Thread regarding Fidelity Investments layoffs

As a chapter lead I would vehemently refuse to accept our architect into our squad, unless she's willing to work the same way as the rest of the associates. It's a waste to Fidelity but I like current set up where I don't need to deal with her until we produced a new product and needs those set of architectural diagrams to be drew.

And why the architects all reside in the ivory towers on the remote Mount FAE? Leave only the niche ones (security, accessibility...) in FAE so their services can be shared across BUs and embed those who are aligned to a BU in the BU ! During the process of this rationalization you'll find tons of unneeded ones which deserve nothing but cut.

Fire all the architects. Why do we even need so many? Most are just VPs with zero tech awareness and clueless about what’s actually happening in the industry. They hop on calls, repeat the same generic nonsense everyone already knows, and contribute nothing. Useless.!!!

If Fidelity upper management has the gut and wisdom to know where and how to cut, they've already done it years ago. TrackIT maybe a naive and feeble try to get some clarity but it's doomed to be a garbage collector.

All the while objective metrics are readily available to measure one's contribution:

• Github Commits, for tech associates.
• Confluece/SharePoint content, for everybody
• (Teams) Support Channel engagement, for everybody
• ...

If somebody leaves no traces in above spaces, ask her/him to:

• Submit proof of contribution in forms of tangible artifacts such as Word/Excel/Powerpoint documents.
• Document her/his original contributions, not her/his teams's achievements, not her/his reports' contributions.

If this person can not produce much of above, you know she/he is a safe CUT.

And, Fidelity, while doing it, just say it as is: "We're flattening the org for greater agility, efficiency and effectiveness". Market will reward you for it.

If the next round of layoffs don't cull the herd of level 8 employees who are just sticking around because they wanted a VBO that never happened... DESKS WILL FLIP!

I tell you... DESKS.... WILL.... FLIP....

Good discussion! My gripe about these middle managements is that they're not strategizing as they're supposed to. I see too many L8 group chapter/product leaders lowering themselves to the tactic and operational level asking about and messing with technical and implementation details. Oh wait, they didn't really lower themselves because they are never up to the level they're in! How can you expect amateur programmers with humanity degrees to grasp and have a vision in the tech domain? What can they do then? Hopping on the hype of the week train...

VP titles with no reports. Focus on cutting there. They should at least have a couple of reports to be a VP. The people on linked posting the most are doing the least real work.

Enpower the individual contributors! That's how Meta's engineer driven culture succeeded. The authority is vested in the delivery team and Project Manager, Product Manager, Architects are servants (leaders).

Here at Fidelity authorities are assumed by the clueless fat middle mgmt layers. The relic architects who are away from the frontline for decades. The group XX leaders who climbed into and occupied the positions with no visions or qualifications. Even the scrum masters keep setting up perfunctatory recurring meetings wasting everybody's time.

We the engineers at the bottom are mature enough to know what and how to do things. We might be able to innovate if are let alone.

By 'DARN' I assume OP means the new bottom up feedback mechanism. Yet you need to bubble them up through the reporting chain. Imagine you come to your boss and proclaim "cut the middle management" : )

As an India fid employee with 12+ years here i can say that the current leadership structure in India is failing. Most Grade 8+ "leaders", BU heads, and site leads contribute little to actual delivery,instead, they waste time on pointless programs and initiatives. The GCL role in India serves no purpose since these leaders have no real accountability for results.
Remove the dead weight. A drastic reduction in these roles would eliminate most of the inefficiencies overnight. It’s time to cut the bloat and refocus on execution

My manager has become so elusive my team really doesn’t reach out to them other than just an fyi. We have had to research solutions for things that come up to the point we really don’t need our manager. They’ve been consistently unavailable and unreliable, but they come back to micromanage.

Our teams were split to have more access to our “leader” but things are so much worse now.

"room full..." , "quarterly planning...", LOL... I have a screen shot of the meeting invite of our product area owner's quarterly planning, more than half of the invitees are aloof middle mangers of all sorts (engineering, product, architecture, governance). Half of the remaining half frontline managers can also be cut without affecting day-to-day operations.

The roomful then went over the same spreadsheet we used in each of the quarterly plannings, changing a few words here and there, "let's step back and look at the bigger picture..." a couple of times and then the so called leaders would disappear until the next quarterly planning : )

A flattening has to happen. Look at the org charts. I don't think I've seen so many VPs who haver zero direct reports. How does that happen?

It's hard to get anything done. It's not unusual for a simple fix to have a room full of VPs and directors with only one person implementing the fix. Literally, a room full of unhelpful and clueless mo--ns dog-piling the only person who knows how to fix.

A lot of human cholesterol running through the veins of Fidelity at the moment.

Most of middle management is usually overpaid and nearly useless. Overpaid secretaries really. It has always been odd to me that middle management is actually paid more than the people that do real work. I'd say make management an 'entry-level' position and let the managers aspire and get promoted to do real work as individual contributors.

To rub salt into the wound, the higher up in Fidelity's org, the more seniority, the more politics, the less up-to-date skill set, the less vision, the less capable... all the more deserved to be cut off the org chart.