Thread regarding USAA layoffs

As a former manager at USAA, I can tell you from my experience that it really boiled down to how large the incentive and salary increase pool was for the group and how each employee ranked against the others in terms of performance and key person risk. So for example, if a group had a few high performers who are also key persons (meaning, operations are overly dependent upon them), these folks would receive higher ratings and higher monies in order to keep them and then there was less for everyone else. In order to justify less, the performance ratings would be lower for non-high performers. Or, say the group has employees who meet expectations but there is not as much risk to operations if they were to leave. These employees may get less. The last issue that can impact raises is if members of the group are way below market salaries and the managers use the end of year increases to bring some up closer to market, that would leave less for others. This kind of reality has been present at just about every large company I've been.

I know that guy! He’s a great developer! I thinks its the matter of having a sh** manager that doesn’t know the work he does and thinks the employees that can “talk the talk” are the “met or exceeds expectations “. An Employee can only be a reflection of his manager! I hope his manager also got a partial met expectations!

Forced stack ranking is not a new thing. As a manager, I had limited input into the summary ratings of my employees in 2005/2006 when the director and executive director 1,000 miles away called the shots.

Ahh, forced stack ranking. This came into use within USAA around 2020ish, and is evil. Only x% of a groups employees can be rated Exceeds, y% can be Meets, z% can be Meets some - and there HAS to be a % (determined by the BU or HR) that gets forced into whatever the Failed bucket is each cycle.

So if you bust your butt and exceed every known metric layed out for you, turn water to wine, lead to gold, save USAA $10B and make every day a delight, but your group has lots of high achievers, then you might get forced into a Meets Some or lower.

The situation needs something, sure. But escalating to HR is unlikely to improve anything. The toxic managers seem to be part of the overall talent strategy of keeping ESAT low. Not writing HR off completely, but I would only go to them if I had a ton of documentation, not only of meeting the expectations, but also of issues with the manager. And even them be prepared for the possibility that HR is not interested in the truth. Especially if you are in a group that will likely be smaller in 5 years.

Happening to various employees across the company. Trying to ‘control costs’, force people to leave and skip the layoff and severance while the managers stay on top. Good workers given the shaft.

Grow up and get a real job? Seriously, quit treating USAA like it’s a legit company and GTFO.