Why does UP have managers, senior managers, Directors, AVP, RVP, VP, and something called a "General Superintendent" in the leadership chain? There's a lot of redundancy and overlap in all these positions with little (if any) apparent added value.
In most other companies it goes manager, regional manager, director, then executive. Less is more.
Really good question from @YXNYJgD-1qxi.
FoJo was on the fast track to management until he was fired by a foreman who later on was fired himself isn't that ironic
A former COO told all the field managers at AOT in Omaha that he wanted one day for every FTX to end in a coaching event because it showed “we cared”. That was the dumbest thing I ever heard.
Imagine a job where every time you see a manager they write you up for something 100% of the time. You are going to hate both the job and the company leadership and moral will be in the gutter. Which pretty much sums up Union Pacific.
My approach as a manager was to delegate as much as possible to the agreement leadership (foreman, etc.), similar to how officers delegate to NCOs. The team ran efficiently and my guys knew I wasn't out to get them.
Most managers are trained (especially the ones fresh out of school who don't know any better). To look for reasons to write people up. I noticed that the managers fell into two categories: the people waiting a year so they could quit without paying back their relocation package, and pathological policy wonks that would invoke any and every possible reason to mess with everyone they encountered, whether it was agreement, non-agreement, or contractors.
UPRR needs some deep introspection on how they recruit and develop leaders, as well as how they structure and deploy their leadership culture.
Yep it’s funny when these people that were put in these high level positions they didn’t deserve lose their protection cause their buddies retire or get fired they are then exposed and don’t have anyone going to bat for them.
👇This guy just hit the nail on the head hear. I couldn’t have said it better myself.
I agree the UP is very chunky at the upper management level from director up! It's just the ol fraternal order in up! He's an alumni therefore he deserves a position! That where they need to start! It's always been that way. It use to be worse, I have met several id--t managers who are in the position because their buddy got them in back in the day , just because they can swing a golf club. It's sickening the level of politics and corruption in management overall! How can a person become a director of a department they have never worked for? It's asinine, would a person with a degree in civil engineering be able to become director of operations at apple?
the dts does more than a mto. a dts is responsible for the whole service unit and a mto one specific yard. in a lot of service units the superintendent is incompetent and was put there for political reasons, so the dts basically runs the show in the background. you don't see as much of them in the field because they don't have a testing requirement.
I never figured out what the DTS did that no other role (DTO, MTO, etc) couldn’t do. Lots of people would go there to “float”. Absolutely no responsibilities.
At UP a manager is a babysitter. Simple as that. I had none of the powers that a typical manager would have had in any other large company, I couldn't discipline/dismiss bad employees (unions), I couldn't reward/hire good ones (unions), and I couldn't implement improvements to processes (unions and incompetent upper management).
Aside from writing people up, sitting on mostly pointless conference calls, and flying up to Omaha quarterly to watch videos of Lance giving weird motivational speeches at UPC, there really isn't much to the job, and they can afford to loose a few managers.
Fire em all
Ok well we’re talking about all the avp’s that were over the southern, northern, and western regions out in the field. If there’s still a avp of marketing or whatever they can fire them too nobody is going to lose sleep over it.
There are AVPs in every department.
Many with the title of Manager or Sr. Manager do not manage people. They manage processes, territories etc. These same titles are used in other industries for similar work. They are the worker bees in many departments.
Get rid of them all
Which regions still have AVPs?
AVPs are not gone. Maybe a few are.
Well AVPs are gone so there’s that. Hopefully DROs are next