Thread regarding Wells Fargo & Co. layoffs

It’s because Saul wants 80% of IT to be engineers. So you get an Engineer, you get an Engineer, Everyone gets an Engineer!!!!

To be fair, for the below commenter, engineer is a pretty pointless job title. There are so many ASE 4's here. I have no idea how every single person in EIT is a f-ing engineer. There are definitely many, many people who have engineer in their job title who absolutely do not deserve it. They also do plenty of programming. It seems like this is the default role that anyone in EIT was brought on with. Why like 70% of those with Engineer in their title aren't Web Developer or Programmer/Analyst etc I don't know. I guess it's too bad they're not being a little more discriminating?

I'm one of those Engineers.

Adding to the OP's experiences:

The Engineer has to sit through a couple hours of "Daily Stand Up" meetings every day, waiting to be one of 60 people to speak. If they are called on at all.

And the Engineer now has multiple "Scrum Masters" demanding updates and pestering them to "Update your verbiage in Jira". There are a couple more layers of management and a great deal of additional bureaucracy associated with "Agile".

And the Engineer has the impossible task of adhering to mutually exclusive schedules that have no bearing on reality. But they sure make for a pretty spreadsheet!

Oh, and the title of "Engineer" has been taken away from the Engineers. They are now called "Developers". Even though we don't actually "develop" anything. WTF...?

Just shaking my head...

@bit+168391IB

Before departing I re-evaluated my life, my future career path and my finances.

I realized I would be making triple to quadruple as a Contractor, but I would not have company benefits such as medical and a 401k. How do I know this? Because I had access to all the contractor rates and I approved their billing hours as well as STAMP hours.

I ran the numbers over and over and researched the market. I work for myself now. My first thought was to open that dream corner pub and brewery with 2 friends, but I didn’t want to work 8 pm - 3 am Thursday thru Saturday. I like my sleep and weekends too much, so I put that dream on the back burner.

I started an LLC, and I have been a 1099 Contractor for multiple corporations both domestic and foreign. I live off of what my base would have been if I stuck around WF. I pay for my own healthcare insurance and I put the balance of the funds into my IRA and brokerage/savings accounts. I only work 6-9 months out of the year. I value my autonomy and anonymity.

The other companies that I have worked for are well oiled machines. They have their processes, real time dashboards and tools in place. There is no emailing back and forth, there are no daily conference calls where nothing gets accomplished. I have project portals that I upload to, and it is the responsibility of the project members to keep themselves abreast, regardless of rank or title. I was on a call once where a colleague was not up to speed and he was asked to exit the call and bring himself up to speed.

WF was and is the Titanic. There’s a hole in the side of the boat, but the music still plays for passengers comfort.

Get out while you can. Take the life boat. Jump. I got off the boat and survived. I’m better for it mentally, emotionally, physically and financially.

I still plan to open that pub and micro brewery......after the pandemic.

I agree with the post about the GIM . I have worked in three large FIs before WF and I will tell you I have never seen anything this expensive, inefficient and ineffective. It’s a case study on how not to do issues management.

The GIM team is one of the most insane and wasteful initiatives I’ve ever seen. Talk about form over substance. The worst is the effect it’s had on actual issue management. Businesses that used to not fight over an issue or even raise it themselves no longer want to because it means they’re now taking on another full time role of someone who’s trying to jam an admin layer on top. Which would be useful as far as visibility except that the bureaucrats on the team use it for petty power plays and weird control issues. I’ve seen this from all areas of the bank and will be curious if they plan on revamping issue management.

What a mess! They need contributers not paperwork pushers!

Was this you?

BadAcidTrip -

Truly - nothing you experienced has changed - except, we have more requests for information and more roadblocks to getting anything done. Managers that are afraid of making a decision so its safety in numbers (called a team decision) that no one will ever be accountable for. Its crazy right now. Question is - are you in another large company - are they all like WF or are there better ones out there.

Oh, and thanks to the OP also.

BadAcidTrip, please ignore the troll. I hadn’t seen your post before and enjoyed it very much. Cheers to you.

Excellent post and breakdown of

I was that Engineer time and time again. You perfectly outlined the “fat and fluff,” layer after layer that was always added to fix or correct the simplest issue.

When I would go to the business unit who was responsible for an “identified issue,” they also layered the process with the exact layout for their team in a sense to cover their tracks. Like internally lawyering up to shield and protect their stupid antiquated decisions and processes.

I was inundated with emails every hour for data, metrics, pitch books, estimated costs, everything and anything from the exact groups you listed above. When I didn’t respond within an hour to a business unit or one of the layered groups, my Jackhole of a manager would be called or emailed and then I would get a tongue lashing and threats of performance issues that could lead to a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP). I begged my Jackhole manager for help, I needed resources and funding. He goes out and hires 10 remote contractors, yes 10, who sat around doing nothing for 30 days because they had no laptop or system access. They also sat around and contributed or worked on nothing for 18 months.

I left. I checked out by 2017. It was like a bad acid trip day in and day out.

What I find hilarious is that you can’t use video during this pandemic. Why? Because I have been informed by my former colleagues and friends that I was right all along back in 2016.

There is not enough network infrastructure to support the addition of multiple network devices. WF LOB’s giving out Zoom Accounts and Licenses like raffle tickets, purchasing and adding bulky big a$$ Cisco teleconference equipment worldwide which was draining the bandwidth so severely that the voip lines in multiple offices and floors would go down. Also let’s throw in BlueJeans, Skype for Business and a few other Lync Accounts and enable video and voice on everything. Not to mention all kinds of new shiny toys and IoT junk attached to the network by multiple LOB’s. There was no oversight whatsoever.

Nothing worked. Nothing ever worked. It was always patched together as Good Enough. No accountability, never any budgeted funds to make anything work correctly. Time and time again I went to EIT Leaders, presenting deck after deck and hosting call after call to request additional funds and future investments for bandwidth and network infrastructure to large hub sites nationwide and world wide.

Hilariously I was assigned a Tech Relationship Manager who was supposed to be the “go-between” for the conversations between the business unit and EIT. Come to find out, that TRM was making triple what I did in base salary, and did nothing but schedule additional calls and check points for the 2 teams so that the project doesn’t lose momentum.

Glad I left. Wouldn’t go back if they offered me $1M. It’s all going to come crashing down. Just like the conference call numbers that froze up in March all thru April.

By the way, my conference call ID still works. I’ve been gone for 3+ years.

You have now posted this multiple times in the past few weeks. Go away and get a life