Anthem expanded rapidly and with each acquisition decided who to keep or dump, but instead of keeping those with true subject matter knowledge or leadership skills they selected based on favoritism, self-promotion and the ability to take credit for the work of others. The current state is an extremely top-heavy royal court of tone deaf “leaders” who in my opinion, add little to no value. Because they are in over their heads, I believe they relied on overpaid consultants who sold them on a dysfunctional and elitist business agile model.
Senior leaders were to identify their subject matter experts and make them a grade 15, with stock options after 3 years, higher bonuses and unlimited PTO. But instead of choosing the most worthy, they chose their glam squad, the people who make their PowerPoints and make them look good.
Now that they believe they’ve secured their “brain trust” phase 2 appears to be a business strategy where they replace current experienced employees with a) cheaper on shore hires, b) offshore employees, or c) will completely eliminate positions and replace with AI. If you are still working long hours and weekends trying to bail this sinking ship, just stop. There is no place for you in the lifeboats and there never was.
If you are a grade 15 category and one of the, I’d estimate 40%, who are carrying the other 60%, who use their unlimited PTO all the time, I would put in to take the month of September or October off and see if your peers step up; spoiler alert- they can’t so they won’t. You should plan to leave the minute you get vested.
Agile philosophy means you learn and expand your role; it doesn’t mean you take on the workload of three people. Collaboration in Agile is organized, it isn’t just random in office time to check a box. Return to Office mandates will result in others leaving, when collaboration has the people who work witness first-hand the lack of knowledge and work output among others who are paid much more and do far less.
Elevance has now created an organizational caste system. It used to be if you worked hard, you succeeded, the company succeeded, and everyone reaped the benefit; even if some were better compensated than others. Under this new methodology, there is a largely unworthy noble class that does very little, other than attending meetings where they assign out work to the small minority of grade 15’s who work and to grade 14’s and below. It takes no skill to say something is broken, it is fixing it that requires knowledge and effort. As shown last year, when bonus time comes around the pie is sliced so that those who do less are rewarded more.
With recent layoffs the royal court is scrambling to find peasants to pick up the slack; don’t fall for it. Let the favorite children who still get decent raises and bonuses finally do real work and fix things; if they can. Do enough to keep your job and your sanity until you can find something better. Set an alarm and work an 8 hour day, but when the alarm goes off if you think about working one minute more, remember that there is a VP that is taking 6 paid weeks to climb Everest and will return and still have more PTO, while you are neglecting your friends and family. Don’t overexert during upcoming peak and before you ever consider working a weekend realize that Elevance must be well staffed since they’ve yet to revoke unlimited PTO.
This is the logical conclusion of Elevance policies. Almost every working employee could likely qualify for an anxiety diagnosis. The lack of transparency in layoffs, where employees are disappeared overnight like you’re living in a communist regime, leads to a fear response. In the short term, you might get a burst of productivity, when workers try to do more to avoid getting on the RIF list. But when the RIFs keep coming, and there is no transparency or apparent logic to the RIF’s, the avoidance phase sets in. The weekend or PTO provides short term relief, but you come back to the same stress and if work piles up during PTO it is even worse. Politely turn down the extra work and cite health reasons; it is not a misrepresentation, maybe they can create a new diagnosis code for Elevance induced anxiety- Elevancia.
Calculate the hours you work verses your pay to arrive at your true salary. Calculate the cost of a commute that you may not have agreed to when you were hired. Calculate the impact of stress. Give the minimum you can but don’t buy into the fact that you owe more to fix problems that other’s incompetence and egos created. Notice that some of the fixers are leaving, so believe if or not, it may get worse.
Don’t sacrifice your physical or mental health for an organization that views you as completely disposable. If you set boundaries and get RIF’ed, it potentially was only a matter of time anyway. RIF’s no longer appear to be an unfortunate business necessity, but rather an Elevance business strategy. If the stock drops enough maybe the board will finally step in and replace the current inept leadership team and their royal court.
#IChooseMe
#Elevancia
#PeasantsUnite