Notice that all references to agile are gone from most Wells Fargo job specs. Why? Has/Is Wells given up the agile ghost? I thought BE was going to bring in agile as she did at BNY. She was hired almost a year ago as head of Technology with a 22Mill salary. I haven't seen or heard of anything different in tech land -- other than most of the processing knowledge walking out the door in layoffs. Is the shareholder getting anything for this investment?
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She's only here for one purpose, to outsource as much of the tech LOB as possible. In Sharts eyes, she doesn't need to be able to do anything else.
Man- we’re talking about the same stuff as six months ago. Tech has lost its way. This crew can’t figure out how to crawl but they are trying to run.
Useless
This thread perfectly illustrates the enduring problem at Wells Fargo: a fundamental lack of ethical grounding and a pervasive culture of malfeasance. The aspiration to be a 'safe place to work,' and the attempts at agile transformation and fostering teams, seem to have been undermined by the persistent 'command and control' mentality.
As many here point out, the agile efforts appear to have yielded little tangible improvement, with some even describing it as 'wagile he-l' or just creating 'more weekly update meetings.' The commentary about the 'fully loaded cargo carrier' aptly captures the inertia of the organization.
The core issue isn't just about inefficient processes or flawed methodologies like agile; it's about a leadership culture that, despite the 'account scandal,' hasn't fundamentally shifted its ethical compass. Until Wells Fargo genuinely addresses its deep-seated ethical problems and moves away from a top-down, punitive approach, no efficiency program or agile transformation, no matter how well-intentioned, will truly succeed in creating a better environment for employees or delivering consistent value for shareholders.
You don’t need a 4-year degree to lay people off.
@da But Chuckles thinks he is God
Copilot, and just MS AI in general, is not even that good. There are other tools out there that are way better. Even Gemini's CLI is better and it's still only half-baked.
But hey, we got a 40 year industry veteran with loads of experience and no 4 year degree leading us through layoffs. Pretty awesome.
Lol you will be fired if you don't "utilize" Copilot, and be considered underperforming if you use it too much.
This place is a disaster.
We are worse than agile. We are now both top down and pretend agile. So instead of three weekly update meetings I have six.
WF tech is like a fully loaded cargo carrier-- it doesn't turn quickly, it doesn't speed up quickly, it doesn't slow down quickly. Nothing is quick at the company and any transformation is years in the making. Much of what Saul came up with is on back burner essentially-- it's there, sort of, but not really.
Cloud migration has been a joke. So no real transformation there.
You know what is a must do that will get messed up also? Data Center exit. Nobody is going to do any major tech transformation while we're trying to exit the existing data centers AND migrating to OCP and whatever bullsh*t they come up with.
Oh I forgot-- we'll slap ourselves on the back for lame minor things we do AI. Big whoop.
Her nickname is Agile Engle, per her significant other… just sayin
Agile is d-mb as heck. When I step back and think of what I produce as an engineer, where we need to go and what to get done, any of the agile stuff and tracking etc have no part of that.
Simply a backlog, maybe epics to show ownership, and a good Kanban board are all you need.
As an ex employee of more than 2 decades , I can opine that around 2010, small IT teams within the company was successful with agile implementation as the teams were autonomous and decisions happened at local level. Late 2020's the corporate started bringing enterprise Agile with scrum of scrums, sAFE, XP, and Kanban and struggle to get success. The bureaucracy was still in tact to get approvals. xP was miserable step for Agile and so called QA does not need and everything should be Developer. 90% of the standups are wasted as they never talked about issues.
It only looks like she's not doing anything because in the eyes of the execs 100% of tech is going to become a service provided by india, so I'm guessing that's where all of her efforts are focused. The tech people are just tasked with puttering along until they get the pink slip.
Anyone notice one of the Board members is from Make A Wish….. well folks Make A Wish!!!!
Maybe that’s how they govern, through wishes….
Ever notice they all have done the same things. She did what TK did who did what SVB did . They just use the same background , just change the names.
@bb But wait!!! Isn’t Middlesex College the epitome of computer science? Surpassing Stanford, MIT, Georgia Tech . Her credentials are all about managing up.
@ce Off course Bridgit was excited about coming over. Who wouldn’t be for $22M ?
Charlie could tout all the so called experience but what did she ever accomplish at any of those stops BNY was happy to see her go as were her some of her other stops. This too will be a bust like TK.
@cz Except she may not be able to touch TK because of SVB . Makes you wonder if SVB and TK would get caught on a kiss cam at a Coldplay concert. Or maybe BE and CS .
@cz The only results that have trickled down are more indians and increasing threat of layoff with a terrible stack ranking system.
She is making millions while Americans suffer. I'm sure there are some lazycoasters, but most of the "innefficiency" simply ties to bad management and ever changing priorities. Layoffs in the absense of a threat to company survivability = bad management, every time.
A million years ago, when I started at WF (2005), I attended an Agile overview by a company trying to sell us their services.. I attended multiple discussions regarding requirements, project management, testing and was not able to see how this “methodology” could be integrated into a company with extraordinarily complex business processes and databases and tools owned by individual parts of the business…everything siloed. I spoke directly with the company reps trying to sell the services and after I described the situation, 3 of their reps declared that Agile would NOT work at WF. It didn’t matter, it became the buzzword and promise of efficiency and excellence. Over the course of a 20 year career, I have not seen a single instance of Agile being used successfully. No matter what, tech insisted in fully developed, detailed requirements. That required fully developed business processes and databases definitions. Then, tech delivery could come in an agile delivery, and insufficient testing time before production. Result was toolsets that caused business to create MANY workarounds, which then polluted business processes and impacting requirements. The workarounds became operationalized and never resolved. No efficiencies. Higher costs of business. Move work to India in an attempt. To lower costs as a result. Agile was never going to work at WF, but yeah, hire someone at $22mil to make it work.
Not even god could run this company
@ce+1k0fw31x7 I’m not advocating for or against BE, but what could someone really do in less than a year with a hot mess like WF?
And those worrying about her educational credentials, wouldn’t demonstrated past performance be a better indicator vs ANY paper educational document for anyone?
While results may not have trickled down to the first line employees yet, my understanding is BE isn’t letting those under her remain on cruise control with “well this is always how we’ve done things” mentalities. She’s apparently asking questions, making people provide validations and data to back up whatever BS they are spewing. We’ll see how this turns out.
ok she reports directly to CS. Its been 341 days. Why was she hired? "Engle, who previously held the positions of SEVP and Chief Information Officer at BNY Mellon, has managed large, global technology organizations within complex financial institutions for more than 30 years. Her extensive background also includes key roles at Bank of America and other financial institutions, where she led significant technology transformations.
Scharf highlighted Engle’s proven leadership and deep expertise as crucial for the ongoing modernization and innovation of Wells Fargo’s platforms. Engle expressed her enthusiasm for joining Wells Fargo during this transformative period, aiming to enhance the company’s technological capabilities for both customers and employees. "
So CS hired BE to enhance the company's technology capabilities for both customers and employees. So has the bank's tech been enhanced in the 341 days she has been hired? What has Wells Fargo gotten for their 20M investment (365/341)*22M? You guys in the business side -- do you feel that your tech capabilities have been enhanced? Or is it still up in the clouds (or perhaps not in the clouds)?
WTF? Is it even possible to get a 2 year "Computer Science" degree? If this is true that really pi---s me off.
Her Bio: https://www.wellsfargo.com/about/corporate/governance/engle/
"Bridget earned a degree in Computer Science from Middlesex College (New Jersey)."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middlesex_College_(New_Jersey)
$22,000,000/yr and doesn't even have a proper Bachelor's degree, shareholders are getting ripped off as usual by Charlie and friends.
@OP here, the $22M salary is here https://www1.salary.com/Bridget-E-Engle-Salary-Bonus-Stock-Options-for-WELLS-FARGO-and-COMPANY-MN.html and here https://www.erieri.com/executive/salary/bridget-engle-aqd4. Perhaps the stock award is a "sign-on" bonus? Bridget E. Engle’s total compensation at Wells Fargo for 2023 was $22,111,032, including a $589,286 salary, $2,236,500 bonus, and $19,285,246 in stock awards, with no option awards or other compensation. There is no mention of a sign-on bonus in the available data, suggesting it may not be part of this figure. For more details, check Wells Fargo’s proxy statements at www.sec.gov. At BNY she was making $7.1M -- so a nice raise.
Didn't mean for this to be focus on "Wagile". Has there been any advances in Wells Fargo tech this year? Adoption and use of AI to create agentic solutions? How is "Fargo" doing? Has it been improved? Has AI been disseminated fairly? Has anything been done to capture the knowledge of those escorted out of the door? I hope you are not using that accpac cr-p.
She needs to go, I would rather have Saul any day over her. He has been a cancer for technology.
@ac It's a symptom of layer upon layer of bureaucracy combined top down command and control management. Agile was doomed from the start. We were foolish to think we could do it. In hindsight, there was no way management was going to let us be truly agile, because how would they be able to justify their existence?
Agile is shamefully old as a technology vehicle. It's decades old. There are skilled people at Wells that weren't even born when agile started being used.
Do you have a 25 year old computer? How about a 25 year old phone? 25 year old furniture? No to all of the above, but "yes" when it comes to technology at work for some reason? 🤡
And if you know the history of agile (a group of geeks met in the desert to talk about different ways of doing their job) it makes the mass, cultish adoption of it even more embarrassing.
One of the (d-mbest) stated principles of agile is "working software over comprehensive documentation". Oh really? How does that square with endless jira entries where 500 fields need to be populated just right for every little thing that's done? The difference is that "comprehensive documentation" is actually useful as a reference whereas jira is useless.
Oh well, gimme muh bonus 🤷
No way she has a $22M salary. Charlie doesn't even get paid that in salary.
Agile failed and now everyone is stuck in wagile he-l. Glad I'm out. Sc--w that dysfunctional dumpster fire. For those of you still in it, I hope you get out before you get burned.
Skill up. WF will sp-t you out completely unprepared for the world that is a decade ahead.
BE is collecting the $22M to update all the "Agile" references to "AI"