Thread regarding Wells Fargo & Co. layoffs

There is no incentive. Period.

Used to get 4s and 5s. Busted my backside. Now got 3.

Problem is that, for those who stay, maintaining just a 3 will be backbreaking since so much work has to be absorbed with so many being let go.

I just had my mid-year review. I hold a senior technical position. As usual the feedback was entirely positive but this time my rating is 3. Ratings deflation is definitely afoot.

@1fjn+16bSV3Xd, CCG, 2011-ish.

Staying on the Titanic until the bitter end. Not enough life boats for all.

I have always been a 4-5 or exceeds. Now I’m a three. I will not be doing anything different. I will continue to do my job as usual, so as not to attract any negative attention. That said, I will CERTAINLY not be busting my a$$ to raise my rating. No point. The jury has spoken

Come ON severance!

@pft+16bSV3Xd I've never seen it and I've been here a while.

Stop being selfish about bonuses and just get over the fact there won’t be any. Scharf has a lot of money invested in paying his new executive team so he needs to divert incentive compensation from the employees to them. How dare you be so greedy!

@htd+16bSV3Xd, there's precedent for the company not paying out bonuses at all.

Incentive: To possibly stay employed during the coming economic collapse. Raises and bonuses are the least of your worries. Work hard. If you do get laid off anyway, at least you won’t have uncertainty over whether you could’ve prevented it rubbing salt in your wound.

@qqt+16bSV3Xd Not sure I understand your question but I was saying that discretionary bonuses will probably be down somewhere in the area of 10% give or take.

I saw my rating today and its a 3. I bust my a$$ and in 20 years always get a 4 or 5. I hope to get a package. If I actually work at a level 3 (because thats what I am gonna do) you can bet I will no longer meet expectations. This is why everything is so vague, so they can get away with the bs.

I have heard if someone was given a 4/5 and there must be another one to get 1/2. They want to put people in 3 as much as possible this time.

@anu- Spot on. If you are rated 2 no use in putting forth an effort, especially when it wasn’t deserved, but forced on your manager to pick who is going to the slaughter house. All to avoid severance. The current “leadership” teams ethics is as bad as the prior leadership. Padding their pockets but just in a different way with this tactic to avoid severance pay to drive up the stock price as quickly as possible to pad their pockets. Go buy another guitar to throw in the garbage and run our noses in your wealth.

There are many employees with little to nothing to do. They keep themselves busy by attending meetings, creating meaningless documents and processes. Fake account scandal was just the surface. The is people creating fake work and there are plenty of fake managers that need to go before before we see any meaningful improvements.

It’s kinda hard to get above a 3 now since HR has made it a bell curve with 60% slated to be a 3. In a new employee 8 mo that’s a 3

@ioj+16bSV3Xd , do you mean the bonuses that are not guaranteed and probably won't be paid, much as they weren't the last time the company was in jeopardy, circa (I think) 2010?

Bonuses will be lower but still enough to incentivize people to perform (~-10%). Not to mention keeping your job in this environment has obvious value.

A follow up question would be, outside of being a brownnoser, what is the criteria for getting a 4 or 5?

I am guessing no one would be able to provide criteria, because it’s predetermined that you will not get this rating.

A fair system would tell you the precise criteria for achieving excellence and allow for many people to achieve it. The fact that this is being done a curve and competitively tells you that it’s a shell game for selecting people to lay-off, and not a substantive effort to drive high performance.

Unless you got a 1 or 2, it’s not worth applying any additional effort. You’ll k–l yourself trying to make some undefined and unachievable objective, the high rating will most likely involve nepotism or favoritism rather than true performance.

Since the bottom two ratings combine to make 20% of FTE, you can see how that gets you very quickly to 50k people being laid off.

my only real motivation is not to be hassled, that and the fear of losing my job. But you know, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired

I do as little work as possible. I have areas where I could make incremental improvements but am not going to waste my time. No one is asking for anything and anything I do is self created work not attached to anything.

For everyone waiting for packages (including me, until recently), with no bonuses and raises, impending layoffs and company match value tanking, it's not worth istaying.

Every day you stay is one day you could be getting healthy compensation (and healthy culture) elsewhere. Many if my friends are enjoying that – some retiring in their 40s due to financial gains. No package will make up for that unless it bridges you to retirement.

Or what’s the incentive to perform above a 2?

My group has received all of these things. Right now I'm thinking they'll be non existent or very hard to come by next year. I don't know if that's true but mentally preparing for it. I'll keep doing what I'm doing in the meantime though. No reason to shoot myself in the foot.

Since bonuses and raises have been extremely modest and no promotions in the past five years, I've been asking myself that for a while.