There has been large-scale cultural change in the workplace the last 15 years. It’s not limited to Fidelity. Assuming this is a Fidelity-specific problem and punishing Fidelity’s workers to try to get them to revert to an office culture that no longer exists is short-sighted and cruel. No wonder we are all miserable.
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@aj the grass isn't always greener. I left once then came back.
Job market su-ks, thanks trump, corporations can do whatever they want to their employees and get away with it. It’s only temporary. We had the Great Recession once. It’ll swing back the other way again some day
@e9 and those people will be set for the rest of their lives.
@fd I made the a similar calculation but it came down to leaving once the right role came up. I could accept Fidelity bureaucracy and technical conservatism when it was a friendly place to work but I've too many years left in my career to su-k it up now. Happy moving on once my bonus is paid out.
@aj I’ll offer another perspective. I’ve been with Fidelity for nearly 27 years. I’m in my 50s. I would need a stellar, life-altering opportunity to go somewhere else at this point. I could not manage to start somewhere new with a couple/few weeks of PTO. In just a couple of years, I’ll be retirement-eligible. So, I’ll be around for a few more years to maximize share waterfalls and earn retirement benefits. It’s not about fear of leaving at this stage, it’s about what makes sense for my life goals.
@e9 so true and the thing is that they might be VPs here but they are probably afraid that their skills might not translate to the same level elsewhere. It’s going to get interesting if they start flattening the organization. How many SVPs are really needed.
A lot of people in Fidelity know nothing else. Interned here, joined a BU, stayed at that BU for their career, met their husband/wife at company social events, etc. Some of these people are not equipped to move out like a normal employee.
@aj speaking of afraid…everyone is afraid of speaking up about what’s wrong with Fidelity culture. Everyone is smiling and saying, “Everything is fine” while slowly dying on the inside.
There are other remote jobs out there. Problem is that the people who have spent years at Fidelity are afraid to leave. They think there is something prestigious about working at Fidelity because of the brand, but if they expanded their horizons would find better opportunities. The culture is based on fear so that’s why hardly anyone leaves.
Office culture still exists in many companies. The problem for organisations like Fidelity is that they tried to squeeze the maximum cost benefit out of remote working. You don't get distributed multi timezone teams who work long hours for free. The more bureaucracy and time pressure you put in the more relationships fray. Fidelity ended up with a transactional impersonal work culture run by a clique of middle managers with older kids who miss their office life.
RTO will fail for the same reason as Connect Weeks failed. My team can't be un-squeezed without missing goals so we'll sit on Zoom most of the day and achieve less than we did remote. Ultimately Fidelity will need to completely restructure all the broken COVID hiring patterns and team structures if they want to improve anything.