Thread regarding State Farm Insurance layoffs

We are fortunate that we were able to attract external leaders from staples. Without them we would be decades behind.

Would like to know who gets fired for a 48-hour long enterprise blackout? Stop blaming the weather, this was a failure to maintain the generators as well as a failure to understand how to properly back up systems. At least 2 VPs of these areas and 1/2 the upper management should be fired.

Sounds like it was handled well and the systems were brought up as soon as humanly possible. Great recovery team!

No excuse! Do your job!

The guy who had the code to switch had
Covid

Could be a great topic for the next IT symposium, data centers where you backup and switch over to! What wonders await!🙈

Add to this the fact that they didn’t do the failover to Olathe as that part is untested and they didn’t want to risk losing data. Better design and architecture to make it testable would be a good thing eh? Do they know the half of it?

It’s ok. SF and it’s “affiliates” and third party vendor “consultants” will just grab and sell & share every form of data and employee data and do “cloud” and implement “risk management”, security and compliance partnerships to track, surveillance and analyze customers, claimants, policyholders and you for profit. Watch and monitor and report on and project/predict your every web and life move and categorize you snd customers. And sell it.

Chatbots, AI (wanna be), scripts, and exploitive and mostly wrong built in admin systems and rules engines will make SF a star and number # 1. ( while paying Google and other entities to be “the top and best insurer”.)

Technocrats and wolves in sheep’s clothing looking like “great businessmen” amd Managers and belong society while making way too much money exploiting whoever they can.

Not smart or good business.

Marketing way and China way.

Enjoy

My understanding was that the diesel fuel for the generators gelled in the cold temps. Like everything else in TX, nobody even thought of cold temps being a problem.

If that is the case about the generators someone needs to be fired. This is negligence in risk management and facilities operation.

By the way, is MT going to address the company? Is he hiding in a bunker? Is this a legal thing why he is not communicating?

Shouldn't they have tested the generators each year to make are they work?

This is the real reason —SF has back up generators x5 - massive generators. They have not been used for years and the diesel in them was not good after all these years of sitting. They basically ruined components when they tried to start them up.

To the prior poster and Booyah it’s a secret I’ve kept myself until now. During my salary reviews with my boss while he’s going on a big long spiel I put my headphones my punk nephew when I go to the bathroom and while he slam dances against the wall when I come back my boss finishes up he always seems flattered that I have off the wall enthusiasm and gives me a bigger raise. To the prior poster God knows what your dog has been doing while you’re gone I think you have the camera and the sound off I assume.

To booyah, When I have to go to the bathroom I put my headset on my dog during a meeting with management so sometimes I come back and I get the strange looks from them so I hope I don’t get fired for my dogs been doing.

I’m back and I won’t be deterred! Texas is an icy hot place to be now. Would you wanna move there now ? Would you want to be considered critical and had to move here?

Common man. Just had my meeting with MT and company at Pool Side. Planning another big news item. Stay tuned!! System Chiefs

I would wager he is plotting how to get a promotion out of this outage.

Thta isnt accurate. I believe he came to us from middle management at the office supply company

Our Chiefs. We have a guy who drove Staples to the ground and left - Hmmmm!! We have a gal who likes to travel and sounds good. We are focusing on Cloud and spending LOTS of money where the services can be bought cheaper. And we did nothing and our EIP was GRRRRRREAT!!

A serious review of IT execs should be established. Shortcuts and lack of leadership and experience is frightening. Going out to office supply company and giving the keys probably not the best strategy.

For sure. Agents and their teams are catching all heck from the customers. The customers are justified....but we are powerless to help. In exchange for being the bullet catchers on the frontline, we will be the ones who see income loss due to cancellations and lost opportunities. Credibility...what’s that?
Sales Leader apologizing profusely for our being utterly failed. That’s appreciated, but we hear nothing from those actually responsible....except links to lists of extra things we can do for them.
No CEO at another similarly influential company would survive this.

You want the real deal? -Jake

The company failed egregiously in their duty to take care of policyholders. They didn’t properly plan. Bottom line. Saying unprecedented weather is scapegoating.

Senior Leadership is MIA. No one has heard from them. Agency is left in the dark as to what and how to help. We can improvise but have so many compliance protocols in place no one wants to do anything that could get them in trouble. No one is leading right now. People need to hear from sr leadership at least for some sort of acknowledgement, reassurance, something. Like a president in a national crisis.

Is the Board awake? Is there any situational awareness?

If you think the systems infrastructure was somehow compromised by marketing spend you are truly simple minded.

This is a fine example of good ol boy syndrome. People who don't have a clue or have never worked with their hands understanding machinery are making decisions based on touchy emotional crp that doesn't belong in rational thought process. A bunch of people who never put a days work building something to create value by making decisions to cut out the person to maintains the engines to keep the ship running. A bunch of idits who think their food automatically gets on the grocery shelf. It takes the grower, the butcher, the trucker and the diesel mechanic to get that food to your store. The elites think their stupid and worthless. God is slowly giving lessons to them to appreciate their brother. If they don't heed the lesson, the alternative is to learn the hard way.

Or instead of giving money to marketing maybe use that money to improve our IT infrastructure since we want to be a data driven company and all....

Maybe better ideas then a first ever Superbowl add..
Wasted money could have gone to all customers who now need claim reps and help to live this winter

Seems like upgrading and updating systems should have happened long ago. They took what we use for granted. How could a company this big go down becuase of one state. ..
Agree with the others, dont put all your eggs in one basket. No one listens to those of us who actually do all the work and why does it seem we are the ones who actually care about our work, the customers and what happens

Another Fcker Carlson misinformed troglodyte. This isn’t a “green issue.” Texas is the only state in U.S. with its own electrical grid. That grid is run by a number of board members, many of whom don’t even reside in Tx. The board reports to the Republican legislature. Gas represents 40% of the energy followed by wind at 23%, coal, 19% and nuclear at 11%. All have failed -check the price of crude oil today. There are a lot of problems but green energy is way down the list......

This is just a little peek at the future you Greenie weenie’s envision our energy policy will look like. There’s not enough flat surface on the earth for all the solar panels and windmills to generate our electrical needs if everybody’s driving EV‘s. By the way do you know what the mileage drop is on electrical vehicle and subzero temperature, Think 25% of its advertised range maybe. That’s if you don’t run the electrical heat. I’ll keep my big 6.0 L internal combustion engine, thank you very much. Or should I say F you very much.

in insurance edumaction we learned about loss prevention.....perhaps some need to get their iia or cpcu.

Our supersize big brother data metrics can’t tell us when our data center gonna crash but we can tell what you are doing when you have your headset on!

Should be 'supersized' financial firms.

It is freak weather in TX for sure. Otoh, TX is known for having large violent(F5 type) tornados semi regularly. One would think system redundancy would include weather driven disaster, source of disaster irrelevant.And, any other supervised financial firms, say BoA or Citi(or US Bank, lol) having similar eruption of incompetence? Flo stuck in her basement with no wifi? If this was a similar size banking firm the OCC would be all over the place and the top 3-4 would be dead men managin'(and BoD members would be very uncomfortable. But, of course throwing a c-apload of cash at two arrogant, self righteous. QB's and, an NFL stadium and about every pro and major college conference and stadium and adverts on any and all associated media are far more important than having up to date IT systems, infrastructure and planning.

Who do I write-up first on the Segment Feedback form for owning this cluster? 🤣

I think the System Chiefs just got wake up call. Do your job. You should all be ashamed of your self and focus on results instead of you bank account!! They should all get 1 ratings.

Green energy? This is Texas you fool! Where the f— is the green energy? Texas has its own power grid because they didn’t want to be subject to green power and other regulations. Guess who has power and keeps power during snow storms? The North. What does the north have? Green power and not oil!

For the next couple of days we get to hear leadership B*tch & moan about wasted payroll making us be available to answer internal and external calls saying we will be glad to assist but cant since our systems are down. It would have been cheaper to put in a pre-recorded message and send is home, literally save thousands of dollars. They better hope this next storm coming to Texas dont wipe out all the “hard” work they did.

LOL! Watch Fker Carson do we? I live in Tx. Oil refineries in Houston shut down is the largest cause followed closely by natural gas, wind then coal. When the electrical grid goes down it affects everything. Just so you get an actual fact wind contributes 23% of the energy while oil alone is 45%.

Green energy is the cause. It couldn't keep up.

this is going about as well as our commercials