I joined Refinitiv three years ago and now I can say with confidence it was the worst decision I ever made when I quit my old job and come here for a slightly higher pay. That pay bump came with horrible work environment, incompetent managers, constant fear of layoffs...I could go on and on. Still, I only have myself to blame for not doing better research.
Was it always like this? Did people actually used to enjoy working here?
They have made misery and art form. Everything you said is reality. It never will change. Before my demise I used to wake up some mornings wondering if they could make it worse. They always did.
You're talking about a certain garishly ornamented rotund female, I presume. She's very cunning and very mean. And that's why the culture at TR s—s.
Cronyism is rife throughout the company and TR before that. Many at the top table have failed to deliver for years, despite numerous restructures etc. Many do not have the qualifications or experience needed for the roles they are in, and will struggle (or get found out) if they ever have to move out of their 'bubble'. LSEG will hopefully sort this circus out.
Some are just on one big travel junket to preserve their profiles and then come back and post on the intranet how wonderful it was visiting all these wonderful countries.
Many have been rewarded for failure.
At least Covid has stopped the unnecessary extravagant trips and proved they were not needed. These people know who they are !!
I still have my TR tatoo printed on my heart. What a f—ing mess since Refinitiv. I quit last november and I felt sad because I really enjoyed working for TR in Canada.
Refinitiv has really messed up my carreer path. I am now doing something else OK. But one thing I can't stand any more is all the BS on linked from David C. and Debra W. Can you just make up your mind ang let the people work for you and feel for once they will not be let go sometime next week or next month. This work environment is just toxic. Stop pretending you are a great employer. You are not. And what about Blackstone, hiding behind their profitability excel sheets.
I hope they also get fired sometime and understand how bad they are. I blame Refinitiv for the bad managers and all the people and the families they put in trouble.
This was my 10 cents and I dont care if you like it or not. I am still a TR guy no matter what.
Cheers
Lest everyone hate on 4zoo, that person has a point.
Management & culture was horrible at TR post merger, and it wasn't all Reuters' fault. There were some Thomson holdovers inserted in Markets who were terrible. Bought companies that were useless and margin dilutive but small enough to make it under the inorganic revenue growth cutoff, so that exec targets could be made. A short while later, the companies would die in the shop window and be shut down.
The leadership team in Markets / F&R was inept, making massive strategic blunders (launching Eikon 18 months before it was ready for example) and for years the business model was such that the greatest boost to revenue growth was the Annual Price Increase. One of the regional sales directors once told me "we need to rent office space across the street and rebuild this product and company from the bottom up with new people." He was right, and he was let go by F&R management, and replaced with someone who was quite the scandal hound - but he was connected and as such deserved the job!
You might know who I mean, but that person is gone too, for obvious reasons.
So, I'm happy for 4Zoo because he / she likes their job and the company now. Maybe I would like it too now, assuming the old country club has been replaced with a meritocracy.
I joined 8 months before the Refinitiv deal, left a really fast paced and buzzy place to join TR. That was a real shock, everyone had been around for at least 10+ years in my team, no one seemed to have worked anywhere else, so had a one dimensional view. I figure that happens when you only have been in one place. I spent 8 months thinking I had made the worst decision of my life joining such a backward group. Blackstone and Refinitiv was my saving grace and through the cost saves they fired all the dead wood and hired new fresh more open minded peeps, I love my team and I learn from some really smart team mates every day, that was not the case for me in TR. Super excited by the LSEG deal, they are fast paced, very commercial and their financial numbers are just awesome, sales and profit. Their CEO is from Goldmans, a company I have always admired for their high standards and talent (smartest people in banking), and no doubt he has that pedigree instilled in him of what smart really looks like, here is hoping for a top notch executive team we can look up to.
In my years with TR, Refinitiv and other tech or fintech companies, I can say from experience that the more work that gets outsourced to cheap Indian labour, the worse things get. All the good long-time engineers who did the heavy lifting, especially the SMEs with the most knowledge are either being made redundant or forced to transition to offshore contractors like TechM or TCS. Those staying on with the offshore contractors will probably either get forced out in favour of cheaper replacements or will get sick of the shenanigans and find work elsewhere. Offshore contractors tend to have high turnover rates, which means there will be very little build-up of expertise and few SMEs except for development teams (many of whom are also contractors from Beijing, Bangkok or Eastern Europe at risk of getting replaced by TechM or TCS as well). The result will be a much worse customer experience with the resulting loss of reputation and decreased customer retention. The cost savings might be a viable short-term solution to fix the books until the LSE deal closes (or whatever other deal is next) but many times over the long term, after enough of a beating, companies are forced to bring local expertise back in-house. Then years later, sadly, the cycle repeats.
Ah here we go with politics.
I assure you, I won't name names but the people who ran TR F&R and then Refinitive were strongly in the McCain camp back in 2008. So go f that chicken somewhere else. Has nothing to do with politics, and everything to do with cronyism and self preservation.
Which, since you like politics so much, bears a striking similarity to the current White House.
I was with TR for years before Refinitiv. Refinitiv is the same model as you have discovered. Incompetence has be taken to an art form. Don't be hard on yourself... It is like dating someone, you don't know how bad it is until you are in it for 6 months. It is amazing to me though. You wake up every day thinking how could they make it worse, but the creatively do it.
Give a Progressive Liberal a Company, a Government or any project and they will drive it into the ground with ineptitude and concept.
I enjoyed my time till end of 2015, then they started changing the structure of my job every year (or less) clearly having no idea whatsoever of its content. Poor management overall, but you can find some really nice and good people between the weeds - and the benefits are good (it’s what makes some people comfortable). I also heard lots of people that have been 15+ years saying how good it used to be “back in the day” (when the product flew off the shelves)
It was a good place to work. Really nice. Thomson Financial pre-merger was sort of ok; very execution-oriented and a bit less genteel than TR. Post-merger, while I sometimes found it a bit British in terms of culture and internal politics, it was probably the best place I've worked in my life. Really nice offices, great benefits, not overworked.
The problem was the merger did not deliver the way it was supposed to and the margins were lower than peers, so out went Devin Wenig and the cost-cutting began. It never stopped. 25,000 people were working in the financial division around 10 years ago. Now, post-layoffs you'll be around 17,000? Damn near the whole IB management team works at S&P now and Retail Wealth works at Lionbridge.
To be fair, I think the industry is in a structural (maybe not decline, but) transition. Same with legal actually. The days of aggregated databases of b2b information are not dead, but they are in different place in the "ecosystem" now.
The Reuters deal forever changed the culture of Thomson. Harrington was a decent guy who cared about the people who worked there. Reuters management were a bit more egocentric.
In the team I was in they recruited someone and lured the person from taking up another offer with a very well known well established company.
Within 5 months of the person starting he was told with others that he was on the ‘at risk’ list for redundancies.
My manager and his was raging at being put in the position to have to do that the new employee.
Guess what?
Yep he was a cheap option to make redundant.
TR name was mud as this person moved on and started a career elsewhere after a few weeks with a TR customer.
I joined TR as well around 3 yrs ago and I share your point of view. However my senior coworkers always told me that in the past this company used to be a great employer, with a really nice working environment and culture. Unfortunately, I joined when all of this got over.
Why would u have change jobs for only slightly higher pay? Not more growth, earnings potential, advancement (none of which does Refinitive offer)
In my time, it has always been the same. A leopard does not change its spots.