After a little time away, you see the sad dysfunction much clearer

After leaving the company after 10+ years with WF, I’ve had some time to really reflect and process the work environment at WF. Here are some random thoughts and observations in no particular order.

the complexity and over-engineered work processes won’t end anytime soon making work much harder than it needs to be. We do it to ourselves.
executives don’t care about employees or their feedback. They truly don’t give a sh!t.
Charlie and Scott - straight up aholes who speak to people in rude and demeaning ways. They can give the candor but can’t take it.
people are leaving in mass numbers and executives are fine with it, cheaper than severance. Even when it’s top talent, they don’t care and give managers zero leverage to try to retain people.
if you’re truly committed to diversity you know that goal is severely limited by hub location strategy, but they don’t care. It’s all lip service.
most of the people staying are either too close to retirement to leave, have no other viable options so stay or have become so used to the constant abuse it’s normal to them now
people aren’t leaving their managers for the most part, they are leaving a toxic work environment, leaving for more flexibility, better pay/benefits, work/life balance. Bei needs to do her job and actually read some exit surveys. Of course, that assumes she cares but she’s too busy doing Chuckles bidding.
leaving is hard - it can be scary but now that I’m on the other side of that decision, I regret waiting as long as I did. I regret having hope that executives would make the right decisions for employees.
Charlie and all his cronies are here to make themselves rich and beat the nice out of WF. They actually insult the cult members for being too nice.
RTO is so inconsistent across the company creating complete disparity across LOBs
life is too short to be treated so poorly and to be too embarrassed to tell people where you work
every company has its issues but this is not normal

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We don't have 'controls' here, we have process statements. No where in the real world do you have controls written like these, specifying the names of the Control Owner IN the control description, absolutely no documentation at all, no process narrative, and that's the COSO controls, the rest are even worse.... this place is in a race to the bottom. I'm glad I have my exit strategy planned and almost complete.

@1cuj+1hymRGa1
Re: checkers checking the checkers
In our procedures, for EVERY “control,” we have to add a checker who checks the checker. However, our leaders seem to have zero understanding of risks and controls and appear to be just throwing things in, anything, so they can claim “it’s a control.” But a control for what? There wasn’t a risk there that even needed a “control”, let alone a checker for that “control”, and certainly not a checker to check the checker for the control that doesn’t even line up to a risk.

After recent layoff I have to say "It's a nice day to START AGAIN".

Good post but this is the truth as most major banks (eg: jpm, citi etc).

As a former who left just shy of a year how, I am shocked by how complacent I got, just taking all of the crud they dished out. I honestly think I stayed out of some sort of misguided loyalty (30+ year employee) My immediate manager was wonderful but even he could not sway me to stay. Glad I made the leap as I’m much happier.

Oh my god...you nailed it! Post of the month award!

Agile, off shoring and can’t say the word team,

I've been in the banking game 20+ years - worked at Wachovia, BofA, and JPM - been at Wells about 2 years - the way Audit and IT&V are here is just crazy - we're trying to run the business and manage the risk - but we've got all these people checking us - and checkers checking the checkers... It's just brutal and a waste of time. People want to do a good job but just keep getting beat down...

@orc

Add the excuse of regulators for everything in this place. It seems every time i turn around the excuse of regulators or audit is used for everything. Be it reason for delays or reasons to rush or reasons for why something can or cant be done. It’s such a stupid catch-all for everything in this place.

Very well said, OP. And very sad. Wells Fargo takes the fun out of dysfunctional.

I used to love my work, took a lot of pride in doing it, and worked hard. My manager was great and knew the job. They let him go and now we have some useless glad-hander who can’t answer a question, can’t help fix a problem, doesn’t know the names of the people who report to him, couldn’t say whether someone is doing good work or not, and is rarely available. WFC has somehow managed to d-mb- down my job while make it more difficult and more frustrating?

My assessment is that they plan on turning most of our jobs in to “Call Center” jobs. That is what I’m seeing at WFA. They have fancy titles for the Call Center jobs: Financial Services Liason, Trading Assistant, Online Client Associate, Compliance Services Specialist, they are all center jobs.

Who will want to work here?

The constant re-orgs and new processes, each one more complicated and cumbersome than the last. We can’t move forward, because we’re too busy moving sideways.

The "over-engineering" is often forced on the place to meet regulator demands. Regulators have been told to make an example out this place by politicians. Yeah so its a red tape sh-t show and its hard to get anything done.

Many people still leave due to poor manager

I agree. Over-engineered processes happens all over the company, including HR. We can't seem to help ourselves. We add steps because something happened once in the last 10 years. "Streamlined" processes are just processes that are quickly implemented without any planning. The leaders wait until enough complaints bubble up to the right ears before they make changes.

You forgot that it all depends on which department. A lot of people stay because they have good jobs, paid well and have good management.

It seems the majority of those that complain are from IT. It's kind of funny though because we've always had cr---y IT even before Charlie or Saul.

Jon - just go. Say bye and go.

Well put, OP. I left in May and joined another bank two levels above where I was at Wells. My pleas with Wells management that they did not utilize me fully only fell on deaf years for 4 years.

I am significantly relaxed, getting more meaningful work, and achieving something in the process. Is my new firm perfect? Far from it. Is it as broken as Wells ? Absolutely not.

I think the OP is painting Charlie and Scott as the primary villains. They may be, but only these the newcomers

Agree!! Your points are valid and there are more. Last week in one morning i received 4 different emails regarding 4 different systems or processes that were "down". Not one system, but 4 different ones. That was concerning to me, as it is an indication of the wheels coming off the stagecoach.

Thread regarding Wells Fargo & Co. layoffs

After a little time away, you see the sad dysfunction much clearer

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