First off, it's never easy to be on transition wondering if you had a job. Sorry Bloomington folks but this has been going on for 10 years plus in the regional offices and claim centers across the U.S.. Where was the outrage, conspiracy and concern then? Now it hits home and everyone in Bloomington is outraged. Get over it. Either make yourself employable in this market or leave, voluntarily or involuntarily. It's business. Love your salary and benefits, then work for it. If SF doesn't need you any more then move on. Your choice. These rants and rumord/conspiracies are crap. Sorry the golden goose isn't laying magic eggs any more.
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Lets face it we are being outsourced. They are looking at the future of the busines and the future of technology and based on their consultants who provide the metrics and things like SCPs's, 3 PET etc to make the most efficient use of employees which reqiure no advanced skills and can be done from anywhere at any time and they can pay them accordingly. This is just the beginning.
Once again the thread turns into discussions and rants about Systems
That's because there is one particular claims employee here who has a huge hard on for Systems and brings it up in like every other thread. Apparently he applied for work in Systems and was turned down, and can't get over it.
Once again the thread turns into discussions and rants about Systems. Start a comment about Proximity and give it time , the conversation is always ends up about Systems. I think the OP comment was spot on.
Last poster, I completely agree with you. Let's all pray they actually keep the good ones in each dept and not the a** kissers.
Yes, we should look at Systems, just like we should look at inefficiencies in every other department. But this is State Farm we're talking about here. You're never going to get meaningful change anywhere. Look at what's happening now. We have a reorganization going on now that's clearly going to make things worse. There will be just as a high a percentage of dead weight after as there was before, in just about every department.
While systems may not be to blame, we should look at the big picture of it. It's a very bloated dept in which there are too many meetings to discuss upcoming meetings. There's not a lot of work on the management side which causes the department to weigh down the company. While I agree there are some good and intelligent people in systems, for the most part it's been a "yes man" club in which nothing of greatness comes from. I hope they can weed out the people that don't carry their weight and keep the good ones. No one "deserves" a job, you work for it and earn it.
None of these complaints have anything to do with Systems....
There is a whole chain of cause and effect here that you seem to be missing.
First, a project starts with the BUSINESS UNIT. They indicate what they want. They provide the funding for it. In some cases, they choose who will do it (which isn't always State Farm Systems). Then they work to identify the requirements (except they're really bad at that part, in general).
For the most part, Systems delivers whatever the business asks for, provided they are willing and able to pay for it.
The franken-systems we have are the result of decades worth of the business not wanting to pay the piper to solve known integration issues.
By way of analogy, it's similar to the dam that failed in Louisiana despite decades worth of politicians knowing it was an issue and not wanting to spend the money on it.
Look at it this way: They could have paid for better systems, or they could have kept giving you a job. Which would you prefer?
Yes, I realize it's not so black and white but that ought to drive the point home.
Let's admit process is a joke and our intranet is even more laughable. I should be able to put the in a search area NV sol (statute of limitations) and get an accurate response. No I have to rely on Google. Such a state of the art system. We are one of the weathiest insurance companies and we can't handle basic applications. How do you think our customers feel? They are paying us $100's of dollars a year for somthing they will not likely need, yet in the event they do need us they need to speak to numerous people to get a straight answer.
Now let us try to implement 3 Pet (a Mitchell product), another copycat from Allstates Colosuss, except they did it over 10 years ago. I'll play by the book and when we get hit with a bunch of excess verdicts, I will be the fall guy/gal! Innovation has gone out the window years ago! Please keep spending millions in people who do not know the business as well as the people doing the work. The ivory tower is our own worst enemy.
Nice try, troll. We all know all these posts are from you. We also know why you hate systems. Tell me, why did you want to work there? Did you want to be part of the problem, then?
Face it. You're bitter because you got turned down for a job and you're too small minded to move beyond it or to think objectively about anything.
By the way, how am I defending the indefensible by pointing out that Systems did not build ECS? That's a simple statement of fact.
It is hilarious reading you systems nerds defending the indefensible. Systems is at the root of all of SF’s problems.
You probably shouldn't blame Systems for ECS, since Systems DID NOT BUILD ECS.
Blame your bosses in Claims.
LOL @ our resident troll dropping multiple "I hate Systems" posts in this thread to make it look like he's not the only idiot on the block.
There's nothing sillier than watching people who know nothing beyond their own jobs criticizing something they literally understand nothing about.
This is what we get for having a “systems” department located in Central Illinois. A daily race between ineptitude and obsolescence.
so much time is wasted within ECS throughout a day by just trying to size, fit, position, and move the pop-up windows around our screens. Also, a company that requires workers to continue to use IE instead of Firefox and/or Chrome browsers. In the real world, maybe one of ten continue to use IE as their browser
How much time and money did it take to develop and deploy ECS?
ECS is a joke. We have so many applications that do not "talk" to each other. We have to copy and paste from one application to another...don't forget copy and paste onto/from Excel.
I believe you completly. I'm not knocking sytems people and I appreciate what you do. I'm only saying the establishment has it wrong! It is not working. I know they are slow to react and that is where we are now.
The people sleeping on the job would be the idiots who hired a vendor to build that crappy application, and the business people who provided the requirements for it.
You are right, I have no knowlege of computer applications. I do know, I get more more information from google then our lame system, so I guess someone is sleeping on the job! Thank god they haven't blocked google!
By the way, "State of the Art" doesn't mean what you've said it means. There is literally nothing correct in anything you've posted.
Dude, your posts are nonsense. Stop pretending you know anything about Systems.
It's obvious you do not.
ECS is not a "computer system."
Microsoft has no industry expertise in building claims applications for insurance companies.
"State of the art " means a system that is seamless without constant glitches. Do you really think we have that? The system is still lacking on so many points. You really think in house can top Microsoft? Again i said it was a rumor..
I'm beginning to understand why HR laughed at this guy....
Holy Christ such nonsense.
About 10 years ago I ran into a new employee and asked her what she thinks about our new computer system ECS and she said she had no problem with it because they had it at Allstate and got rid of it. I asked why she left and she advised it was because they relocated the subrogation department she worked in. No lie
Previous poster:
You sound like you haven't got a clue what you're talking about, on any level. What the hell is a "State of the Art computer System?"
Is that like one of those Alienware laptops?
Seriously, GFY with your idiotic nonsense.
Years ago, Rumor had it they were contracting with Microsoft to set up a state of the art computer system only to abandon it due to cost. They thought they could do it in house. Epic fail!
It's not whining, it's reality. Some of have invested over 20, 30 years of our lives and being shown the door. It's not about tenure or no tenure. They are finding ways to replace US with computer programs and third party vendors. It costs more up front but saving more in the long run. Employee's aren't supposed to think, they are just data imputers to fill in a blank on a screen. Their savings will be seen in less salaries, benefits and pensions. They will just update the computer programs to save more $ as technology evolves. I wish them well! You are just a cog on a wheel waiting to be replaced. We have lost so many policy's over the last year or so we do not need as many people as we currently have.
The problem is that they didn't address the work and the process, just the number of people to do it.
I'll be interested in reading your take on how much more or less productive Systems has gotten since the reorg, once it's all over and some time has passed.
My prediction was that it was going to become hugely FUBAR'd. The problem, of course, is that it was FUBAR'd starting 7 years ago and lots of those impacted have no frame of reference for when Systems actually worked.
The problem is that they didn't address the work and the process, just the number of people to do it. Instead of spending my time coding, I have to do the compliance and form work that the people they just cut did. People that were paid less than the developers. How is that efficient, time or cost wise? And lets not get into disrupting 80% of my team and thinking that they can just put a new body in a chair and be productive right away.
Executives are clueless on what us grunts have to do and what it takes to perform our work on a daily basis. We are nothing but metrics. It's lazy and ineffective management by pie chart
And to those of you complaining about re-orgs that have happened during the last 5 or 10 years, I could easily point out that re-orgs have been a part of this company's modus operandi for many decades. It didn't start 5 or 10 years ago.
What's different about this round of layoffs isn't just that it's more pervasive. It's that, in many cases, the executives are dumping roles that they ruined with their previous bad ideas, and they are literally tanking the company in the process.
We have a lot of people here who are confusing the "re-org we need" with the "re-org" we're getting.
Good luck with that though.
We just keep repeating ourselves on this site.
Yes, everyone knows that State Farm needed to make cuts. I don't know a single person who disputes this.
I also don't know a single person in the real world (outside of fake internet land) who thinks this executive team has a clue what they are doing or that they are capable of giving us the re-org that we truly need.
The current re-org is a bunch of "shot in the dark" nonsense from an executive team with no insight and no plan who relies on consultants to do their thinking for them.
It may be a business, but they sure don't run it like a business. The run it like a children's game, where the rules don't matter and the goal shifts like the wind, and no matter what happens you can tell yourself you won while blaming everyone else for your failures.
so so true...many of us have been dealing with this kind of stuff over the last 5-10 years. It's interesting to see how many on this site think this is just a 2018 thing. Welcome to the party. I think the future is bright for those who are still able to hang on.
There is truth to this post.
This transition/re-org is not new to claims. Auto re-org in 1995 then Fire re-org 97, FCC, ACC,,,,blah, blah, blah.
I did not want to work in ACC or FCC nor be stuck in a cube in a CSO that was eventually going to close so I joined what was known as NatCat. The travel was brutal but we thought we were safe. We saw CSOs being shut down and we thought they couldn't do that to NatCat. They needed us, We were irreplaceable. But then re-org came to NatCat so we were all scrambling for a chair when the music stopped. Not once, but several times. I was tired and my family had enough. There is life after the Farm.
So, now the reality is hitting BloomNorm. This s---s, especially for the truly valuable employees and the talent lost and the impact on their families...but this process is not new, just bigger....and needed...let's be honest....there was a lot of fat that needed cut....even the VPs were not spared.
You can b!tch and moan but at the end of the day, this is a business and an employee is an expense.
Now he has to announce himself as "not the OP."
Pathetic.
Sorry, not OP, just another impacted employee three times over and still making it work. Proud SF employee, sick of the whining.
OP is literally the worst, most obvious troll I've ever encountered on the internet. And that's saying something.
That makes no sense. My butt doesn't hurt, I know how to move on, not whine. Get a grip snowflake.
Sorry dude. You still can't work in our department, no matter how butt hurt you are.