Thread regarding Wells Fargo & Co. layoffs

There needs to be allot of layoffs at WFA’s Home Office. The so called Product Managers, Directors and Managing Directors do precious little for the profit centers, a.k.a., the FA’s.

The original builders of 1 North Jefferson Ave. in St. Louis had a golden rule, treat the customer always with “Trusted Advice with Exceptional Service”, Never cuff an answer to an FA, if you don’t know the answer, its OK, find out ASAP and follow up with them. And always remember the FA pays the bill for the home office. It worked up until the highly acclaimed, “Universal Bank Model and Globalization arrived.

It might be different this time🙄, but I’ve never seen the people that need to go be laid off. I don’t know how Wells manages to F everything up every time, but they do. If they have one area of consistency and expertise, it is F’ing EVERYTHING up EVERY time lol.

The people who will go are the guys on the front lines who have to deal with the crummy systems and the understandably frustrated customers and FAs. Or the honest managers who try to walk that thin line between supporting their employees, getting the job done with the crummy systems, and keeping the higher ups happy. The guy who raises his hand about another decision coming down from up above that isn’t putting our customers first, or can not realistically happen because of our crummy system. The experienced people who know and understand the regulatory requirements or have been around long enough to understand how to try to make our crummy system somehow bend to achieve those regulatory requirements. And finally, the new upcoming promising employee who hasn’t had the chance to prove himself yet.

Who will stay are the know- nothing yes-men and s—ups, the born- in-to-the-right- family schmoozers and glad- handers, the top execs who are completely out of touch with the reality of making their latest idea work as long as it makes money or saves money for Wells, the people who have sold their souls to the Stagecoach in return for the big bucks, and the people who don’t know a thing about working in the financial industry but make a name for themselves by jumping on the D&I train, the Community Giving train, whatever latest pet project comes down from the C-Suite.

The guy driving the Ferrari or the McLaren to work will be saved. They will lay off the people in the 10 year-old Honda Accords.

Mark my words. That is how it will go down. If you see anything other than that, you come back to me.

They should. Too many national sales type leaders, wfa business leaders that do nothing. Groups like PART are a waste of time. The consultants do nothing but call other departments for answers. Guys making half a million managing partnerships that never change. Too many senior leaders. Losers who don't do c-ap for business development, fairs, fra. Project managers with no real projects to manage. Too many regional folks and not enough supervision which really could use technology. Too many Dinos that don't know how to lead nor leave the ways of the 20th century. A lack of vision to compete for the youngsters in the digital age. Many missed opportunities from that space.

I worked in the field WFA as an FRA and a third of my program was laid off 8/25

The state of the WFA Home Office was as you described 5 years ago when I got severed. It smelled back then and the cleaning crew did not/could not keep up with it. The building built by A.G.Edwards were never designed for nor accommodated the huge increased number of employees packed into high density cubes. In fact, I was always surprised that OSHA was not called in to investigate. The rest rooms typically have only 3 lavatories and sinks, way too little for the number of people jammed onto each floor. But I guess that was part of the much acclaimed “Universal Bank Model of the early 2000’s that screwed up the financial services industry. Just like “the failed benefits of “Globalization” .

Regional Presidents will be reduce from 14 to 6-7. I can’t imagine they will reduce Market Managers as well to increase span of control.

With the Regional Presidents comes the reduction of their support staff.

Post ID below about The Home office by
Post ID: @jeo+16LKC0PI is SO ON Target you nailed it.

Speaking of WFA Home Office: I have NO idea how they are going to safely manage bringing people back in to that building. It’s mostly open concept now, with many packed in to close quarters, and no cubicles. (Some departments do have cubicles, but many don’t.)

The “cleaning” has gone sharply down hill over the years due to cost cutting. This will be my main concern. The bathrooms and kitchens are constantly out of soap and paper towels- we often have to bring in our own soap from home, the paper towels are thin and keep getting shorter, thick layers and gobs of dust everywhere, the cleaning people always have buckets of filthy water and dirty rags on their carts, the bathrooms and stairwells and sewer drains stink, areas around trash cans don’t get cleaned and have months/years of food build-up, we have critters (I’ll just leave it at that), it’s been bad. They say they stepped up the cleaning this Spring, before we went home, but ....no, They brag about how “green” our newer 10-year old addition is, which I would normally be in support of, but that building is very poorly and cheaply managed. It’s just sad. And I will want to hear what they have to say about the quality of our HVAC and ventilation systems, how much fresh air is taken in and what filtering takes place. Based on past experiences, it’s going to be difficult to have any confidence there.

Now, having said all of this and in the spirit of wanting to present both sides: Wells has done the right thing regarding sending us home and keeping us home for longer than I would have thought. They did a good job pulling it all together quickly and making it happen. It does show what they can pull off if they prioritize and focus. And they are keeping us home so far, so I am pleasantly surprised and they deserve kudos for that.

I do know of 1 good manager who was cut, in the name of reducing layers, right before Covid hit.

At WFA, they have been doing a lot of reorganizing in the Operations area. I hear they made some managers re-interview for their positions and if they “got the job”, their pay might be less. So within all of that, there has been a lot of shuffling of chairs with some people leaving the firm. Not sure if they left with packages or quit on their own. I don’t have all the details.

I witnessed that many of the problems in those areas are due to the decisions made by higher-ups, not the department managers’ fault. Managers have had to deal with miserably outdated barely-functional systems, the poorly executed splitting of their departments up over various cities for business continuity purposes, the forced outsourcing of portions of the work to India, out -of- touch up lines who never come out of their glass offices, and unrealistically low salaries for their employees. I don’t know how or why they hung in there as long as they did.

In WFA, they let people go quietly and in small #s: 2 here maybe 5 there. Never a big announcement. It’s more like one day you call for your good contact, Bob, in another department and they tell you he was let go. Or you hear about it through the grapevine.

Why wouldn't there be? My understanding is cuts would happen all through the company