Thread regarding USAA layoffs

Which orgs at USAA do significant work?

I’ve only ever worked in Bank. But, I’ve never done any significant, meaningful work at USAA, project wise. It’s all something a single dev team could wrap up in a week, if even that, at a normal company. But, the pomp and circumstance of PIP and everybody circlej--king everybody else off after looking at a mural board is simply odd. And, then the planning on top of planning to make it appear that the teams have stuff to do, and the “metrics” they have to pretend exist….

My current team is mostly comprised of a handful of contractors from varying 3rd world countries. They aren’t growing as developers, and they sure as he-l aren’t gonna hire on as FTE. It’s unpleasant to think about…. living in a world where USAA is your best, possibly only, option by a mile.

Yeah, that was a ramble. But, what orgs at USAA actually provide value to their customers? Surely they can’t all be as bad as Bank, right?

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| 1501 views | | 8 replies (last February 7, 2024) | Reply
Post ID: @OP+1qWdpug7

8 replies (most recent on top)

When the pre-planners, planners, chart makers and other agile wa-kers get celebrated more than the actual workers, you know something is off.

I cringe when some doofus posts a slack message tagged with a @here tag just to let us know a Jira task got completed or someone's story got all the checkboxes filled in right.

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Post ID: @1qoo+1qWdpug7

@1bbi+1qWdpug7

OP here…. You hit at exactly where I was coming from. The way to build your career and skills is to learn from the tough tasks in front of you at your job. If there’s a skill gap, take some LI Learning classes.

My first assignment years ago was a classic batch job that my “tech lead” (probably still not 30) already had 99% completed. We spent days in PI planning for this, and were wildly celebrated at the end! Barely a single modification was made to the code base, and my team sat idle for most of that PI.

Second one was even better! Since QA’s aren’t a thing at USAA, we spent the entire PI verifying that an existing process still worked okay after some flow changes from another team. Much applause on the zoom call upon announcement!! 6 developers on the team did jack asș the entire time…. Its the centerpiece of my resume, for sure.

USAA members deserve way better than these monumental drains of cash for no apparent reason. It almost seems like money laundering…. Seriously.

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Post ID: @1fuh+1qWdpug7

Tell me about it haha. Six years here and nothing meaningful. The theme is create something useless then replace it every year with another thing that’s equally useless. It kinda hurts you in the long run because you become disconnected with the industry and not able to advance your skills and career.

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Post ID: @1bbi+1qWdpug7

They congratulate themselves on updating 1 or 2 lines of configuration and releasing the stuff! This in a 2-week sprint!!! It's mind boggling!

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Post ID: @1zsl+1qWdpug7

It's committees all the way down...

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Post ID: @1wav+1qWdpug7

Bank SFO is a high work, low productivity group. We do all kinds of busy work that has little impact to our BUs. As Mike M says, in this environment, we have to look busy until the 'storm' passes. Said with a wink because we all know who that means.

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Post ID: @1ntg+1qWdpug7

3 yr Bank BRC here and I can attest to not doing anything meaningful. Bank doesn’t have real controls. Control testing is a farce. So is issue management. PRCI, RCSA, RIAP, KRIs. Po-p. Snowtr is USAA branded caca that doesn’t even show information users need. Workloads follow circular logic with no substance behind them. Everything runs on feelings and over reactions.

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Post ID: @1kbg+1qWdpug7

Sodexo does it right, keeping it tight all night 😂

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Post ID: @1acf+1qWdpug7

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