Thread regarding Wells Fargo & Co. layoffs

My title was changed in the HR reclassification from Business System's Consultant to Tech Business Systems Associate. Mostly I do project and program management but was designated and TBSA to avoid the cumbersome Enterprise PMO processes.

Last month with the 3rd re-org in 2 weeks, I was told that based on my job title - i am now designated as a Trainee.

After 30 years of experience and the development an implementation of a recognized "best practice" process documented and highly effective and repeatable process - the new designation as a trainee was a surprised to me.

Based on my experience, I would not be surprised if the TBSA title is one targeted for layoffs.

Is this happening on 6/24 in bulk or slowly?

I would also like to know if this title is being eliminated on 6/24 in CLT? We have had Agile teams created recently and this role was not included on the Agile registry for our team.

Does anyone have insight on if the title is affected in WIMT on 6/24 or other dates this year?

As someone with that title, I'd be totally okay getting rid of any peers who say "but I'm not technical" as a crutch for not getting stuff done and those who refuse to learn beyond getting a CSM certificate. Why bother supporting technology when you have zero idea of how it works?!

Does anyone have insight on if broad displacements on these job titles are happening this year or later?

Bump, b/c the other related thread is terrible. I know our group isn't safe, they let go half dozen TBS roles recently

You can upskill all you want, but if you have a certain job title, there is a target on your back no matter what you do. They have an excuse for layoffs, that’s what it is all about.

I also have this job title and I’m tired of being told to upskil. I wouldn’t need to upscale if they took away most of my job responsibilities and gave them to the developers to do now. Our team of technical business systems associates can’t even get a straight answer from our management team if we will have a job going forward. We were told to try to find a space for us to fit in the address world.

Is there any push to "upskill" people in this title, similar to the push to "upskill" QA?

Does that point to a plan to no longer have these job titles?

(I see the need to offer training, but I don't like that the "upskill" push assumes that people don't already have more or modern skills, due to their job title. That's another topic, though.)

I believe there is a need for a technical/business analyst on the scrum teams. Some of these people are the only ones who know how these systems work/integrate. We have a fairly large team of 12+ and we have 2 FTE just for technical analyst activities. There is non–stop work that comes in related to SDLC/CR, security/compliance initiatives, coordinating patching, environment support etc etc that you don't want your developers wasting their time with. If you are a resource whose job is primarily to open tickets and email people about said tickets, then I would be worried.

I also have this title and we are moving to agile soon. They are not sure how our title will work with the new agile structure. Basically sounds like they really don’t know what to do with our title at this point. I’m sure a few years from now all of this will change again. I do agree that we really don’t know how to do agile at our company with our current SDLC structure.

@1ofv+1axtbm5i
I understand that the SDLC is executed in smaller increments, but when the SDLC takes an entire sprint to execute, it means you are doing it wrong.
QA/unit testing isn't SDLC, it is part of the story and is mandatory. This is what companies get wrong about Agile... they implement Enterprise Agile but they keep the big stupid bureaucratic waterfall SDLC process. Miss one silly check box or CR deadline, your whole sprint and release blows up. It isn't necessary and adds no value. I have been in shops where the SDLC is very light, PO approves CR, no stupid documents to create and we implement just fine and meet all audit requirements.

You do realize Agile doesn’t mean you don’t follow the SDLC, you just do it in smaller increments, right? It amazes me how many people think agile means you take shortcuts like no unit testing, no QA, no BAs, etc., which is why you get cr–––y code and bad customer experience. Ask Lowe’s, BoA, and several other companies where that got them when they went cheap.

I currently have the title, but I operate mostly as a Dev lead that doesn't code much. I support the decision to move to Agile. Our PO is very business focused and doesn't really care about the Agile formalities, so I write most of our stories. I help with planning/roadmap and do all of the useless SDLC activities related to getting a CR/security/paperwork done for a release. They really need to reform the SDLC side and PM group b/c with Agile, we really don't need it... It just gets in the way and adds no value.

These are people that actually know about the business and WHY it works the way it does, but the new management does not think that’s important.

Developers do not know how to test code and quite often do not do unit testing. It is real obvious when it hits the lower environments and crashes. Any unit test would have found it. Just read defect resolutions and it is obvious.

Such decisions as these will be the downfall when it comes crashing down but those folks will all be gone when it does.

Above mentioned title here.

The move to Agile has more than doubled our workload. Not sure what they'll do to get rid of us. That would leave a lot of work to be done by someone who's not familiar with it. Sure it's easy work, but we cover a lot of @$$3$ with what we do.

Play the numbers. Saul wants to have ~80% of tech staff to be engineers of some sort. Munish has ~1500 reports, so using Saul’s numbers he should have about 1200 engineers, leaving 300 for other staffing needs like managers, assistants, scrum people, and tech secretaries. I don’t know what the current ratios are and each of Munish’s directs would likely have different ratios. I would guess Ron/Sid would be heavy on engineering side while Jen would be heavy on non–engineers, but overall it should fall close to the 80/20 ratio.

yea get rid of all these useless jobs

A lot of Buffett's bank stock sales were in Q2 of last year, but by all means do make it political and motivated by the outcome of an election that hadn't happened yet.

On our team the BA does close 95% of the work. They do the PO's job creating all the stories, they do work scoping and roadmap planning. The scrum master is a running joke, they know less than zero and torture people by setting up endless pointless calls every week . The BA's are also handing code and design docs off to the software engineers at such a detailed level the work is basically done. Also note these are not software engineers like you would find at Microsoft. Most are the cheapest headcount they could find here on a visa with no background in software engineering, when's the last time you saw one here with a CS degree or any real software engineering experience, that's what i thought. QA sorry to say is also basically worthless, they often test incorrectly because they're lazy and test out only one aspect of the design and miss important part.

who knows what they are doing, doesnt seem like the right way as see no progress.

Anyways, why is Warren buffet selling all the banking stocks off?

He sold: JP morgan – all of it; M and T bank 100% sold, also PNC, US Bankcorp all 100%, then Wells Fargo 60% and other banks reduced position drastically too.

Does this have to do with all the free money the democrats are giving out? If not, then what does he know that we dont?

@fcc+1axtbm5i – not true. My team and all of the teams in my division will do just fine. In fact we don’t rely on BAs at all.

There is the Agile Manifesto and there is also the reality of our staffing and skills. Many Product Owners were strictly business people and do not excel at or even like system planning or design. Many POs also do not take the time to write their own user stories. Many developers on our teams are not skilled at communicating with business. Both sides are currently struggling to connect without hands–on help.

Agile assumes that both will work fluently together. I have seen Agile done well at many companies before WF without BAs, but the developers had extensive business knowledge and great communication skills at those places. Many on projects here have stated that agile would be a nightmare without having at least some BAs here.

I would say its more aligned to what you do than your title. If you are the one responsible for access requests for a couple engineering mgrs, you are safe cause they aren’t going to have devs waste thie time figuring out art/aims. If you do lots of documentation, you are likely safe. If you do mostly project mgmt or analyst work, start looking.

@evx+1axtbm5i. Developers are SoftWare Engineers. If you look and the Agile Transformation Manifesto, they only have 3 roles there. Product Owner, Scrum Master and Software Engineers. It’s no secret that BA’s and QA have no role in the future here.

I have that title, and I can almost guarantee it will be eliminated in the Q2, Q3 layoffs. As Saul said, they primarily want to retain software engineers and developers.

Fortunately I have 2 interviews coming up outside Wells and hoping I can get the heck out of here. Unless you’re in the protected area of corporate risk (until the consent orders are lifted), I doubt it will be a stable place to work. Even if I was in a ‘protected’ area, I’d probably still try to get out because you just don’t know what they will do.