Thread regarding Wells Fargo & Co. layoffs

I do not see people intentionally violating the rules. I do see a lot of laziness, incompetence, and inexperience (cheaper, younger bankers who do not have a clue and let problems grow that could have been quickly and easily solved had they acted sooner). I also see compliance often missing the forest for the trees. Do not even get me started about the QA groups and "Center of Excellence" teams.

We talk a lot about risk management and compliance but there is no there there. Compliance, risk, and law are scared to answer questions and rarely put anything in writing. None of them talk to each other, so us poor minions just do whatever we think makes sense. There is no oversight at the top.

@2ndf - once you are treated like garbage a lot of people just want the saga to end and do not hire legal counsel. Its easier to throw in the towel and move on in life than fight Wells in a stacked fight. We know ER and HR won't be fair, for starters.

I am seeing a theme here, especially in Compliance. Raise your hand and you are shut down or fired. Are those that have lost the jobs hiring lawyers? Seems like this would be fairly easy to prove if there are emails, documentation, meetings, etc. Especially related to board reporting...there has to be a chain of documentation associated with formal reporting.

I raised my hand several times to the former CCO of WellsCap and was told to "stop being a storm cloud" and that I "didn't know what I was doing." The former CCO had no compliance experience prior to becoming the CCO and did everything in her power to get me fired. This was regarding regulatory and law violations. She would not discuss the items with me so I sent her emails outlining the situations after which she then told me to "stop emailing me"

Its a multi layer problem. I was lucky, my direct manager agreed that this was a big problem and also raised her hand. But guess what, we both got hammered back down. We were both intimidated into submission and let it be known we should have never picked up the rock to show the worms. But considering the changes that happened over the last few years, it just doesnt matter anyway. Management is now totally incompetant and wouldnt even know what to do to fix the problem. WFC is no different then the DMV.

Ooh the “team player” comment below just triggered me lol. I would want my employees to feel comfortable bringing problems, potential impending disasters, suggestions for improvement etc to me. But it’s viewed as negativity in our department. My manager doesn’t want to hear it because it would require him to ask for money or technology which he knows he can’t get. He clearly surrounds himself with only the employees who give the positive picture to him, even if it means they’re setting him up for a future problem by not telling him what he needs to know. There has to be a balance between positivity and actual reality. IMO, this is why WFC (other banks as well) keep having scandals blow up in their face. It is because they don’t want to hear about anything that takes away from their ability to grow the bottom line.

My job was threatened when I raised my hand. I was told I was not being a team player, and it looked like it wasn't working out for me.

I have seen people "raise their hands" in compliance about inaccurate BOARD reporting information, it was made to look better than the story really was. Several people escalated this to ER, Management, etc - the ER concerns were "investigated" and nothing ever changed or happened. Then the people who were mis reporting information got promoted into new/different areas of the bank. Typical WF.

Are you READING this Kelty McRae? LIttle Ms. Risk and and Compliance HR who doesn't do sh*t to stop this!

In light of compliance and hostile work environment issues.... My experience was 'Raise your hand' = 'Displaced'. HR is useless.

I had an identical experience to @epg. There will be retaliation for raising your hand on any issue, no matter how small and mid level management will lie to cover their tracks. Until this layer is completely cleaned out by lay off and fitness for duty evaluation, you are better off saying nothing if you care to stay at the company.

The terribleness of Compliance may be the only thing everyone on this forum agrees on. I agree that the culture is very much against raising your hand.

You bring it up once in writing and that's it until someone responds. You raised your hand and did the right thing. Now it's up to someone else. I'm sure you have enough things to do besides looking for more work. Unfortunately it comes to a not my problem thing.

I learned my lesson. I brought up some big time deficiencies and I was attacked by upper management. Thinking I was doing the right thing by rising my hand, what I really learned is that upper management gives the illusion that they want to "fix" the problems but they really want things to remain below the radar so the money keeps flowing in. Now, like many others, I keep my head down and protect only me. To h–l with the company.

"My theory is that either A. Management doesn’t know enough to ask the right questions, and/or B. Management doesn’t want to ask the right questions, because they know they most likely can’t fix the problems."

This is what I used to think of every time I took the Voice of the Team survey. Whenever executive management wanted employee feedback the questions were crafted to create responses of happiness and approval while offering no chance to report problems or dislikes. They went out of their way to avoid getting negative feedback.

Last year was the first in my multiple decades at WF that I ever saw management actually allow honest commenting on how you were feeling about working here. Of course, acting like it was actually seeking feedback rather than asking, "how many of you are likely to leave before we can lay you off?" was hilariously naive.