every working employee could likely qualify for an anxiety diagnosis. The lack of transparency in layoffs, where employees are disappeared overnight like you’re living in a communist regime, leads to a fear response. In the short term, you might get a burst of productivity, when workers try to do more to avoid getting on the RIF list. But when the RIFs keep coming, and there is no transparency or apparent logic to the RIF’s, the avoidance phase sets in. The weekend or PTO provides short term relief, but you come back to the same stress and if work piles up during PTO it is even worse. Politely turn down the extra work and cite health reasons; it is not a misrepresentation, maybe they can create a new diagnosis code for Elevance induced anxiety- Elevancia.

Calculate the hours you work verses your pay to arrive at your true salary. Calculate the cost of a commute that you may not have agreed to when you were hired. Calculate the impact of stress. Give the minimum you can but don’t buy into the fact that you owe more to fix problems that other’s incompetence and egos created. Notice that some of the fixers are leaving, so believe if or not, it may get worse.

Don’t sacrifice your physical or mental health for an organization that views you as completely disposable. If you set boundaries and get RIF’ed, it potentially was only a matter of time anyway. RIF’s no longer appear to be an unfortunate business necessity, but rather an Elevance business strategy. If the stock drops enough maybe the board will finally step in and replace the current inept leadership team and their royal court.
#IChooseMe
#Elevancia
#PeasantsUnite

More than 15 years with Nike. I gave it every chance to change and improve because of those good early days. But I’m done waiting and wasting time with a company that lacks vision and a real future. I just landed another job. Not better by any measure, but in a different environment. If I stayed here another day, I’d have jumped out of my skin. Wishing you all the best. And if you end up as fed up as I am, don’t hesitate - leave. There’s no point staying somewhere that makes you feel awful.

I’m starting to lean toward the former.

Out of curiosity, if offered the option to be fully remote in exchange for a lower salary, what % reduction would make it worth it to you?

While this will never happen, I'd gladly accept a 15% lower salary in exchange.

this was an article "The traditional 9-to-5 is being replaced by the ‘infinite workday’". For those of you at WF, do you find that the company wants you to RTO and to work off hours from home.

And it’s only going to get worse. Anything management can do to make it more miserable, more difficult to comply with, more absurd or outright humiliating, they’ll do it. Because no matter what they’ve claimed, the real goal of RTO has always been the same - to make you quit. Pure, distilled attrition.

Used until I’m worn down, then easily discarded. I no longer feel like a human being or a professional with over 30 years of specialized experience. It’s as if none of it ever mattered. As someone who once took real pride in my work, it’s been disheartening to watch what companies like ours have gradually become. The shift has been subtle but steady - eroding purpose, value, and basic respect for employees. The way people are treated now feels like near-complete disregard. At this stage, it’s probably too late for me to change careers, or even companies, because of my age. But I hope younger colleagues start to look at their careers with a different lens. Unless something gives, the culture will only continue to decline.

here is my mini rant... they expect you to do “plus one” work and a bunch of unchargable stuff, and you've got to play along if you want to be rated as good. basically do extra work for free, on top of your actual project, otherwise your performance looks weak. it’s a scam imho...

staffing is a constant headache and the process is not clear at all andd you never know who makes the decisions, and every time you’re scrambling just to land somewhere. feels like you’re rolling dice more than planning a career.

and forget about keeping your tech skills. most people get pushed into business analyst or pm type roles whether they want to or not. you stop coding, you stop building, you end up in meetings taking notes. your skills just rot away.

ok, soooo -- no promotions, no raises. fine... 2+ yrs of nothing for a lot of people. they just say wait, be patient... but nothing changes. what’s the point of working harder if the outcome is the same??

nobody will be surprised when I say that everyone i know is pulling overtime, weekends, late nights. they say it’s temporary but it’s always like that. that's just acn, that's what they say. and that's the game they've been playing for decades. it just becomes normal. at this point you start asking yourself, why am i even here???