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Leap Systems Analysts, QA, etc..

Does this truly surprise any of you? By the time we joined our assigned teams, existing systems Analysts and QA were on their way out the door with a buyout. That was the first of many red flags. We remained categorized in who’s who as systems analysts, but largely fulfilled the traditional “product owner” roles on standard scrum teams. Some years later we were faced with two options when scaling across orgs. Become a scrum master, or a dual-hat scrum master/product owner. The latter option did not exist within the incoming scaled model, not to mention the two roles inherently contradicted one another. A lot of people took the (no pun intended) leap of faith into the new role. This happened in a lot of groups because the younger systems analysts were not experienced enough to take on squad lead roles yet, as those were being filled by the product managers at the director level. So in turn, some became scrum masters, others became squad leads without the director level promotion. Kudos to anyone who stuck it out as long as the most recent layoff. Most did so with dignity and grace, despite being dogged on by their engineering peers — & they did in-fact make an impact on the groups they joined. You will all do great in your next positions, hope you are all doing well this weekend despite the chaos and poorly delivered news.

#QA #Scrum

An answer to the earlier inquiry about Scrum Master salary

TLDR: me, another person on this site, ranting about Fidelity’s agile, and my potentially useless prediction.

If they’re cutting agile roles, then I hate to say it but they’re cutting in the right place. Frankly, they should have laid them off last year.

I used to want to position myself into an agile role myself. Frankly, as a tech person, I was lazy, and decided to try to weasel my way into an easier role. Eventually, I fell in love with the art of software engineering, so I’m not gonna transfer into Agile. Plus, I’ve met (countless) scrum masters and agile coaches in and out of Fidelity who told me that it’s not a good time to be in the craft.

Frankly, Agile just isn’t done right in so many roles. There’s not enough actually good scrum masters out there. Fidelity is also not a good place for agilists to grow. The way Fidelity is set up, there are many non scrum masters that play as the scrum master. You have scrum masters in Fidelity who glorify things like “it’s a made up job”, and “I just do this to get the easiest way into management”. That culture is rampant especially in FI. You don’t need a scrum master unless the scrum master is damn good at their job, and we’re gonna need those that operate about higher than Fidelity’s EP standards.

It’s just the way Fidelity is. Fidelity isn’t doing agile. They’re doing their Fidelity Fragile. Which, hasn’t worked. Fidelity in 2025 is about networking to the top. Scrum masters are a program dedicated to networking to the top. Respectfully, the way Fidelity does scrum is to have the scrum masters be the ones that the upper management blame and speak with when things go awry. The scrum masters report to those higher up people. They’re viewed by Fidelity as Fidelity figure heads. It’s disrespectful to those who are actually good at their jobs.

My prediction is that a good chunk of scrum masters will definitely be laid off. Potentially, 1/3. I don’t have someone high in ranking “in the know” like many anonymous people on this website claim they have. I just have my experience in tech and my experience with how Fidelity mucks things up. I could be wrong. I hope I am wrong.

This is the rest of my prediction. A few months after the layoff, remaining scrum masters will be reorganized to manage more teams. Usually, they manage up to 2 teams. That’s just how it’s supposed to be in agile anywhere. But knowing Fidelity, they might try to extend that to 3 or 4. Upper management will realize that many don’t really have any real functionality outside of hanging out all day (not an agile fault, it’s a Fidelity fault), so they’ll pile more teams on the surviving agilists to manage. Job opportunities for agility is scarce, so the remaining scrum masters will stay at Fidelity. The good 1% (not even the good 5%) will leave for better opportunity elsewhere. The remaining will probably not have much hope outside of Fidelity. Unless they want to uproot their lives. Many have been in tech as software engineers in the past, but once you cross that bridge from software engineer to Scrum, you ain’t going back. Which is a shame since some are passionate about code.

I don’t know if I’d be happy to be proven right or wrong by this. If you’re gonna lay off the scrum masters, I mean… majority of them deserve it, many are lazy, have no motive other than themselves, and capitalize off Fidelity. Those scrum masters should be out, rather than other positions that don’t obviously offer no value. But then, you could lay off the good scrum masters that make people realize why they’re useful. And that would be sad. But then again, that’s Fidelity’s culture anyway. And Fidelity will still survive since the company is a historic cash cow.

I’m genuinely sorry to passionate scrum masters at Fidelity that you’re in this position. None of this was meant to disrespect YOU. You don’t deserve to be dealing with these other people who do not appreciate you. When I was researching becoming a scrum master for the wrong reasons, I talked with 10 scrum masters/agile coaches. There were only 2 that were actually passionate about agile. That’s just my personal experience, but you may see something different. As for the scrum masters that don’t add ANY value and are only jaded to get a paycheck, please just add some value. They probably won’t take my request seriously. They’ll sit around being like “hi team, look at this chart I made of your guys work, it has a squiggly line that shows how many stories you finish, so now I can make money, derp”.

Thank you for reading. I’d be happily proven wrong, and like to hear back from other people. Especially people who have seen how agile unfolded at Fidelity over the years, and (good) agilists at Fidelity themselves.

#Agile #Culture #Layoffs #Scrum

do we need architects ?

I am skeptical about the value of architects in modern development, especially when they operate in an ivory tower. The role often results in a pile of Confluence pages and diagrams that no one reads, adds unnecessary bureaucracy, and ultimately slows us down. Many are outdated and worse than scrum masters.To be valuable, an architect must be able to contribute directly to the codebase. If they can't code, their relevance in a fast-paced delivery environment is questionable.
The architect role has become parasitic, consuming resources and time without delivering tangible value to the development process

#Architecture #SoftwareDevelopment #Agile #Scrum #Coding