Thread regarding Wells Fargo & Co. layoffs

Thanks for all the replies. You all made some really great points. I don’t know what I’m going to do yet other than I know I’m cruising

Morale is in the toilet and it's there for a lot of reasons. For me it started when the account scandals broke and the execs seemed to think it was important to drag every employee through the mud, for years, whether the employee was involved or not. It was exhausting. The company response to C19 was good in some ways (no mandates) but blatantly ridiculous in others. That time should have been where the company reflected on WFH vs Office and implemented a targeted approach that made sense, instead they did a hamfisted faux-blanket approach. For PR reasons they said it applied to everyone, but we know it didn't, so there was nothing reasonable or fair about it. If you work in an area that's hard to hire in-office workers in, you probably got exemption and weren't "better together". If your role is more easily replaced, you didn't, and thousands of workers were forced to come work in buildings even if no collaboration was even possible (geographically distributed teams etc.). The alleged reason for RTO was obviously a pack of lies, and everyone knew it, so naturally respect for the execs plummeted.

Caps and consent orders never seem to go away and fines keep coming in. Only so many years you can "build out the risk infrastructure" before you have to show results.

There's also been constant churn in the upper management / executive ranks, such that pretty much everyone falls into the "whatever, they'll be gone in a few months anyway" category. Why listen to hard to people that are just looking to bounce?

Then there's DEI, which they say is for "everyone" but it's obviously not. I hire the best people and it has resulted in a very diverse team. In spite of this, I have to listen to "leaders" with less diverse teams drone on and on about how "we" need to do better in this area. They never say it out loud, but the obvious suggestion is to discriminate. I'm not going to do it, because it's racist BS and if they want to fire me over it, "ok". That said, it's exhausting and a morale ki---r to constantly be bombarded with this racist nonsense.

I used to be a WF flag waving fan of the company. Not anymore. I pray every day that the current execs will leave and sane leadership will take over. Until then, morale will remain in the toilet.

Long time employee here. The economy during the 2008 timeframe brought a culture of "misguided over-empowerment" to management here. Their mindset was "there's people lined up for your job right now, and we can replace you in an instant". Comments like "you people are a dime a dozen" were common, and demoralizing.

That mindset became entrenched.

A few years later, there was the fake account scandal, which exposed a lot of internal WF practices to the outside world.

WF used to be a "Goal" employer. People aspired to work here. That feeling is long gone. The only people left from that old guard are ones like me who are close to retirement. It is a vastly different company now.

RTO was the last straw.

Trollish post asking a good question.

Fraud, scandal, weak self-serving leaders and across-the-board mismanagement is what happened at (not to) Wells Fargo.

OP - hate to burst your bubble, but your bonus will be the same as your co-workers.

You worked your rear off all year and you'll get nothing extra for it.

This is why your coworkers do so little. You think they're behind you, but in fact, they're ahead of you. They've already figured out that going above the minimum is not rewarded here.

Maybe a past version of Wells wasn't like this, and it can be interesting to understand why things changed. But more importantly, things have changed, and there's no reason to go above the minimum anymore, and that's not a bad thing.

If it helps, look at the situation like your bosses have become experts at staffing. There's no more need for staff to play games with competing with one another to crank out one more spreadsheet than the next person. (I don't know why you'd ever miss a geeky environment like that anyway.)

A nice mix of Charlie and retaliation against employees who “raise their hands”. Mass layoffs don’t help with hiring morale as word gets around.

If you had a stellar resume, why would you send it to WF to be the low man when layoffs roll through?

I think you are right. But what is causing the discontent in most cases?

The good people left, well, looks like you're still here.