Sad. Angry. Disheartened.

As a long time employee, I have witnessed many changes in this company...Some good, some definitely not so good. I don't mind change. Change is the better part of my job. What I do mind is that once I loved coming to work, but not anymore. I loved the way people pulled together to get something done. There wasn't a "that's not my job" or "you will get the bare minimum out of me because in the end I'm just a MEETS at best anyway" attitude. People worked hard and were rewarded for their work. Managers could reward several great employees at the same time without living under the bell curve rating mandate. We actually had fun at work and production quality and quantity was high!

Now, I see this "location strategy" taking really good people, with an immense amount of knowledge, and letting them go because suddenly where they live isn't acceptable (when it's been acceptable for years). Many of those people know the nuances of this place (the people and the systems) and when they are let go it leaves the new and less seasoned people with limited knowledge and limited networking skills - and takes far longer for them to get something done. When this company says they focus on risk, clearly they do not!

Collaboration is said to be one big reason for the "location strategy". That is a joke. Many people don't collaborate at all during their day other than on Teams, which they can do from anywhere. Some don't even sit in the same city as their counterparts so they go into an office 3 days a week to sit alone and speak to no one around them. I personally witness people around me spending a large amount of time talking on their cell phones for personal calls and shopping online and not interacting at all with anyone around them. I suspect they were more productive at home not wasting the prep and commute time.

My two cents is that a lot of these technology systems failures lately aren't a coincidence. It's because the people with the knowledge and skills or those systems, the deep knowledge needed to react and address issues when they occur (and they will occur), have been let go.

The COST of the location strategy is enormous. It's costly to the company in means of lost productivity, in extended downtime for issues and in the attitudes of people. All of this leads to a huge cost to our customers!!

This once incredibly fun and vibrant workplace is so sad and depressing now. I sure miss those days.

Comment! It's anonymous!

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Reminds me of a snippet of an ABBA song:

*The gods may throw a dice
Their minds as cold as ice*

The smallest actions at the top have enormous implications for us way down here.

You know what's disheartening to me?

I was raised to have good work ethics. Work hard, grind it out, do extras, help others, etc.; don't worry about money it will come later with hard work. I did exactly that here for 17 years and saw brownnosers get promoted by incompetent managers. Palace intrigue is rampant and politics is the only thing that matters to your career progression here.

At the end, what do I get? 2.5% raise and a pink slip. My son is graduating from college next year, I'm just not sure what to tell him on how to get ahead. You have to kiss a$$, stab others in the back, put your energies into politics not hard work? Maybe I'll just have him watch "Survivors" reruns...

Well said. All of the knowledge that this bank has is gone or will be soon. Wells Fargo has become the Bank of Scarf. Almost every single top executive there now has worked with the CEO in a previous bank. All WF executives left or were pushed out. No senior leaders care about the knowledge of this bank and how to keep it running anymore. It is being run into ground. Was very proud to work for this company for 2 decades...sadly not anymore. It's a sinking ship...

Also, they are outsourcing most jobs to India and the Philippines….

@ywk+1tD0ecSy

And to top it off, CEOs have an executive assistance or two, a nanny, a driver to handle all the typical toils of the day.

Being the head of any company certainly puts one in the crosshairs, this is justified as the role is supposed to represent the maximum breadth of responsibilities while leading by example.

For quite some time the WF CEO position looks like a money grab without consequences. It's making sure you fit in with the other big banks at the country club. There is no ingenuity, no special talent. The board says jump and you say "how high?". More esteemed CEOs say they are doing X, you say you will follow and do X too.

@dzw+1tD0ecSy

First of all, Quiet Quitting is nothing new. It's just a new buzzword for a phenomona that has been worsening over the years in most organizations. People aren't going to work harder/extra if they realize it's only hopium and leads to no tangible reward. Why ki-l yourself for a company that isn't loyal to you, but expects you to be loyal to them?

GenZ seems to realize this after witnessing their parents get sh-t on for decades and wisening up. Smart kids.

We were told as credit we are customer facing. Yet I face no customers. We were told 4 days a week. So I go 3 hour round trip to be all alone as my team is in another state. Yet my counterpart works from home full time. My RTO is a big goal that they tried to use against me when i was sick. Imagine being remote and not having that goal. So when a remote person is sick they don’t have to worry about being fired for being sick. How is that fair?

Contrast a CEO's motivation and daily schedule against the average worker.

A CEO's main purpose is to be the face of a company and maintain the profits and share price. They are not a skill-based knowledge worker, they are an overcompensated, glad-handing leech. They spend most of their time talking to people and face time is a big asset to their job. Being in the office makes sense since they can be seen. They control their hours and are likely driven to work so they can focus on leisure or "job"-relevant knowledge pursuits (eg: newspaper/magazine).

The average worker on the other hand has to wake up, spend time either in traffic or on over-crowded, under-funded public transit, and then deal with the hassle of finding a desk. Some also manage other human beings (kids) before starting their commute, just like other stressed-out workers who are also trying to cope with the same grind. By the time they "get to work" they've already handled more work than most CEOs will perform all day. Then they finally get to "start working". You may have gotten breakfast before getting to work if you're lucky or planned for it. So you "begin the work day" already stressed out and partially exhausted. So you take the first hour to compose yourself for being productive for the rest of the day.

Contrast that to working from home (if your job can be done this way). You wake up, potentially manage other humans, easily commute in the opposite direction of most traffic (back home), stroll through the kitchen, and grab something to eat before sitting down and logging on. By the time you would have been getting on the freeway/main thoroughfare/public transit, you're already at work and productive, your stress level is lower, and you can positively contribute.

CEOs have no idea what a real person's day is like, of course they lack empathy for the average worker.

It is expensive, and Shart is more than willing to use the profits we earn to downsize us. That and stock buy backs are what he spends our profits on. Tells you a lot about HY.

The team I am on has two people co-located. The other 11 work in different cities. Going into the office to join teams meetings is asinine.

RTO sole purpose is to push us out. No other reason. But I read somewhere Charlie is mad we are not quitting fast enough.

@xf+1 - quiet quitting isn't a solution or a fix. It only adds to the problem. But thanks for telling us you clearly don't get OPs point!

Ok, thanks for posting what we already know, already are/have been experiencing, and already have resolved to some extent to either do something to correct it, implement work arounds, or quiet quit.

Thread regarding Wells Fargo & Co. layoffs

Sad. Angry. Disheartened.

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