It seems someone(s) at MM hates the idea of people writing in earnest about their experience and has been posting most recently fake 5 star reviews. You can tell because no one write that way naturally. Are they utilizing Copilot for this? Have they no shame? Let people speak to their truth.
12 replies (most recent on top)
@39a when you call the ethics line, make sure you tell them the CEO is having an affair just to test the credibility of the ethics line
@34k Great write up and insight !
@36q Well Written comment. Well done sir !
@2mq There's an anonymous third party ethics website you can use to report
@36q
I would heart this comment if I could.
Thank you for it. It gave me a loud laugh I most certainly needed these past few weeks.
@34v
I will tell you how they get away with it. They are a Mutual company, not a public company. You think a public company could have a CFO who could not accurately produce revenue and expense numbers? How many mistakes and failed audits happen every year, year in and year out? The stock holders would oust them in a NY Minute. So long as the policy holders get their dividend they’re fat and happy. Add in a Board and Regulators asleep at the switch and you have a recipe for zero accountability.
How did the synthetic stock price drop in half (reflecting poor company performance) but the dividend hit a new record every year? Sounds like someone attended the Bernard Madoff School of Business. Maybe there’s some rationale explanation but I cannot think of one.
I have to believe that someone gets that there is consequences to the terrible decisions being made? I mean this is a 175 yr old company. I come from the financial industry , wall street to be precise. I don’t get how they’ve survived this far. Everything they are doing are lessons learned over the past 10-15 yrs on what not to do! How the heck are the SLT in an IT org who do not have the IT background? It’s unheard of! They reward lifers because they are not questioned. They say they want to get candid feedback then punish the newer folks for providing that feedback. It’s insane to see them get away with it. Never in my 20yrs experience have I seen it and I can tell you a company in Wall Street would fire them all (elt/slt) in a heartbeat.
@2m8 I personally read the "raising the bar" comment as 100% pure satire.
Otherwise
I agree with you as well. I've had the pleasure of working with a young person who asked questions that made others still during group meetings. Brought up inefficiencies. Question why isn't the process for _ done better. Why are brokers or agents still having to do things on paper. To name a few. And yes, that person was let go in May. Just one of many talented people let go on whims because tactical is the RULE OF ORDER at massmutual.
With the ever increasing tech debt here, shifting critical technical roles to MMI is a crime and a half. Regardless if employment is at will. (facts mentions in a separate post by a person with 0 shame and empathy) And will only make work that could be turned around faster that much slower. For non tech people the Code is riddled with mistakes that cause a huge amount of rework and production issues. The developers hired in MMI often have very little idea the business context of what they're developing, and have a hard time asking clarifying questions for a variety of reasons ranging from time zones to language barriers, and often won't stay/focus on a single code base long enough to really 'get' it. They're working on some small part of things often out-of-context with everything else... and so expect 52 versions of a function that does the same thing in different areas of the code, because they have to deliver this feature in 3 days and don't have time to really onboard to the codebase. Their code can get very spaghetti and hard to maintain because of this. The way developers are rewarded matters - a lot of times there's a lot of quick-delivery pressure, not understand-the-big-picture-before-writing-quality-code-pressure. It's very much 'get them to accept this feature' and not looking at maintainability, etc. When things are 'bad' they're bad in a distant 'work on this again' way, not a concrete 'here's how to improve' way. All because choices were made and keep being made....
@2m8 I've had a few good leaders who fight for doing the right work, not just the flashiest work. Those are the teams where our colleagues outside of ETX praise work going against the grain of normal ETX thinking. But those leaders are always the ones either let go or demoted during another reorg or who decide to leave because they won't win the politics game. You're right that MM wants smart people who say yes, not smart people who challenge groupthink. They don't want people with outside technology experience because it exposes how bad ETX is at technology. They want people who have spent their entire careers in the call centers and operations to lead their technology teams so MM can keep coasting.
They'll throw anyone who isn't a lifer under the bus and then complain that they can't find good talent when the hiring market turns around in job seekers' favor again.
100% spot on. You can forget the Board, they’re all bought and paid for or asleep at the switch. The only hope for the policy holders are the state insurance regulators. Maybe they’ll intervene in this gross negligence.
Look at the "talent" in India and tell me restructuring is about "raising the bar". Look at who runs teams in ETX and tell me it's about "raising the bar". MM has ALWAYS been a place where leaders fail up. With exception for a few , promoting and hiring incompetent "yes" men (and women) is the status quo there. All other points are spot on, but none of this is about raising the bar. Mediocrity is the point now and any real talent willing to challenge the status quo is already long gone or on the way out seeing the writing on the wall. Anyone else is coasting to retirement or holding out hope for the board to wake up and fire the ELT.
There are some phenomenal people here that I really enjoyed getting to know. MM is like the show Survivor. It's shiny and cool and exciting to get an offer and for the first few weeks everyone is super nice and all seems great. But then you learn that it's more like a Darwinian environment and people are voted off (let go under the guise of restructures) with no notice and less than acceptable explanation.
I witnessed 7 different restructures across the business in my short tenure. Everyone is always on edge they will be next. And will be.
The new attrition rate is starting to become through the roof. The rotating door is all about "raising the bar" of talent, like a sports team. But we aren't paid millions or part of a union and able to stomach a sudden "restructure" if let go on whim.
There is no recognition among the CEO or execs that this kind of instability does not foster an environment for people to do their best work. Instead, it's looked as a weakness of the employees to not be able to handle the adversity. I could name quite a few Head of __ or VPs who think this way.
Strength and survival at MM is not defined by great work, but rather as a willingness to work back breaking hours just to "meet expectations", sacrifice your mental health and grit through it, and to not think for yourself and instead take orders yet still be asked to think for yourself (if that reads as confusing, it is!).
The people who you think are your teammates are actually other folks simply trying to survive and won't have a lot of time to help you. Or do than bring it up as a means you aren’t good enough.
A lot of talk about teamwork and collaboration, but it's really each person for themselves here. The loudest and flashiest in the room always wins. What they are really looking for are super smart people willing to take orders and smile through the toxicity and devote their life to MM.
The values are we-ponized by the executive team and used as a way for the executive team to avoid any accountability at all. People stay here because of the money, they haven't found something else yet, or they are a favorites and are a bit immune to the chaos (tons of favoritism and bias here). I read some of the Glassdoor reviews before joining, but neglected to look at all the upvotes to help see if some critical reviews were isolated or part of larger trend. Be sure to look at the upvotes.