Thread regarding USAA layoffs

Ummm, I'm not an HR rat. I was literally sick to my stomach worrying about RTO and layoffs recently. Maybe my 'theory' is crummy, but you don't have to be a d**k about it.

Sounds more like a hypothesis than a theory

I mean, most CEOs are hired for a purpose: turn the company around, increase profitability, eliminate waste, whatever the company needs at that point in time. They are given a mandate by the board. Bob Davis' was probably "clean house, eliminate waste." Joe Robles' was probably "Increase employee morale."

I think it would be very unlikely for a CEO to be hired and the board just say "Uhhh, yeah idk just run the company for a few years idc."

So, to your point, OP, Wayne is probably doing what he thinks is necessary to accomplish his mandate. But I can guarantee that the board did not tell him to:

1. Layoff the specific people he did. Many of those people who lived and breathed USAA's mission could have been reassigned elsewhere rather than letting them go entirely. As those people left the building, so did a piece of USAA's culture.
2. Lie to employees about remote status, and bait and switch people into accepting a remote role then pulling the rug out from under them, then exhibiting the highest level of cowardice possible by pushing the responsibility of communicating this down to individual leaders. I hope employees never forget that.
3. Hire executives with no familiarity with USAA's culture to come in and upend decades of culture building and military affinity, and replace it with myopic publicly-traded company business practices like focusing exclusively on quarterly profits
4. Completely fail to introduce relevant and competitive products and services. Literally none of our products are better than our competitors. Not a single one. When you look at insurance: too expensive and not differentiated by service. Checking and savings accounts: virtually no interest paid, and our competitors also offer ATM reimbursement and mobile check deposit. Credit cards: with the 2.5% card gone, none of our cards are noteworthy. The list goes on.
5. Hire an CHRO who is more concerned about the proportions of skin color and se-ual preferences throughout the company than whether or not the people actually bring something to the company. If your only measure of success is a report saying "We have increased X representation by 23%!" then you don't have to consider whether the person they hired is actually good or not.

All of these decisions fall squarely on Wayne's shoulders. The board likely told him something to the effect of "Get us out of this compliance mess, then reduce expenses to ensure we can thrive for another hundred years. Automate as much as we can, eliminate legacy departments, focus on our big rocks as an organization and get rid of departments that don't make us much money."

There are multiple ways of accomplishing all of these things. Were some layoffs going to be inevitable? Sure, I think most of us who have been with the company for a while have seen that it's bloated in certain areas. But they didn't need to let go many of the specific people they did. There's one leader in particular I can think of who was let go who was the literal embodiment of USAA's culture — and they kicked him to the curb. That's not the board's fault. The responsibility for that lies solely with Wayne and his direct reports. I'd argue mostly Wayne, because he's the one who brought in people like Amala who in turn laid off these people with no regard to their history, tenure, or intangible assets they brought to the company.

So, is Wayne doing what he was told? To an extent. He was probably told "what" he had to accomplish. But as a CEO he gets to choose the "whos, hows, and whys."

It's like a shill HR campaign the last 3 or 4 posts here. Go crawl back under the hole you came out of rat.