Things have been eerily quiet on the work front lately. Maybe it’s the push toward AI. Or maybe it’s other service teams assuming more ownership. Either way, it feels like a precarious inflection point in the charter of our Customer Advocacy team. Seven years ago, I was a founding member of an exclusive special ops team under Hans-Jurgen, but now it’s hard to ignore we’ve grown into a bloated, amorphous department with a lackluster leader and a widely diluted brand. We have all the machinations you’d expect of group our size. Administrative minutia, utilization metrics and continuous improvement loops. But who knows how truly valuable we are when rolled up in aggregate. And now, the foundational tool they built our entire processes upon is being dismantled in favor of cost savings and consolidated corporate IT. Pair all this with significant layoffs, the stringent return to office mandate (though there’s no office for me to go to), and I’d have to say this has been my least fulfilling year at Dell to date. I’m going to have a tough time filling out my self evaluation. Might be high time to think about what’s next if I want to evolve my career here.