What we're seeing right now and what we've been seeing for the past several years is mediocre employees with top-notch brown-nosing skills take all the available promotions. This has both created a whole layer of incompetent managers and prompted some of the bank's best employees to walk away. Neither is a recipe for success. I'm hoping that one of these days they'll realize rewarding their best pays off much more than screwing them over.
4 replies (most recent on top)
The middle management at this company (managers reporting to managers) rarely has any training or skills at being a manager. They have simply eliminated anyone that is competition for their position. They understand that the best brown-nosing employees will never take their jobs. These old middle managers have gained their position by time at the company and not by ability. Time for another re-org. This is what they know and do. This company needs way fewer of these useless levels. Bring actual workers closer to the actual decision makers.
I agree with the comments below but would add one caveat. If you are promoted to a supervisory or the next level up manager level, remember that you will be blamed for any failures made by your management. This makes you a more likely target for elimination than those who report to you. I've seen it so many times that I lost count. Reorgs are the direct result of mistakes that cost USB money/reputation and upper managers use them as a way to prove they have done something to resolve the issue without addressing the actual cause. The problem is still there but the managers get at least 6 months to push the pressure off themselves because the reorg puts people who don't know anything about the department in charge. It's a total whitewash that directly impacts the bottom level workers because they are still responsible for continuing to clean up the messes.
I've worked at several companies. Never seen one where brown-nosing the boss was so important. If you work hard, are dedicated, work long hours, management will never promote you. They want to squeeze more of the juice out of you.
If you are no challenge to the boss, a super brown-nosing, useless worker, you have a real future here. USB only promotes the useless and talentless. The key to brown-nosing is to brown-nose your boss' boss.
At every meeting, after your useless boss blathers on, making another obvious statement, make sure you say the loudest, "That's a great idea!" "I don't know what we would do without you". Stroke the gas-bag ego and you will go far here.
Sad, but true.