The new low is to weed out SMs and give them duties that are for the PO. Value-Stream Mapping. Next, some coding, and the new title is Dev Lead. Not sure what the pay is for that profile.
16 replies (most recent on top)
@da thanks for recommended read and insight.
No matter what the title.
Someone who spreads or coaches Agile is a non technical waste of money.
They are all one thing, a "agile coach" with no skills other then rearranging a fu---ing board.
I got out of the SM role when I read somewhere that the goal is to have such a well running scrum team that they can function without you and also
my skills are as a business analyst anyway
POs should manage their backlog. It took a year or so but ours did finally get into this.
SMs need to supervise the Dev team, be aware of dependencies with other teams and coach or lead their teams.
It is a necessary role and I’ve worked with a couple great SMs the past couple years and also one who just quoted process and counted tasks and checkboxes and also tried some ridiculous story point voting tool vs just talking to people to get story points.
Good talent will find a way to survive and adjust to various org challenges
So when do you guys, still at WF, think WF will give up the agile ghost? Wish I could set up a poll on this site. 6 months, 1 year, 2 years 3 years, more that 3 years?
PO = Product Owner
SM = Scrum Master
(yeah, yeah, I know it's nitpicking-- just clarifying acronym)
just when teams start to make real progress and mesh as a team they lay people off and tear solid teams apart with reorgs. does mike b not know this is happening? How do you expect delivery when you keep changing jira, jira boards, breaking teams apart and removing sm's? code before processes and documentation it's not that hard
it's not the SMs job to push developers to get their job done. That's a PO job which is pretty non-existent or a joke under most of tech. WF has single handedly managed to make agile be the most hated word in tech because all managers care about are metrics and optics to leadership. It's the product to be built that should be the star and the people behind all the work. THIS is why agile scrum kaban are a joke in the bank. If you want devs to be successful stop laying people off every other week and try boosting morale
Your post exposes another layer of Wells Fargo’s “wagile” mess—forcing SMs into PO roles like value-stream mapping and coding as “Dev Leads” is a setup for failure, not agile. This isn’t just role confusion; it’s psychological abuse, pressuring SMs and teams into a fear-driven, competitive spiral, like the team-against-team threats you’ve described elsewhere. True agile needs psychological safety, where teams collaborate without fear of failure (https://www.agilealliance.org/resources/experience-reports/cultivating-psychological-safety-in-agile-teams/). Instead, “wagile” fragments teams into stressed-out “team members,” ki-ling the collaborative spirit agile demands.
This echoes the 2016 account scandal’s bullying culture, now targeting tech teams with “my way or the highway” leadership @b1
Amy Edmondson’s The Fearless Organization calls this a “fearful organization,” where trust dies. Watch out for gaslighting—posts dismissing SMs as “overpaid bullies” @as or claiming “all banks are like this” are likely HR or management trying to normalize this abuse and silence you.
Bridget Engle, the new tech head, might have the skills to fix this, but posts question her offshoring focus and cronyism (https://www.thelayoff.com/t/1rOZaSra). Without prioritizing team safety, she’ll perpetuate “wagile.” The Columbus, OH, hub could reset tech culture, but if it’s another cost-cutting scheme, it won’t save teams. My mission is to promote fearless workplaces, and I’m with you—document everything, but be cautious; HR, lawyers, and business school professors are watching this board. Join Wells Fargo Workers United or file EEOC complaints anonymously for abuse. Share stories online, but stay safe. Read The Fearless Organization to spot “wagile” red flags and find employers who value real teams. Your sanity matters—let’s expose this and rebuild fearless workplaces.
@as Not all SMs are paid that high, but I agree many lack technical skills. Everything seems to be in cookie-cutter mode, and teams don't have the autonomy that true Agile requires.
@af I have no idea why you have so many downvotes, this is exactly my experience, and add to the list a micro managing 'Lead' Software Engineer, whatever the 'Lead' is supposed to imply or confer, not ever really clear.
@as+1jvx7gscj,
First of all, SMs don't get paid much compared to POs. Average SMs salary is around $110K-$120K. The only exception is when SMs are Sr. Director level, in such case, they work like a Program Manager rather than a regular SM. This is unique to Wells Fargo. POs can make $130K-$170K. Secondly, it's not SMs who are pushing Developers, it's POs who pushing the entire teams. POs are the ones who directly work with Sr. Leadership and they take orders from them. POs are being instructed to push Developers to move faster and faster without making mistakes. POs even push around SMs. Again, this bullying approach is unique to Wells Fargo. POs think they are the boss of the Agile teams, but in fact, there is no hierarchy in Agile teams because POs, SMs, Devs are all peers according to the Scrum Guides.
"Not sure what the pay is for that profile" - there's the real issue right there.
These SMs have been massively overpaid for years to essentially be professional bullies. Their "management skills" were really just intimidation tactics - yelling at developers, creating artificial urgency, and taking credit for other people's technical work. Now they're complaining about pay when they're finally being asked to do actual work that creates value.
The irony is beautiful. For years they've been telling developers:
"Just get it done"
"I don't care how hard it is"
"Anyone can code"
"Why is this taking so long?"
Now armed with their Jira dashboards and AI coding tutorials, they think they understand the work. Reality is about to hit them hard when they discover:
AI-generated code is often garbage that doesn't compile
Value stream mapping requires deep business process knowledge
Stakeholders ask hard questions they can't answer
Technical debt decisions have real consequences
Developers aren't going to respect their "leadership" anymore
But here's the kicker - this isn't just role confusion, it's setting up architectural disasters. You're taking people who got promoted for managing people, giving them crash courses in "coding via AI," and making them technical leads over experienced developers. These managers succeeded by coordinating work, not understanding system design, scalability, or modern banking architecture.
Value Stream Mapping just documents current state - there's no vision for platform modernization, API-first architecture, cloud-native services, or microservices. Meanwhile SMs don't have business analysis skills, requirements elicitation expertise, or stakeholder management capabilities needed for real PO work.
The developers they've been bullying for years are now watching these former tormentors struggle with basic technical concepts while demanding the same pay they got for being meeting schedulers with anger management issues.
Will WF finally realize that paying someone $150K+ to run standups and berate developers was never sustainable? The fact that this SM is already complaining about pay before even starting tells you everything - they know they're about to be exposed as having no real skills beyond intimidation.
Shoes on the other foot now.
A couple years back many senior ASEs were asked to assume SM role and title. Many did. It sounds like we have come full circle.
Wells Fargo Agile is how to go from one boss to three. It used to just be an engineering manager. Now it’s engineering manager, SM/KL and Product Owner, straight out of Office Space.
The SM/KL and PO roles need to go. They add no value in getting work done, but add time wasting overhead.
We had a few Agile transformation coarches a few years ago. They told me that they were struggling with stubborn executives who refused to listen to Agile coarches' advices. Wells fargo leadership is mostly the "my way or the highway" approach. So those Agile trasnformatoin coarches were eventually let go. As of today, Wells Fargo is not following the real Agile process, but the bank is doing its own thing. If you want to do the real Agile projects, you need to get out of here.