Thread regarding T. Rowe Price Group Inc. layoffs

@jx One of the best takes I have read here. Whether someone agrees with DEI/ESG is irrelevant. It was irrelevant to really making money. If you look at past press releases, they seemed focused on achieving various social ratings from various groups which focused on percentage of employees of various demos and whether they had solar panels installed and used biodegradable flatware. None of that really translates into gains in the end. I spent several hours in DEI seminars, as mandated by my management including Sharps himself, as evidence by that being the only piece of our annual reviews that included his name on it. I could have been helping doing something actually productive.

Mr. Price was very much about generating value for not only his clients, but for the City of Baltimore itself. These transplant managers are just here until they move onto their next chapter. Price would have never fired talented people within the community in favor of foreign nationals who needed to be trained by outgoing employees under duress. I was in awe of the competence at this place when I started. Now it seems all about foolish experiments where they refuse to change course until it is too late. Instead they doubled down. The Flex desks are another bad idea. Someone read it in a trade publication. They never asked the people who would have to deal with them. They made assumptions about how they would work in practice. Whoever subjected us to that probably collected huge bonuses and either already moved on, or were given a sweet retirement package. Now all of those efforts (and whatever that cost the firm) are wasted. I really can't wait to leave this Clown Show.

The truth is, this crisis could have been our opportunity. If we had delivered consistent returns in this chaotic market, we could have protected the firm’s core value and brand. Instead, we failed to update our investment approach, clung to past successes, ignored how the world was changing, and prioritized nonsense like DEI and ESG — pandering to the loudest id--ts in the room. All that did was erode trust in the brand.
Let’s be honest — AI is already smarter than most of our analysts. And yet we’re still burning money on pointless business trips, company visits, and sellside reports that add zero alpha. How long are we going to keep funding irrational, underperforming behavior?
This company is like a beginner trader who just keeps averaging down into a losing position. Absolutely pathetic.
This is what happens when politics and power take over a company instead of intellect

@g9 haa. you must be one of the people who are mediocre at best. TROWE loves to reward mediocrity

From where I sit, I haven’t seen anyone great leave the firm.

@aq This is so painful to read but simultaneously so true. I started in 2021 and remember those unbelievably lax times. I was let go recently as well and so feel this. And then in 2023 when underperformance and real concerns started to surface, we needed a strategy, which did buy us time but was not something realistic to execute. By the end of 2025 it was clear we had no clue what to do and it was getting to a point where everything just looked bad. Remember those earnings calls where we said we had a meaningful path to inflows starting in 2025? I don't know about you, but I remember discussion of "green shoots" in the broader asset management industry in late 2024-mid 2025. But by early 2026, we found that global growth stalled, that a private credit crunch affecting a major subsidiary, that we were stuck an overpaid sports partnership, and an broad ETF suite that wasn't attracting the wealth channel like we thought it would.
We had ideas, and they didn't work, so we have to downsize and lay off to stay afloat. We have to offshore just to keep costs from going haywire. And despite very cautious guidance to the markets, we still fell short of our goals. Things are not good.

@aw Ridiculous comment. A lot of great people have been let go with these layoffs, and a lot of useless deadweight still exists.

@aw I have seen excellent people gone and are going. It is not about excellence. It is about cost savings. Many groups the WHOLE group was let go.

I wonder what percentage of the people who got laid off were actually talented, and what percentage were dead weight. So far, most of the people around me who got cut were like, 'That's unfortunate, but not surprising.' But going forward, I feel like even the strong performers are going to start getting let go too...

@aq I try to look at the positive even though I am headed for the food bank line. As bad as things have become since 2020, they will keep getting worse over the next 5 years. So to the people in my job function who were "safe" this go round. Good luck with all of that - you are going to need it. I'll land somewhere even if I have to switch careers. But there is no end in sight to the woke stupidity and incompetence happening. Everything seems to be based on ideology and not what works. The Flex Desks look great in a Powerpoint presentation. Awful in practice. Same with this offshoring. I am sure it looks great in a spreadsheet. People will collect huge bonuses for "the savings". Reality will hit - and we will read about it in the finance journals or local news.

During the COVID bull market, this place was unbelievably lax — and now we're actually worried about layoffs. When they started throwing around meaningless buzzwords like DEI and ESG, signed unnecessary vendor contract after unnecessary vendor contract, and kept bringing in outside executives you'd look at and think "why on earth did they hire this person?" — I already knew the writing was on the wall. But raising those concerns with management simply wasn't an option. In that so-called "collaborative culture," speaking up for what was right just got you sidelined.
Everyone learned to go along to get along, hiding behind vague feel-good language like "collaboration" — and all it did was let soft, clueless people in power dig in deeper. That's how a once-great company rotted itself into irrelevance.
There was no real conviction in the investment management business. Just complacency and arrogance. I'm done listening to underperforming PMs make excuses.