but there’s no chance in he-l they’ll be transparent about it. They really just make it up as they go along. A real recipe for success.
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@3rm It's been a soul crushing few weeks on the tech side and we don't envy anyone calling in for support going forward. We had a great core team of people that were dedicated to helping everyone that called in and we really loved helping (most of) you all! The replacements really are bottom-tier non-techs, with no related experience, scraped together from sales. I very much doubt we'll be the last team at TRP to be off-shored and the future for everyone left is looking pretty grim. But I guess what else should we expect? C suite has gotta pad those multi million dollar bonuses, after all.
How about a manager that's only in Friday of this week? Got one of those. Happy Labor Day all!
@1dd Hi - Yes those were the Service Desk/Command Center/Helpdesk folks. They have known all summer their last day was Sept 12, and have had to train their replacements all of this time. After Friday, they will be in the background while Accenture takes the reins for the next 2 weeks, and then they will be gone. I have witnessed first hand the grit and grace these folks have shown in doing something so difficult - training their replacements. Think how hard that has had to be? It is a shame people with such fortitude will no longer be among us, and I admire every single one of them.
@3fn Buckle up, Trusties! I guess we will see today. On our team, it is pretty much accepted as a fact that we will be disbanded, and joke our goal is to make it to Spring. I dunno, there is a certain freedom to it. I am shoring up my skills and learning what resumes are like in the "modern age" and will likely start sending resumes out soon. I was looking for a long career here, but that will not pan out. I brought my best, and always wanted to take on more, but this is no longer a company that values ingenuity and hard work. It is all about getting stuff done cheap, and upholding woke principals of the HRC. Will that stop bleeding AUM? I don't care at this point. When my time comes I am moving my 401k funds out with me. Good luck everyone. Be honest with yourself, and then plan for YOUR future, it will likely be brighter on the other side of this mess.
I have several managers out of the office this week, but all returning on Thurs (8/27/25). This is how it went down last time layoffs happened. Anyone else seeing a pattern like this (this week)?
@1xg I had so much respect for this company when I first started, Something has changed. If firing Baltimore based workers for offshore workers is supposed to help the exodus of funds from AUM, best of luck to them, I guess. :-) I guess we will know soon.
@1th Fair points...but our credibility was in the 'old' stuff, and you don't get instant cred in the newer stuff, as there are already incumbents operating in those spaces. We were known as wagon wheel makers (good ones at that), others made the other modes of transport. It's an imperfect argument, but the secular trends were estbalished quite some time before 2021, but we were still doing very well off the old ones. It's also pretty difficult to be operating at 'old' (high) fee levels when the world demands more and more at lower rates. Not easy to slide down that profitability slope at the pace being set by the market.
@1tc Hard to tell, but even today, much can be explained in simple terms. Say your family made wagon wheels for generations, but the carriage market gave way to cars. You could either pivot to making something people are demanding, like tires, or continue to try and sell a product in falling demand. A huge marketing campaign in this case would not help the wagon wheel maker much if at all because what he is offering is no longer what his customers are interested in. If Investors wanted different products, there was already examples of popular products in the industry, it seemed it would have made sense to produce offerings these people who are moving their money out of T Rowe are looking to get into. They'd have much less reason to leave. All these people who watch Orioles and Ravens games - are they going to just come here, look at what is currently offered and not be interested in the old tired offerings. There seems to be changes in IT, marketing all over the company - but is substantial effort in progress to entice investors back?
@1nq Perhaps the 'cautious' approcah of prior years has resulted in the current situation? The world has changed and playing catch-up will be painful for a while.
@1nq It is interesting that they have so much pride in Baltimore, the Orioles, the Ravens, etc. They are basically dumping good employees because they live in this area and can't work for peanuts in this city and state. Is it just me, or have there been a rash of Incidents lately involving networking and other IT problems in the past few weeks? Are the new "Accenture partners" in place already?
@1jm He was surprised that internal communications were shared so quickly externally. I mean it’s 2025. Has he been on the internet lately? That’s exactly what happens.
More “eliminations” are definitely coming. Nice word choice there. Still not sure why the decision was made to expand the firm’s brand reach instead of evolving the investment side to offer what investors are looking for.
The firm used be so much more cautious and thoughtful. It would never be caught off guard by anything in the past. Maybe the firm should stop trying to be so big/flashy and just get back to its own basic, Baltimore roots.
@1kp you nailed it. Anyone who has been here more than 10 years or so has seen this playout in slow motion and finally come to this point.
@1jm In the past you had competent leaders to navigate the waters. This place used to be:
Investors > Employees > Shareholders.
The shareholders benefited from the employees doing a good job to satisfy the investors. Now it’s toadying and kowtowing to the shareholders first by putting lipstick on the pig - trying to be Wall Street when they’re more Water Street. And now it’s
Shareholders > Investors > Employees
Good example is Vanguard. They have no such compunctions to be headquartered in Philadelphia and satisfied to be HQ’d in the suburbs in Malvern, PA. They don’t wh--e out their name out for billboards and advertisement for the Phillies, Eagles, Sixers, or Flyers. They manage ~$10T in AUM. Obviously the difference is, they’re privately held and investor owned (which also contributes to lower investment expenses). But we could’ve taken lessons learned. NOT build a faulty but shiny HQ on a toxic dump. USE the OM campus that has 2 unused buildings and 4 that aren’t at capacity.
Another major issue is they’ve favored outside talent at the upper echelon of management im their quest to be a BlackRock. People that don’t know the corporate culture and bring in cost-cutting tactics or incongruous styles. It’s two-fold - you get incompatible thought culture being injected and morale is destroyed, knowing people have no path up. And in the process, asked to “retire” or show them the door.
“How many yachts can you waterski behind, Gordon?”
I would suggest people watch the 15 minute video from Sharpes and the HR woman that went out in email today. I didn't realize how bad our AUM situation was. How could they just let this fester for years until action was taken to change course? Other competitors managed to navigate these changes, why not us? I got the sense it could take years to be in the positive on AUM again. I expect more cost cutting, etc. After watching that I questioned the whole Orioles thing and new building even more. I fully expect more layoffs. I expect less transparency - he mentioned that someone shared an e-mail on here (didn't mention by name but I did see someone posted it here). I doubt they are happy about that, or this site, so expect short of no notice going forward.
@1dd what area was that in? Horrible to hear, hope the advance notice gives them time to compose themselves best they can.
This may have been shared already, but some individuals were given a heads up on being laid off ...last work day next [Sept 12]. Hoping that's not the next big wave of lay offs but it looks like anything can happen without warning.
@ca Yes in past 2 weeks
@bs Were there layoffs last 2 weeks that you know of? I'm not disagreeing and it would make sense to me given the reaction over round 1, just genuinely curious if anyone has heard anything substantial.
@aj It's still happening, just in isolated unannounced exercises...
Sure, just like we had 3 weeks of layoffs before earnings. Oh wait, we didn’t. Guess all those swearing it was coming were just full of it.