Thread regarding Wells Fargo & Co. layoffs

The op was looking for information from people with knowledge of the situation not speculation.

I don’t have any first-hand knowledge but am in the same boat as a remote ee for several years and would like to know.

Hey @1sby, I'd love SVB's comp, but I don't have his capacity to speak during an AMA for an hour and say absolutely nothing useful.

Companies develop a location strategy to eliminate higher cost workers in a way that prevents lawsuits for age discrimination. Telecommuters are usually higher paid, higher skilled, but also older and more costly, both in salary and health insurance. A hub strategy isn't about getting better work but getting rid of expensive older workers. They have kids in school or have already done the big city thing.

I'm not involved with the discussions so this is not about WF. It is just the usual reason you do this.

You don't provide relocation money. You say either "move on your own dollar" or you don't allow relocations and just let them go. You tend not to do it for your core functions. Everyone else is fungible: worker bees are worker bees.

@dxz, so agree with you. Thank you for that. Now, can you please take SVB's position? :-)

3 positions were recently approved for us in tech. We were not allowed to post for Charlotte as that is only a maintain site (you can replace someone there but not hire new). We were allowed to post for Minneapolis or St Louis.

Considering the coming lay-offs in the name of cost cutting, how much sense would it make for the company to offer $$$ for relocating employees from non-hub locations to hubs?

In general for the whole bank the locations were Portland, Salt Lake City, Minneapolis, DesMoines, Dallas, Atlanta, Charlotte

I believe wF will be opening themselves up for a lawsuit if the first people they lay-off are the ones in tech that received relocation package and then they were pulled back due to the relocation strategy being cancelled in IT. You can’t remove a package and then turn around and lay those 700 people off. Very bad additional PR for Wells if that were true.

Sticking to the location strategy isn't very Agile.

Adapting to a changed world would be the smart thing to do.

Sticking to a bad idea because you can't admit it's an even worse idea now is just bad management.

But based on comments made by Saul in IT and others, I believe the OP is correct, the location strategy is lurking on the horizon.

There must be some math behind it, but shedding locations and allowing people to WFH would save a lot of money, unless we're locked into leases, or feel we can't sell space that's owned.

It would be nice if they'd be a bit more open about why the location strategy is still being considered, becuase Saul's call for people to work side by side "rubbing elbows" was only a good idea for a limited number of teams, and it's downright dangerous in the age of COVID.

Wouldn’t look for many, if any, relocation opportunities. Relocation is going to mostly be limited to healthy, growing companies these days.

Location strategy is still alive and well... As a telecommuter not in a code hub location, I've applied for dozens of roles over the last year. All rejected. Finally, a hiring manager told me they are sticking to the core location strategy for hiring and if you are not in a location, the hiring manager will not even see your application because HR is screening them.

glad to see the company is being so forwarding looking with location strategy. Guess they don't understand how many employees will want to keep working remote for the work life balance when the pandemic is "over"

This is so dumb. I can't think of a single team that will have all members in the same location and the relocation money could be used to save jobs. Each LOB has their own options. I can't believe more places like Atlanta, Birmingham, Nashville aren't standard options if they don't want to save the money permanent telecommuting provides.

so in answer to your question no relocation has been taken off the table...

yes the location strat is alive and well... the primary list that was developed when this started was the people who were effected by the strat are the ones who will be cut first. then the people who have 1's and 2's. This was from meetings that happened in july as part of the automation effort project that started in july... anyone that is in tech in a location which has lower than 100 IT people will be impacted. Yes SVB said it was canceled.. well the official location strat project itself was canceled and merged into the displacements project.

those are corp risk locations

There are more locations than that. Each LOB can decide which hubs will be their core locations.