It's deeply disappointing to see trusted and proven leaders like the CIO of LifeCo being pushed out under Amla's new direction, only to be replaced by her go-to people. In the past life CIO leaders brought much-needed stability, deep institutional knowledge, and a long-term vision that can't be easily replaced. Now, we're seeing a culture of micromanagement take hold, with decision-making bogged down by unnecessary red tape. The constant leadership churn, combined with this top-down control, is eroding trust, slowing progress, and raising serious concerns about the judgment and priorities behind these organizational change
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While I feel for the Life CIO on a personal level and don't wish job loss on anyone, this was long overdue. Perhaps from a business perspective, he was an excellent partner, pushing IT deliverables under tight timelines with ever-expanding scope to meet business goals. From the technical side, his tenure left a lot wanting. Not speaking on behalf of IT against awful strategic technical decisions, or articulating ongoing costs of decisions; not shielding IT from the whiplash of constantly changing requirements (at best), or no requirements "build it like how it used to work" (at worst); not setting aside any capacity to address truly putrid technical debt in a mad rush to deliver new and shiny, then relegating that to ad hoc hackathon efforts.
How do you splurge on an administrative system that's technically worse by orders of magnitude than the replaced one, and still keep your job? The decision to partner with a specific vendor (whose systems a majority of LifeCo IT developers will tell you are measurably less stable, less performant, less comprehensible, less documented, etc. than the prior administrative system) was made under his leadership. Yes the preceding system needed replacing in order to speed up new product delivery, but the new one we have is not it. Hasn't been.
LifeCo has released 4 new term products in the last 4 years, and none of them have sold well. Why is that? Could it be b/c devs receive slapdash requirements that take ages to gather (if at all), even as they build? A purchasing experience worse than one from which LifeCo IT modernized? Multiple new vendor integrations, some with vastly different UX that interrupt right in the middle of purchasing?
The financial results indicate something is severely amiss. Whether rightly or wrongly, company leadership felt that these ongoing results weren't sustainable, and required mitigating.
I hope the former LifeCo CIO learns from this experience, and finds a good landing spot.
Got names for which EMG were cut?
@ep yep
I was told roughly 36 EMG were cut at the same time as Scobee.
Jeff scobee dude impacted
the MAJOR problem with LifeCo is majority of executives who manage investments don't have technical knowledge to make sound judgments. Members and the board must demand a better oversight before affected members start suing the company for ignorance of fiduciary duties.
What who was let go what did I miss here