Thread regarding Wells Fargo & Co. layoffs

159k last year and yet I dream about doing a simple job that has purpose...like slinging burritos at Chipotle.

Managers no longer "do the right thing" for their employees here. It's all about saving their hide & they will lie to do it if pushed on anything where they need to stand up for what is right. No wonder most employees are adrift.

I retired early last year for exactly this reason. I was a middle manager who ENJOYED working with my team, training them, getting them promoted, changing careers even. After over 18 months I sat down to document what we had implemented for the bank's benefit and what I had done for my team's benefit, forget myself. Little got implemented. Instead of dozens of tech and operational improvements with direct benefits to the bank we had one. Agile had ki-led us by delaying change and watering it down. It was NOT faster. For my team members, nothing. I was always chasing something that needed a PowerPoint deck to convince someone to do something they didn't want to for many months. We had two team meeting a week with our boss and weekly one on ones as well. Two down skip meetings once a month that got cancelled and moved every time, multiple, times. At least 3 change committees where documenting what was said by everyone was the only result. I told my boss that I was spending 100% of my time doing work that improved life for no one, not our customers, not the banks bottom line, not my teams careers, nothing. I submitted an annual review saying all this and left. Oh, and I received a meets with a review that had no accomplishments. Says a lot.

Is this agile?

@1pho+1m4g4y2n. Yeah, my ex-manager always came up with insane excuses for being late to meetings, like "the wind blew my trashcan down the street and I had to run after it". She wasn't available to her team, didn't care and offered no managerial skills. If anything, she gaslit you when you asked for some info (ie: as one is when being new to the team). All my managers pretty much were demotivating rather than motivating, and would cut you down. I was a high performer too.

My processing manager is worthless. She needs to go back to being in an office 5 days a week. She spent all of 2021 and 2022 building her house. Working remote it was easy for her not to work. She was never available and still to this day is never around. Instead of cutting the workers get rid of these middle over paid managers.

This is a systemic issue at WF, which seems to have gained momentum over the past ten years, but more so since Charlie's been in charge. My most recent manager had zero clue what we did all day. Way too much time was wasted trying to escalate things that really didn't warrant escalation--except that a higher-up (even more clueless) got hung up on something which might look bad on them. More effort spent worshiping the people higher up than dealing with day-to-day. Great loss to being effective or efficient, but what do I know.

Yep, I'm a manager and I spent countless hours doing BS that has no impact on my groups performance. If it won't result in death or regulatory/legal issues if they don't, the execs / upper management types probably shouldn't be rolling it down hill. We have more important things to do, most of which they have no idea about. We invest an inordinate amount of time talking about working and explaining to the higher ups what we're doing--rather than actually doing it.

I have to say my mgr is very involved in day to day and does know our work--that said, my mgr attends all project call meetings so not exactly sure why the 1-1 go over every single project in my queue? My mgr lost 3/4 of the team and now has a handful of direct reports. I'm trying to understand why this middle mgt level has not been displaced. IMO there are WAY to many mgrs now and now hardly any of "us" to do the work

Goes back to career vs job debate. WF is all about jobs, not careers. You do some sort of work in some sort of order without clarity and purpose and collect a paycheck. Lots of mistakes, lots of reactionary round robins, head scratching logic.

There just simply is no framework at WF to develop a career. One should be critical of the distinction between jobs and careers and adjust their expectations accordingly.

In a way, we are paid/compensated for tolerating blah-ness.

When managers don't really know what their teams are doing, it makes managing their capacities extremely difficult. And with people so geographically dispersed and no co-located, employees know that that their teams don't really know what they are doing and I feel like people take advantage of doing nothing while snowing the bosss in 1:1's that their swamped with a task they are barely spending any time on at all. Tons of inequity in work load simply because the boss spends no time trying to understand/manage to it.

It flat out sucks having a manager who has no interest or understanding in what you actually do. When you have a problem or encounter a challenge or situation where some guidance is needed or a decisions needs made, you can't even get them to really understand the context of the problem because they have no clue what you do. 9 times out of 10 your question becomes another task item for you to go on a hunt for self-discovery of the answer and then report back to the manager what you plan to do. That's a manager deflecting so they don't have any actions items to do.

This is scarily accurate and applies to all but 1 manager I've had in 8+ years at WF. My current manager knows very little about the day-to-day activities of our team, but I can't even really blame them.

Very well stated. It's literally everywhere. Internal Audit, Front-Line Control, IRM......layers and layers of managers who's primary focus is on the guy/gal above them and further. Those beneath them are nothing more than a vehicle to get things done when needed, but there is very little interested in actual managing/leading people. There's no money in focusing on developing your people and addressing their needs. There's money in delivering for the boss, plain and simple.

It’s because their manager’s manager and on up the chain keep them all busy with meetings, committees, and tasks of questionable value. It’s the work culture here - zero strategy 100 percent reactive to seem productive.

Uh oh... @luh thinks that 'manage' automatically equals 'micromanage'.

He must be a manager that keeps busy but doesn't manage. Just wants to sit in meetings all day and call it good.

A manager's job is to manage. Managing is an active verb - it's not just a job title, regardless of role.

Holy...

I could've written that about my current experience. I'd only have to change the name of the dept and the gender pronoun. That's it. Everything else rings true, and my area of the bank is far removed from compliance. So this really is a widespread problem.