Thread regarding Wells Fargo & Co. layoffs

Thanks to the OP for posting because I did not realize this was a common issue here.

I’m in the same boat. I ask for work, but very little is given. I sign up for everything to keep busy, but it is not enough. I come to the office, but no one interacts. The big difference for me is that I am not near retirement. I don’t think next year will be any different which is why I have started looking.

That sounds nice, especially with that pay. I have seen a lot of HR people (not at this company, just in general) say they same thing. I need a job like that, severely underpaid for constantly being busy and definitely not being told to stay in my lane, always doing extra projects well above my pay grade. (Different financial company). Would love to know how to get a job like that. Definitely keep it up.

Same boat here. For two years I have asked at meetings and one on ones - what can I do to help the team? What more should I work on? I have bandwidth to take on more…. And still get no work. Year three and I stopped asking.

When Elon bought Twitter they had 7500 employees. 

He fired 50% of their workforce.

Another 1200 left after he told them he was going to make Twitter "Extremely Hardcore".

Less than 2900 remain.

How can 2900 do the same job as 7500?

Price's Law

Derek Price, a British physicist, historian and scientist discovered something interesting about his peers.

There were always a handful of people who dominated the publications within a certain subject.

Being a scientist, he investigated.

He found out the following:

50% of the work is done by the square root of the total number of people who participate in the work.

He tested it across different groups and audiences and it almost universally applied.

Especially in business.

The square root of the number of people in a company do 50% of the work.

Credit - Scott D. Clary, CEO, OnMi Patch

@uzk@14 ..... Working harder than the next person is not the way to avoid layoffs. The employees that have nothing to do are not bottom of the barrel folks who don't do the work assigned to them and don't help out their team by doing more, at least I'm not. But, due to LOB decisions way above my head me and a lot of other folks were moved to a different department. I was placed with a new manager and the work stopped. Asking for something to do was met with resistance by management. So I stay in my lane. I'm waiting to see how all this shakes out.

But, back to my original point, busting your bu-t is not a guarantee of anything in corporate America. You can still be let go while the do nothing co-worker next to you keeps their job.

That is what all H1b workers aimed to be, better than American.

It is like the American financial management and C-suite all colluded with China, no matter how we ask for work, we just don't get work to do.

I thoroughly encourage you to stay and milk it. Every team needs some D List members like you to cut when the hard layoffs come around.

I don’t need to outrun the bear, I just need to outrun you.

It sounds like quiet firing though?

I go through it too, but it was because H1b workers from 2 very large countries in the team lack ability but need all the credit and visibility

I'm in the same boat.....getting paid for really nothing is great. I used to feel badly about it but I remember the years and years of working nights and weekends to meet deadlines, take care of rush jobs, leaving PTO on the table because I couldn't find the time to go on vacation, etc.

Then it seems more like my ship has finally come in.

Payback is a b@tch.

@ipu

How do those WF boots taste?

why dont you let your manager know you have bandwidth and can do more. Be a professional not a lazy piece of cr-p

I agree! I had the EXACT same internal conversation with myself as you when you wrote,
“ I was going to retire LAST YEAR, but thought to myself "Hey, this is free money. I can't just walk away from a 6 figure job. Let's see how long this continues."

Milk it for as longggggg as you can because at your age, it will be very difficult to find another similar position. Max out your 401K, stay the course and stay off their radar. You will be glad you did, trust me.

@ehc+1k4QDpuM
I understand your take and you may be right, but I’m not so sure they are capable of right siding things. Seems like we are on the merry go round of leadership failure and ineptitude

"Is this mythological risk team with no work hiring?"

Sure, but once the bank has buttoned everything up, there will be a huge layoff in risk.

@mcy+1k4QDpuM

It doesn’t sound to me like they’re underpaid? Please explain why you feel this way. They literally are doing zero work by their own admission.

Same here. I just collect the check and "stay in my lane" as well. I don't know when, how, or if this will end.

The kicker is my department continues to hire people. Also, there are some people who claim to have plenty to do while others like me sit around with nothing to do.

I too receive meets ratings and have one on ones. Like you, I have decided to just ride it out.

Risk leadership is such a complete joke. All the overloaded competent employees have already or will be jumping ship. This will leave them with the “warehoused” employees which leadership hopes will leave. This circus is led by the clowns

I have a similar job- but instead of enjoying it, I have a constant nagging "what am I missing?" drumbeat in my head.

Do you find what you are doing fulfilling? No way could I spend countless years doing what you are doing.

Where do you work? My group is doing constant OT because we are understaffed and our volume is at record levels. Apparently your leadership team either does not have awareness of their business and numbers or they just don’t care. Meanwhile, everyone else pays the price. Unbelievable.

A lot of us have been warehoused like this. It’s an institutional game of “Chicken” to see who will flinch first. They want us to be bored and unfulfilled (and underpaid) so we’ll leave. They avoid severance, and can flex that it was the employees decision to seek greener pastures instead of fessing up that we have to many bodies and not enough work. It’s a waiting game, for sure. I’ve been in a holding pattern myself going on almost 3 years. I feel I’m owed at this point (a divorce settlement if you will), but I’m loosing faith that WF will do the humane and sensible thing by cutting us loose with the parachutes that we’ve earned.

I just left a role like that. There’s only so much on Netflix these days. I think my manager was happy I left since they couldn’t find enough work to keep me busy.

Is this mythological risk team with no work hiring? That is not the situation on my team, though all these dead weight mismanaged employees on other teams sure would explain a lot.

Strange, I have the same situation except no 1-on-1 meetings. Reviews are meets and no mid-year review meeting this year.

Sounds like me and OP have the same job.

Keep collecting the money if it's easy.

Do you work on the risk team?

Why not? Who cares about the extraneous noise and that included the talk in your head. I guess that 20 percent across the bank has much work. You can coast knowing that your future is secure. If you plan to work 10 more years and this is a concern the. Why not move on if you cannot tune out the WF noise. We all wanted to be someone in life but things worked out to that we did our best to get what we have. Even if we did make it higher who wants to deal with the politics.