These demoted high pay IC just boss around like before? Or fight for work or credit with hardworking lower titles?
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If same salary IC role doesn't makes any difference unless someone push you hard. You just do minimum to get same salary and prepare for next interviews. If work pressure builds yes then more fights erupt.
Individual contributor
What is IC ?
Challenge is that Ds & MDs are forced to spend lot of time managing up, leaving not much time for managing down.
Unfortunately packaging has become more important than the product itself and most of the Ds/MDs spend more time on making presentations for executives, regulators, auditors, legal & compliance, rather than spending time in making high caliber teams, revenue generating products, and customer delight.
When good talkers are given preference over good doers, organizations end up where Citi is today.
D and MDs are expected to manage people considering how heavy the responsibilities are. They should not be delegating such responsibilities to SVPs or VPs on the pretext of giving people a chance. SVPs and VPs will get their chances when they become Ds and MDs. If everyone in the bank delegates responsibilities to give people a chance to learn, heavy responsibilities get delegated multiple times until several top layers absolve themselves of such responsibilities
While it's certainly a different bank then when I last saw this happen in mass, in 08 they did similar. Then just treated them the same as the lower level. About 20% quit because they didn't like this ( probably would have been higher if the economy was better) the rest soldiered on for around a year in a diminished role. Around 09' about 60-70% of those that stayed were laid off too. Those that were actually valuable stayed is the short of it.
This is not the first time they've done this. I was moved to IC 4 years ago when my org did the same thing (no more than 8 levels and at least 8 employee reports). The result was:
- I continued doing the same job I was doing, except I no longer had 1 on 1s with my team
- When yearly reviews rolled around I wasn't consulted and ended up counselling my team members when they came to me to complain that the person doing their review had no idea what they were doing
- In situations of conflict or dissent I was treated as someone with little authority and wasn't able to handle the situation appropriately. The net result was that the situation festered, undermined the entire team, and eventually boiled up to the "manager" who had it explode in his face
This strikes me as just another incarnation of "flat management" that was popular in the 90s. I said then and I say now that this is just the ego of upper management thinking only they can solve problems. Instead of learning to delegate and demand proper reporting they're trying to get as closely involved as they can.
Ironically, just a few hours ago I was watching a show on World War II where Hi---r was doing the same to his generals right before they started losing on all fronts. Power corrupts....