We're drowning in management layers. Every issue gets passed up the chain until nothing actually gets done. They talk about being efficient, but you have a dozen people giving orders and no one helping. The pay structure is all over the place and new hires are completely lost. How did we even reach this point?
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@35q I reckon they even think those ads are stupid. Incoherent, vague, lacking a pointed message - the marketing team are almost as worse as their Curiosity campaign ads.
@33a lol, quite a few of them are just like some of the sales guys. So much talk, very little results.
Those ads are so stupid.
@1rm surely many marketing staff know their time is up. They can’t be that arrogant to think they’re adding that much value.
@1s4 where are you hearing 2026 from? Is that just speculation?
@14x I’d give a lot of them an F. Value destroyers are an apt term. Waste of space. Can have fly in fly out sales people who would do a better job with less overhead costs. AUM going backwards in one of the largest equity bull markets ever. It would be a joke if it wasn’t so sad.
@2ct I agree but slow moving train wreck… uh how about gonna turn into a house full of fireworks on fire. There have been some of the d-mbest decisions made by local, regional and global management. The point of no return is coming if not already here. More momentum in underperformance of strategies and also net outflows will have the potential to tip this company permanently into the abyss.
@gf ha you’re an optimist. I’ll believe it when I see it. The company sadly has looked like a slow moving train wreck for the past few years and senior leadership don’t have the integrity or the courage to do what is right. They’ve been backing the wrong people and turning a blind eye to the incompetence and immorality.
Change hasn’t happened when it should have and if it does come it may be too late. It’s tragic to see what’s happened over the years.
Tim?
@1rm I imagine we will see some of that early into 2026.
Are we canning some of the random people in marketing that have roles where no one knows what they actually do?
@OP You are spot on. So many other companies, in Finance and other industries, have got rid of many useless middle managers and pointless management layers. Why can’t this company? Keep the people actually doing the work and adding value.
What isn’t needed - the mediocre manager who doesn’t produce anything but thinks he/she is such a strategic star. They do not do a lot of actual work or they delegate most of it. They pitch themselves as having a strategic mind but their results show otherwise. They readily lie and shift blame. AND T. Rowe keeps filth like this and supports them. Why?
@15s some teams have talented folk. It’s mixed. At least performance in Investments gets rewarded. Some other parts of the business reward incompetence from what I’ve seen.
New hires being lost is an understatement. Why hire people and not even know what you want them to do or add value? Other teams actually need the headcount.
@OP MANAGEMENT DO NOT HAVE INTEGRITY. I’ve seen so many instances where they just make stuff up to suit their needs.
@17q should take the headcount back
@g0 since it didn't work they're just folding all the focus markets into international and dropping the focus tag. Esp since many non-focus markets did better without getting extra resources.
@14k totally. Huge teams in Client Ops compared to Investment Ops though from what I’ve seen of the teams. And then they got sub teams. Like what? Why? Are services levels good? Is the company easy to deal with?
@14x Plenty of B and C graders in the investment divisions too, hence the underpeformance in recent times. Not exactly bright, shiny offerings to take to clients. Lots of benchmark-like (or worse) performance outcomes for sale at high prices...
@14k both Ops and Distribution staff have a lot of B and C graders… Mixed teams all round. If the company can’t service top clients then they will leave.
@rn what are all the Operations staff doing at this place? The company has a ton of Ops what are they all doing? Not all of the problem is on Sales
@rw the funniest situation is when they lose a huge client or experience a large redemption and it was never flagged as a vulnerable account. Hahahaha! You can just see their manipulative deceitful little minds trying to come up with an explanation.
@rn yeah, totally agree with this. A lot of the sales team are all show, no go. If they spent more time with clients and doing a good job servicing them as well as selling, instead of doing vanity projects and things that make them look insightful and useful (but really are not), then perhaps the company might not be in this situation.
@rn I think they’re puppet masters. Know of a few of the senior sales guys OUS are all about controlling the narrative internally. They do a terrible job with the client and then when things fall apart say that the client said something else to shift the blame to other people. One of the sales guys had the audacity to say his job is bringing the company and clients together and that he should be focused on knowing his client and nothing else. Lazy. Manipulative. Deceiptful.
Sales is running the show. There are no roadmaps. No apparent top-down planning at all. Just utter reactive chaos. The firm now opts for temporary sales flashiness over the cautious, stable consistency it used to have.
If a prospect or client offers a single piece of negative sounding feedback, the entire company has to pivot. Get more managers on the case. They can all have meetings around the random negative comments received and make random teams come up with random solutions in total isolation of each other.
Works every time!
@g0 APAC is set to have its best year in 2026. They recently held a talk, "Building Inclusion and Understanding with TransgenderSG" in honor of Singapore Pride. This will revolutionize the work force and create sales potential never before seen. Props to the firm for focusing on this vita area while outflows soar!
@ge Yes indeed. That market is ripe and you'll see change soon enough.
@g0 From what I understand, there have been a few focus markets that have ramped up growth significantly. However, there are others that should be double the size they are now but have had the wrong people and are stagnant. There’s even at least one focus market that has gone backwards in AUM in the past few years. That’s despite equity markets at all time highs and their pension market naturally having double digit growth each year. Headcount should be redistributed to not just the markets with the best potential but also the best teams that can execute on that potential.
@g0 Likely drop the language around those sort of things. Unlikley to drop the h/c much, although sales did not dramatically expand around them being 'focus'. They are still the highest potential OUS markets, but things like insurance have become more important.
Do y’all think they’ll get rid of the whole international focus markets mumbo jumbo? I heard the focus markets got more headcount than the US and they haven’t exactly hit the ball out of the park, well most of them anyway.
@fn Perhaps. What is not in doubt is that when certain (senior) managers voluntarily go, they will not be directly replaced. Already seeing that play out with a couple of departures in recent weeks.
Do you think they’ll get rid of management layers on the business side at least? A lot of inefficiencies and people who think their job is just “oversight”. They cost a lot of money too and in some cases I reckon just cause trouble thinking they can stay in a job - both fireman and arsonist.
@OP totally agree. So many layers but also so many useless middle managers at this place. One of the worst I’ve seen is a master delegator of both work and blame. Shift the work and shift the blame. So many career delegators that barely do any work here.
“The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.”
― Oscar Wilde
@OP I hear ya! How about the recycled managers that keep getting moved around instead of out the door?