Thread regarding TIAA (TIAA-CREF) layoffs

The Company Culture is Depression

We care about your mental health but you better get that A-s in a seat to be on zoom for 3 days a week.

Aren’t you excited about Frisco? You get to deal with the fallout from Denver, picking up the slack, and force-hiring lesser talent in Texas at the expense of years and years of proprietary knowledge.

You worked extra hard, worked extra hours, went above and beyond, but was awarded a 2 or 3 because leadership does not understand your work because they aren’t that smart. But, if you repeat enough “Wow Amazing look at this” communications you can trick leadership like a toddler that needs to eat their veggies into giving you a better rating.

The company is broken. Apathy is rewarded, while hard work and talent is trashed or misunderstood. I have seen some of the most talented and hard working people completely shift their mentality to do the bare minimum because TIAA has not rewarded what should be rewarded. It’s hard to not get bitter or depressed when you get blamed for the company’s expense issues, when you work your a-s off but see yet another clueless new hire have to have to hand held and ultimately underperform. But that underperforming manager goes unnoticed because they just manipulate metrics and pat themselves on the back enough and loudly.

The company has an insane amount of non-work related programs, meetings, emails, support groups, extra events, and other complete waste of resources and time. Get rid of just half of this and suddenly our labor expenses are less of an issue. But no, let’s fire a bunch of senior and tenured employees and keep hiring more levels of management. Fire 3 people who actually work and hire 1 mid level manager for the same price. Make it make sense!!!

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| 5432 views | | 16 replies (last June 4, 2025) | Reply
Post ID: @OP+1jvpw7d9b

16 replies (most recent on top)

Very real. The culture went from proud to embarrassing.

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Post ID: @2et+1jvpw7d9b

I’m so happy I’m leaving this company soon. I just accepted and offer and will be turning in my notice soon. I’m over the moon about finally leaving this depressing company. I loved working here until Temu wrecked the company’s reputation. Peace!✌🏼

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Post ID: @24g+1jvpw7d9b

I can’t wait for the survey results. Everything and everyone’s concerns will just vanish.

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Post ID: @1jj+1jvpw7d9b

Ha, agreed. I can lose the company $1.2 Billion dollars each year and fu-k around on instagram every day while not completing my Workday trainings for a fraction of the price!

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Post ID: @nj+1jvpw7d9b

Apparently "Retire Inequality" doesn't include situations where a rookie CEO with no record of success makes 20 million per year with bonuses 500x times her salary, all while the company posted increasing net LOSSES every year she's been in charge with the latest loss being $1.2 Billion.

Howzabout they retire inequality between executive compensation and the regular rank & file employee compensation? Wouldn't that be a logical thing to expect if they truly cared about inequality? Lordie, how they speaketh with forked tongues.

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Post ID: @nf+1jvpw7d9b

Normally I am all for DEI hires but this T seems to be the antithesis of what a DEI hire should be.

Hey Board of Directors I will gladly be CEO of this failing company for between $500k and $750K a year and we can kick out anyone making more than me. Then we can reallocate that $17M to pay our associates a more fair salary ensuring they don’t live paycheck to paycheck. Then we can give them a good enough bonus that they may actually put half of it back into the company in their their TIAA 401K or brokerage accounts instead of using all of it to pay down debt from lack of raises over the last several years. Together we can change the world of greedy AF queen bees and improve the morale of the hardest worker bees.

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Post ID: @mj+1jvpw7d9b

You know what would help my mental health? Just the smallest bit of job security from this place. Also income inequality…TIAA doesn’t help that either…for us or for the country.

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Post ID: @k4+1jvpw7d9b

From a 2021 article:

“TIAA notes that the target pay of Brown Duckett’s annual cash award and LTPP award are set at 520% and 780% of salary, respectively. While it is common to measure potential bonuses as multiples of salary, most S&P 500 companies set the target between 150-300%. I cannot recall seeing any bonus target set at 780% of salary.”

“Perhaps blinded by their own excessively paid executives, TIAA may not recognize as much as its participants how such bloated compensation is critical issue that contributes to income inequality.”

https://www.asyousow.org/our-work/ceo-pay/blog/2021/6/30/tiaa

T loves her money. T also loves your money.

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Post ID: @h3+1jvpw7d9b

Just remember that TIAA executive comp and Board of Trustee comp is not, nor has it ever been, "comparable" to its Industry "peer group". Its a risk-free, self-dealing giveaway by the execs of the participants equity. Those companies pay their execs with cash and stock options.... which at least have SOME market risk, SOME incentive to make the company grow and perform long term. Nope...... TIAA execs get paid with straight cash, homie. No downside risk due to their own poor performance.

Combine that with the fact that the BoT's are appointed by the CEO and remain fat and happy making hundreds of thousands for a few ZOOM calls each year and you can see who the winners and losers are gonna be. The BoT's are winners. They get this "prestigious" title on their CV to go along with their day job as the Thurston Howell III Professor of Intersectional Gobbledygook or the Senior Fellow of Naval Gazing at the Woke DEI Institute of NGO Diddlers.

Senior Management are winners. They get paid gobs of money to run a company into the ground and nobody does jack-boo about it until someone comes heavy off the high rope from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal to say "Yeah, this emperor has no clothes."

Lesser employees get sc--wed because they can fire you and keep your bonus. Did you know that the bonus money from terminated or laid-off employees doesn't go back to net income for participants like it should. Nooooo...it stays in the bonus pool for all the surviving employees where the payout is HEAVILY skewed towards the managers with the biggest salaries.

Participants get royally sc--wed. They are the equity owners of the everything. The General Account, The operating business, the investment funds...everything. Yet they get an "additional amount" from a mediocre performing company as if a dividend was the same as getting equity from capital appreciation. And they get told every year that Executive Comp is similar and inline with other Wall Street firms.

If TIAA was run for the benefit of participants instead of senior management, those participants who have been with TIAA for 25 years or more would almost ALL be independently wealthy enough to teach for free if they wanted. Instead the senior execs and thousands of upper middle managers both past and present own multiple multi-million dollar homes and live lives of absolute privilege for doing nothing extraordinary.

Frankly, it's the participants who should be on this board in active revolt. If they had any idea that their equity stake in TIAA SHOULD be worth multiples of whatever they contributed over the years. Unfortunately, management just wants them to think "I started with nothing. Now I have almost enough to retire and not worry. TIAA must have done that."

Instead they need to ask themselves if the Johnson family that owns Fidelity got where they are due solely to the performance of Fidelity funds or due to their equity ownership in Fidelity itself.

Rant over. TIAA is, and always has been, a financial leech on its participants. A place where mediocre executive posers come to play act the role of executives and get paid huge dollars by taking equity away from participants and paying it to themselves as "Similar and in-line" with industry peers.

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Post ID: @gj+1jvpw7d9b

DEI for the win!

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Post ID: @fz+1jvpw7d9b

The thought of seeing the EC’s O-faces is terrifying. Thanks for that disturbing visual!

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Post ID: @e9+1jvpw7d9b

I do 4% effort these days while the EC orgasms over badge swipes.

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Post ID: @cv+1jvpw7d9b

I know right @bk+1jvpw7d9b I felt like Peter Gibbons from “Office Space” most of last week and all of this week multiple times a day, management and peers asking if I did the survey. The thing is… is it doesn’t matter if I do it or not because come July I’m gone (not moving to Frisco).

It is like… Yeah I got the memo on the TPS reports (I mean Survey). Now get of my back and let me give the 30% effort when I used to do 90+% before last August.

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Post ID: @c2+1jvpw7d9b

But, but, but... you need to make sure fill out your surveys. Surveys and Cultures are the most important things in this sinking company.

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Post ID: @bk+1jvpw7d9b

Sadly executives in corporate America will do anything to juice their bonuses. They know within a few years they won’t be at the company.

Executives are rewarded for short-term profit thinking. That’s not just at TIAA but everywhere. Ever notice when a company announces layoffs the stock price goes up? Executives make more money.

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Post ID: @ar+1jvpw7d9b

Don’t worry, the company will provide you with an AI therapist chatbot to ensure your mental health is their top priority.

Please make sure to conduct your therapy sessions in the claustrophobic phone booths or in any sad beige or grey space.

Your commute to work and badge swipes are important for collaborating on synergistic projects that give our clients some clap clap delight.

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Post ID: @af+1jvpw7d9b

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