I hate to stand up for Tim Sloan too much, because I’m wishing he hadn’t spent the $40 billion on stock buybacks to falsely pump up the stock price. We could use that money back right now. And he probably did have knowledge of the cross-selling scandal. But I do think he sincerely wanted to lift employee morale after Stumpf left.
Compared to Stumpf and now Scharf: I’m starting to appreciate Sloan more, in hindsight.
Stumpf had the employee surveys, but they were smoke and mirrors and I never saw anything beneficial come out of those. We were actually tortured by our managers with painful meetings and projects if we didn’t give high ratings on the survey. Under Stumpf, our low wage bankers were brutalized with the cross-selling pressure. And then blamed and fired.
Scharf is a whole new animal, the likes of which I’ve never experienced. This guy is cold as ice. He blatantly does not care about employees or employee morale. No communication, no inspiration, no respect, zero transparency, no empathy, no shared vision, no gratitude for our hard work, no loyalty to the existing employees. Someone described him as a snake. But not all snakes are ruthless. So I’m going with a bull shark.
Tim Sloan wasn’t perfect but he at least gave the impression that he cared. Seemed genuine. He did enact some changes from the employee surveys. He raised the minimum hourly wage, gave us the 50 shares of stock, held many Town halls in person across the country. It was under Sloan that we had some pancake breakfasts and some competitions in the atrium (at WFA). There were some recognition events for employees. I think there was more, but I can’t remember.
Now that we are experiencing Charlie’ s “leadership”, Tim Sloan is starting to look like a Prince.