Thread regarding Wells Fargo & Co. layoffs

Charlotte is not cheap like Des Moines, only the salary.

@uck+16lFq4ky if you move from area 0 to area 2, you don't get a pay cut. So no savings really. The way savings happen is as TMs in area 0 attrite, new positions posted are not permitted to be filled in area 0 or 1. You can see this happening all over in the job postings. very few have SF, NY or LA (area 1) and if a current TM from one of those areas applies anyway they will be declined because of geography.

@1acm+16lFq4ky JM's out... didn't you hear?

@1sdv+16lFq4ky - this is by far the funniest comment ever! The pandemic came to the US. From CHina ! Hey that is a different country. It is the US that Re- exported the China virus to India. Talk to Trump for other alternate theories .. you jokers are the reason why WF is a joke.

For all newcomers to Wells Fargo, it is actually quite interesting to discover a very high population that is completely WFH. While the option to work from home is very helpful to the employees at times like this, I cannot imagine why any organization will need to maintain an office and offer this kind of flexibility.

Maintaining a physical presence is required in every customer facing org unless you are an Amazon who is going to customers’ residences.

the long desks is how they treat workers in India; this is the United States, maybe they don't know which country we are in, plus they will create new pandemics world wide.

WF planned – and will again, the moment pandemic is under control – to use banishment of WFH as a path to natural attrition. Period.

Execs know it's one of the only remaining reasons to stay with WF, so by removing the last leg of the stool, they hope to shake loose a LOT of people. When they quit, WF saves $$ on severance and unemployment costs.

Therefore, WF will NEVER support WFH until it suits their needs to do otherwise. Execs know recruiting talent will be much more difficult by not allowing WFH, but the desperate measures to achieve RIF goals are paramount.

The hypocrisy (many execs WFH) and antiquated thinking re: WFH (Charlie Scharf, Bll Daley, etc.) further dooms this company from ever being progressive.

Talent will always go where it's valued and not hampered by career-k–ling dinosaurs.

@1nqz - LOL. To be fair, he said his "navy seals background", which could mean he washed out of BUDS in the first hour of training.

@1ppi - you are so full of sh–. But, thanks for the laugh...

I have no issue going in the office but the new design is a no go. Cramming 10 people in a large office with long desks and no elbow room will never fly. The new space that was the AT&T building at least has walls but they are super tiny. The Office 202 project made sense (ha ha) pre Covid but there is no way I am going into a random desk where no one knows who sat in it before.

It not collaborative it is a sweatshop and no one wants to work like that.

WFH is not that popular with the 420 exes they like it for themselves but the peasants they want at work. Prior to COVID it was actually being scaled back. People like Jamie Moldafsky who let Jennifer Copeland a mid level manager with 3 direct reports “WFH” which was really her condo in Hawaii ruined the WFH for everyone because when Jennifer had a mandatory meeting she couldn’t make it but she lived in Oakland right? Found out she was in Hawaii after it cost the bank a fortune. 3 weeks later Jennifer “retired” at just 56 years old. Now she is in Hawaii full time look her up on FB. It’s all true. Get rid of Jamie! Dredge the swamp!

I don't know what you're basing your premise that "WF is big on WFH". In Risk, the exact opposite is true. Every since the train wreck MN came in, she has been trying to end that practice. If you were WFH you got to stay but if you changed positions into the office you went even if they didn't have a desk for you. Being in the office is much less productive. Constant interruptions, more days ill thanks to inconsiderate co-workers coming in sick because god forbid they use a PTO day to stay home.

To the comment about the put out people out east staying to 7:00 to finish up a project, cry me a river. Most of you don't log on until 9:00 and disappear for hours at a time during the day. Maybe if there were less meetings to hand hold you through doing your work or have a decision made for you maybe you too could be productive enough to get your work done timely. My experience is the people who have to mention the amount of 'overtime' they have to put in are the least productive.

Probably will follow what the majority of schools are doing??

Navy seal? Yeah, right. Sheesh. Go away, troll!

seems they are having the managers start to torture their employees now to get them to quit. I know i am facing it.
Everyone be ready for the torture and stay strong!

I am lifting weights, running, protein shakes, up at 3 am, get as strong as possible both body and mind. My navy seals background is really helping me in this. Reminds me of hell week back in the training for becoming a seal.

Good news is the managers are weak, so training wont match in the military but it is bad enough if this is new to you.

Pro tip: midwesterners do that in an office too. You get eight solid hours of productive work and not ten hours of dinking-around work, but it evens out in the end. I worked in the midwest, east, and west coast, and the midwesterners are the most “European” in the sense that they are productive when they’re on the clock but after that, quality of life is more important than your meeting.

I don’t think anyone has said this: management does not actually care whether you are in an office or not. The problem they were trying to solve was to increase productivity , which is very difficult to do. Most (not all) of the staff who are supposedly WfH would promptly log off at 5 PM local time. The managers in NYC or Charlotte will be scurrying to get the job finished at 7 PM EST while the staff in Iowa have logged off and ‘gone’.. this was and remains a real problem. To solve this, dragging the people to the office was a way to instill some discipline and improve productivity. Covid k–led that idea . Short of firing people enmasse, there is no easy way to save money now.

thing is company use come back to office as a secret layoff strategy to get workers to pick them self then companies wont have to lay them off and pay out more money during a normal layoff strategy;

they announced on news vaccine will be available November 2, but i wont get it for at least a year; may cause cancer or other issues far worse than the virus; someone else can be the guinea pig.

Based on this, i assume it will be going back to office at end of year or in Quarter 1.

The amount of abuse of WFH policy at Wells is amazing. In my group we have a senior director that “works” remotely from the mezzanine of a branch in Raleigh NC where his daughter is a branch manager. Grandkids can be heard in the background, so I wonder if this branch actually exists. Also I witnessed “all hands” calls where you could hear someone snoring out loud in the background. In another meeting you could hear audio announcement from a Target store. Unfortunately no one knows if these are isolated cases or the norm, but all will pay the price.

Tech support at Wells also comes from personnel in the Phillipines.

I don’t think we should compare banking to tech (fb and google). It is easier for tech companies to work remotely and operate under bau.

Two different working models. Cost cuts can be made in tech at wells. I came from BoA and whenever I called tech my line would be sourced to someone from India or phillipines. Here at wells, it’s all Americans. I support everything American but I think the company has no choice to cut/off shore such roles along with the roles where people did nothing for years and got by working from home.

To be honest, all this is short term/medium term. I would be bullish on wells. People need to stop acting like the world is over.

I think it's funny that exec's think we'll ever return to an office, or at least a tightly packed "elbow to elbow" office situation.

The monster is driving the bus and it's just picking up speed.

We'll have WFH until Covid is sorted. Then we'll probably go back to the "no more WFH", get in the office mentality where they'll cram as many people as possible into Workplace 2020 fridge box size cubes.

Somebody told me the cost to house an employee in an office is on the order 5-7k per MONTH if I remember correctly. WFH saves the company money (assuming they're productive).

People clearly need to be held accountable to do their work and be monitored for that. It's no different than if you're in the office. Nobody I work with is in my office, they're all over the country.

The whole thing was weird – close small offices (ok, makes sense). Now pay to move people or pay them severance to leave. Then even if you're near a core city (which has changed of course), start going to the office. How much money are they going to spend to create enough space for thousands that work remotely?

Facebook has joined Google in saying it will allow employees to work from home until the middle of next year as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

“Based on guidance from health and government experts, as well as decisions drawn from our internal discussions about these matters, we are allowing employees to continue voluntarily working from home until July 2021,” a spokeswoman told the Reuters news agency.

Facebook also said it will provide employees with an additional $1,000 to spend on “home office needs.”

Late last month Google also extended its coronavirus remote work provision, saying staff would be able to continue working from home until the end of June 2021.

OP may not be familiar but almost exactly a year ago Saul started coming after the remote tech people (do a search for Location Strategy) and decided we had to move to Charlotte/Minneapolis/StLouis/Phoenix/DesMoines. Then they delayed making a decision, then they finally gave (some but not all) people the ultimatum of either relocate at company expense or lose the job. Then Coronavirus hit. When asked, he will not commit to remote. So nobody knows what is going on exactly. But I don’t see them embracing long term WFH unless they have no choice.

I don’t think the poster understands the practical problem exclusive to Wells. It is not the general visitors to this portal. It is the lot who in many cases have spent 20, 30 years in the Company and many of these folks have been ‘working’ from home since the 1990s. Such people have managed to keep their jobs while they have seen many managers come and go. These people in most cases are barely productive . There have been instances where remote employees are running a small grocery store on the side while logged into the Wells Network. It is that lot that need to be identified and purged.

Charlie does not like WFH, expect to be in the office (period).

WFH should have been more widespread. It's actually much cheaper for the company. I had a coworker who showed the math to our boss about 13 years ago. It was essentially half the cost.

They can easily run call centers this way as well. The one argument against it right now is they can't geographically isolate you like they want to. During my current team's title mapping call, my boss's boss rushed through slides mentioning "location strategy" focusing on "strategic markets".

So while WFH is worth it, they also don't want you WFH in region 000 or 001 since you're still to expensive that way. So the centralized hub model that was previously planned will probably be kept to justify laying off the expensive people.

However the rumor mill I'm plugged into is saying Chainsaw values the coasts and realizes the talent is there. It's hard to know, so ymmv.

If you want to work in a cheaper location like Charlotte or Des Moines, why don't you just propose that to your boss? WF would love to get you out of Area 0 and start paying you an Area 2 salary, which is 20% less.