Thread regarding Wells Fargo & Co. layoffs

I quit over “inconsistently meets” justified by made up things and my manager confirmed for me that she didn’t have the guts to stand up to her manager because she didn’t want to rate me below meets. Total surprise when they knew I was working late to get their new and rushed credit risk program supported on time. They egg’s me out of any merit increase and gave me a third of my well earned bonus. Turns out my new job values me to the point of paying me $25K more per year plus they don’t lie and make stuff up to cover themselves because they aren’t spineless a$$holes like in mortgage credit risk “leadership” and their lemming middle manager tools at Wells Fargo.

just remember, an "Inconsistently meets" rating cannot get more than a 1% merit increase. Budgets are based on the bell curve. In order to keep merit increases in check, a certain number of people MUST be inconsistently meets in their review to keep expenses down.

That's why I was forced to change the ratings of two of my team members.

I definitely was. Even in a production driven role where clear goals were established for the metrics. I was forced to lower people in other areas to offset their productivity rankings giving them an Exceeds.

Absolutely and have had my ratings changed from under me by higher ups to meet budget guidelines

@2ebi+1jyTIz8I

That's true, but Charlie and the gang is going the other way with it. Make the place so miserable to work at that all the good people leave and we're left with nothing but the dregs. Everyone really will deserve "meets" once all the high performers with options leave.

Doesn't this reflect on the hiring process, if we are only able to find talent that matches the bell curve ? What a coincidence that after forcing this system on managers, that we are supposed to match this exactly, right?

Yes, and that’s a primary reason why I left the company this year. Forced to give certain ratings when the employee deserved a batter one.

Absolutely, management actually would lower ratings to meet their quota for each band. One of the reasons I left, this place is f'ed.

I wish we could all rank Charlie from 1 to 5 on the global survey.

If your talent pool is finite because you're not hiring, when you rank on the curve and let your poorest performers go (or they leave), eventually you'll only be left with the better performers. After that you're ranking actually good performers against each other. Nothing good can come of that.

"Someone needs to ask Charlie on the next town hall which one or two of his managers has he identified as "needs improvement" and what performance improvement plan he has in place for them."

Sh-t, by Charlie's own standards he should be ranked as Needs Improvement.

We have offshore teams that can't even copy & paste a pre-filled email template without making spelling or grammatical mistakes, where is their needs improvement rating?

The curve is real and forced rankings are real. I’m a CIB manager and exceeds ratings are scrutinized like never before. A team of folks who challenge everything are doing that now. The landscape has been changing in the last few years but this year they mean business. Not an easy message to deliver for managers but part of the job and very much an industry wide practice that many are accustomed to who came to Wells from other firms. Wells is a decade behind competitors. That is the reality.

Pressure to limit # of exceeds but no pressure to put anyone below meets.

My coworkers and I were all asked to lower ratings to align more closely with the bell curve.

What do you call a Mexican that reviews employees on a bell curve?

Taco Bell.

@VFG - and then they can walk away with a golden parachute of $10 million.

I've been given the curve as a general curve but have never been held to it.

The old GE let's rank the bottom10% and get rid of them...
How's that working out??? LOLS.

My boss is under tremendous pressure to rate one of our small team an Inconsistently Meets. Every time I go in for a review with him, I have a preprinted on-the-spot resignation letter tucked in my folio in case he tries to lay it on me.

Data management manager here. Mostly nonsense on this thread. You get a IM is you deserve it. You need to be horrible to get a NI. For an exceeds need to have you be involved in success of critical projects. For a CI forget it. That goes up to the CDO and he is a PITA..

Someone needs to ask Charlie on the next town hall which one or two of his managers has he identified as "needs improvement" and what performance improvement plan he has in place for them.

How about we fill out that bell curve by rating all the executives as "needs improvement". Problem solved.

If you are a good manager and the people truly are exceed then you can make the justification. Sometimes it is a numbers game with the rating as you go up the chain. However not being locked into bonus percentages allows manager flexibility to pay high performers like an exceeds despite the meets rating. The rating is nice but being able to pay people and be able to explain it goes a long way. That is part of being a manager. Rating everyone who s-cks a meets and paying a flat 10 percent is no good for anyone and is lazy mgt which is why we have so much dead wood at WF. Don't manage people out, hold then to expectations just keep hiring until you hopefully find someone who does actual work . I have seen it much much worse outside of WF.

Have to force meets down to inconsistently meets, and people quit. But, continue to meet your targets while short-staffed, because we aren't filling empty positions.

Credit risk manager here, we absolutely have to rate on the curve. This leads to a ton of end of year issues, my team performs very well and I have no complaints from any of my directs, none of which deserve anything less than a meets.
However my area is so corrupt, often I'm told to adjust ratings and "come up with a justification for why" senior managers don't care they just don't want to have to explain why an area isn't sticking with the curve.
For the past 2 years I've refused to adjust and my manager has changed ratings without any justification. I also end up with a lower than expected rating because "I'm not a team player" by not abiding by the requirements.
I have no issue giving poor ratings to those that deserve it but when all projects are on time with no issues and often new projects are dumped last minute and still completed. I cannot and will not hold people to a curve to cut costs.
I'm just waiting for 401k match and maybe bonus before I leave if i can stick it out that long. Several of my team are also actively looking. Next year will be interesting, but I'm sure Wells will be fine with the EGS and analytic teams that can't even code (still amazed we can have an analytic manager that can't actually perform any analytics)

Pretty sure I've heard the senior folks like Saul say the curve is just to show how they'd expect to see the distribution statistically but it's not at all a mandate. Meanwhile, my manager specifically told the team if we have X number of meets we need Y number of needs improvement, etc.. Pretty sure they don't want people saying that out loud - even if it's true.

Absolutely, every review period now. I have been told to make up some negative items to push people to lower ratings. Chainsaw only has old, outdated methods. This has been proven over and over to have no impact on performance improvements. It is not effective for managing people out. Your true 2's and 1's stay you only lose those who feel offended by the rating. It is all about visibility to senior leaders.

As a manager I’m asked to do lots of things I don’t find useful

A failing company led by m0r0ns