Thread regarding USAA layoffs

Wasteful Spending At USAA

No one should be shocked by the mismanagement you are currently witnessing at the highest levels at USAA. The $4.6B revenue swing from 2021 to 2022 is a colossal failure on top of the company losing $13B in net worth. That loss in net worth is roughly 1/3 of the company's net worth in 2021. How does that happen in one year unless there is complete incompetence in management at all levels of a company.

I'm fairly certain that wasteful spending played a big part in these losses. Look at the money that was wasted on the downtown offices. One Riverwalk was never filled to even 75% capacity before COVID hit and had been open for 5 years. And if you are an employee and never visited the downtown offices, you never got to see all the other money that was wasted. Instead of doors that secured with proximity badge readers, USAA installed turnstiles on EVERY single floor in both downtown offices where there were USAA employees. At the time that seemed strange and somewhat surreal because it appeared that there were as many or more USAA turnstiles downtown as there were at the home office. But it was definitely a huge waste of money now in hindsight. And who knows how much other money was wasted on the downtown offices. While that doesn't account for all of the $13B lost in net worth it does seem typical of the type of mismanagement that got USAA to where it's at today.

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| 2331 views | | 7 replies (last May 19, 2023) | Reply
Post ID: @OP+1mGYhUKP

7 replies (most recent on top)

The drop in net worth is due to unrealized losses which will amortize away as those investments get closer to maturity. In short, if USAA doesn’t sell those investments and holds them until maturity the losses will go away and Net Worth will rebound.

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Post ID: @1vgd+1mGYhUKP

The guide wire example sounds like TPRM… systems never worked right, so it’ll have to get replaced eventually. In the meantime, let’s keep building processes to workaround the broken technology we spent millions on…

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Post ID: @1goe+1mGYhUKP

Purchasing Guidewire when we knew Duck Creek was the better solution (and the one used by GEICO and Progressive). Now we're stuck with a product that doesn't do what we need it to do (so we are paying Earnix to do part of it), the product is so unusable that our front line phone reps are complaining, it can't even do a bundled home/auto quote out of the box so we need to build an abstraction layer to trick it into doing what we need. Billions of dollars wasted. Innovation put on hold for years while we wait for "Modernization".

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Post ID: @vav+1mGYhUKP

What about the that social media influencer guy with the goofy mustache? What does that guy actually do? I think he calls himself a creative communicator. What is God's name is that exactly? More wasteful spending if you ask me.

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Post ID: @vjp+1mGYhUKP

Privacy phone booths always made me ask "why?????"

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Post ID: @qah+1mGYhUKP

Maybe having 3/4 of company fly in for a week last year for Eagle Day wasn’t genius.

Or having hundreds of teams flying around weekly from one site to another every week to go do some bullsh-t volunteer work project for 2hours. Then sit around a conference and bi--h (wait strategy session).

How about the miracle idea of having executives simplify. And by simplify. Not work with one another. Create redundancy in an already redundant environment. Spend IT dollars on the work. Then give themselves a bonus and pat on the back for simplifying.

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Post ID: @jbv+1mGYhUKP

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