I am so embarrassed to be in Wells IT.
The list of "we need to fix this and..." is insane.
What has upper management been doing for the last decade?
I see some of the things we're working on now to move Wells into the year 2020 and it still looks like 1997.
Poor design, poorly thought out...
I'm leaving, I can't take this anymore.
Shame on Wells IT management, past and current.
Yes the SharePoint and now the Jira lists to track what we're working on. I'll spend a quarter of my week figuring that out . Our team works in a consultative role, often while projects are still in ideation, which means we have many things we can't bill our time to. To have to track these few hours here and there is going to be a nightmare.
Working long hours is never okay and if it's an ongoing issue it's abuse.
This is one way corporations steal wages and transfer that wealth to shareholders.
It is a common practice in IT departments especially, partly because salaries tend to be high and it's expected, and because it's a 40 year old+ tradition, going back to the hobbyists spending long hours "hacking" their first IBM PC's and Apples for fun.
They all kept working long hours when they got tech jobs because they enjoyed it.
Modern IT work is not the same, most of us enjoy tech, but most of us are not blazing new cyber trails late into the night anymore.
On your deathbed you are not going to be wishing you'd spent more time at the office making Wall Street richer.
I did it for years before moving to other IT work that does not require I be logged on 24/7, because I enjoy IT work, but I wanted a life beyond a screen and working those hours is unhealthy.
I get paid a little less now, and that's fine.
In a startup you roll the dice hoping the hours you put in will have a big payday, in a giant bank you get a few shares that are nothing compared to the millions that Wall Street owns.
I know how this may sound to some, but I am fine with a free market economy, it's been good to me, but I am against the excesses that come with capitalism.
And @2zrq+13mRpkzf makes a very good point, at some point, overworking IT folks causes mistakes, and IT people making mistakes is a good way to take down a network or lose data.
So here's the "thing" with HAVING to telecommute to meet project deadlines.
The work in the department is so overwhelmingly intense and stressful, being totally overloaded with work, required to work all week and then also all weekend, to meet artificially derived at target dates causes top performing, most experienced, totally overloaded and tired employees to leave the department and get a different job where one can have some sort of work/life balance.
Then all of the FORMER most experienced team member's work gets left for the one or two remaining employees, not as experienced, who then also get totally burnt out by working all week, all weekend, after a long commute each day. In order to attempt to meet the unrealistic target dates said remaining employees realize they need to bail out of the 2 + hour daily commute in order to telecommute and have some hope of meeting the target date by working very long hours each day, and also on the weekend. See the business provides an initial Requirements document that is used to set the target date. Then as the programmer codes and sends test data to the business the requirements keep changing, but they often do NOT change the initial target date. This leaves the programmer in crunch mode, having to work VERY long hours to meet the ever changing business requirements with NO shift in the final target date. Telecommuting helps but is still not enough to resolve this issue.
I'm the OP. Here's why I'm embarrassed, and here's some info from the town hall on locations.
I'm embarrassed because what is being proposed to fix our problems is mostly just good IT management, things that most of us in IT management learned 25 years ago.
I'm embarrassed because you test failover of apps and systems at least once a year, more if better, not after you lose an entire datacenter to a smoke detector, or whatever the BS story was.
There is nothing new in tech, things are smaller/faster and can run more complicated code, but there is nothing new in how to manage software and hardware.
What have they been doing all these years, other than rearranging the deck chairs?
A lot of the presentation was literally about implementing standard practices.
I always assumed a bank of Wells stature had a world class IT department, we do not, we have a third world IT department.
That's embarrassing to career IT person. Losing a datacenter is a news making event, and your IT department should NEVER be in the news.
To answer some of the location questions, here's what was on the slides:
Markest targeted for expansion:
San Francisco
Phoenix
Dallas
Des Moines
Minneapolis
St. Louis
Chicago
New York Metro
Boston
Philadelphia
Raleigh
Markets Approved for Replacements Only:
Portland
Los Angeles
Salt Lake City
Denver
San Antonio
Washington, DC
Richmond
Winston-Salem
Charlotte
Atlanta
Also on other slides:
Relocate technology roles in the smallest markets to larger, strategic markets.
The announced No New Telecommuting
They announced that the relocation announcement will come out in Q1.
I have heard, not directly, that some people in IT have already been told to start going into the office a few days a week. I believe this to be true because I see the group being told to commute is starting to have issues getting work done.
Probably because they're in a car instead of in front of a system.
I have also heard, not directly, that team Saul may finally understand the scope of the telecommuting workforce, and realizes there are not enough chairs in offices for everyone, and if you telecommute full-time now, you may keep doing so, but that is entirely dependent on what you do and where.
Every IT department I have worked in had issues, and every corporation I have worked at, including NASDAQ100 companies and some Silicon Valley darlings, have had SEC issues, and skirted a law here and there.
But I've never worked anywhere so openly criminal and so embarrassingly incompetent.
And yes, I am looking for a new job. You can't move a career forward in tech working for a backwards IT department.
I hope things work out well for all.
Peace.
Courtney looking good in that red dress with knee-high black boots though! Work it girllll!
Can you share some details? What are the issues raised and what’s the plan? Why are you embarrassed? I didn’t watch it.
I am not in tech but I have deep concerns. I will just say honest info is typically not released during town halls. So if attendees have concerns on what they heard then that may be the tip of the iceberg. Facts and challenges speakers/execs couldn’t ignore. Honesty is the best policy.
Can anyone share with us any announcements made in the Tech Town hall? What did they say about work from home, strategy, etc. thanks
Which locations are tech locations?
My location was not even on the map
I can't wait for my manager to tell me I have 20 more SharePoint lists to keep updated for tracking progress!