Thread regarding U.S. Bank layoffs

Mgmt - just help us be successful

I've been with USB for a while now. I was told I had just avoided the last major transformation before I joined. I've been in tech for most of my career, you can guess what dept I'm in. The introduction of Agile isn't new to me, so this round of resistance is not unusual. What makes it confusing for me is how Digital and Eng'ring/TOS don't seem to walk on the same path. Digital is product-driven, and Eng'ring/TOS is technology-driven. An Eng'ring/TOS manager I once asked couldn't articulate what the product model meant. They each have their quarterly plans and from experience, there's hardly any knock on the door from Eng'ring/TOS to tell Digital what they plan on doing, and perhaps vice-versa. Digital, meanwhile, still advocates that Eng'ring/TOS is the 4th leg of the Shield Ways of Working stool, along with Product, UX, and Agile (scrum masters, coaches). Digital enforces the idea of "sticky teams" and yet Eng'ring/TOS has a staffing protocol that does not enable sticky teams. The Eng'ring/TOS managers I worked with want the control to move staff, esp contractors, around because they don't have enough people to support a large-scale operation like USB.

People on the ground fight amongst each other to implement the rules they were told to follow. I've worked with new employees (under 3 years), and they're simply doing their jobs. Please let's not blame each other who are only doing what we're hired for.

All of this is NOT the employees' problem. This stress is causing job insecurity in all of us. Management MUST figure out what protocols to follow across the board. If they want agile, everyone gets on agile, no exceptions. If CAPEX will never go away, figure out how to make it work with agile. I received one of the best onboarding experiences when I joined USB from my one-up and 2-up even, but it's so lacking nowadays. I witnessed new employees get slotted into a group with no clear picture of where they are or direction to guide them.

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You just described the way things have been at USB since First Bank bought USB in 1998 and probably for a decade before that. First Bank was accumulating smaller banks trying to become a top tier Regional Bank. They had so many problems with mergers of data back then and they kept acquiring more and more without dealing with those core issues. Now it's a total Cluster of nothing cohesive. With 90% of long term staff belittled into retiring or whose jobs were "eliminated", there are very few people left who might be able to help redirect the ship. It's going to go under one of these days and it is sad to watch it happen.

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