Have read this a lot..
The problem with this logic is that it is exactly the strategy used to hire them in the first place (internally from other BUs using Spotify model) what your missing is that this is was designed to fail and there was extreme internal resistance that became louder in late 2019… convenient right?
Have you ever heard anyone at the firm say “fidelity doesn’t like two VPs in one room” before they humbly announce a lateral move to a different adjacent org? Take a look at some of your peers at any pay grade that started to make lateral moves during the fall of ‘25 water cooler talk.
I see your posts, i hear your sentiment. but what you are enraged about isn’t the firms gross incompetence. It’s actually quite worse, because it was strategic and now associates are left pointing the finger at the right people but for the wrong reason.
The existing tenured VPs on teams actively pushed back for years against the re-org and likely didn’t tell you about it. It was near impossible to fight — as PI was proving the model worked in their BU. The main argument of why the success wouldn’t transfer for AM tech is based on the end users and stakeholders. 100% internal technology with a specific set of elitist stock pickers, research analysts and traders as internal customers.
And then expecting those exact investment professionals to engage in this new silly structure was down right embarrassing. Asking someone who has worked as a product manger (industry title) to become a squad lead (not even a title used by Spotify itself anymore) was evidence in itself for some people aware enough that they jumped ship or took a lateral move.
Covid became the catalyst for this shift to formally take place, yes. But dont let your ignorance (and outright bigotry) distract you from the real enemy here. False sense of transparency from upper executives. Tenured VPs shielding delivery teams from all this happening only made them less prepared for the blow.
Fidelity wants to remain known for not following suit in layoff trends throughout changing economies. This is a decade long plan to control costs in a different way that other competing public firms cant take the same approach. If you want someone to blame, this is a “privately owned” cop out.
Thats it. The VPs you keep bringing up that you all seem to want to interrogate hypothetically. They were brought in so that there wouldn’t be outraged when they were phased out. Every single AM tech leader knew this. Patterns were recognized. New roles were presented to people with confusing titles and responsibilities. Delivery teams divided.
Asking chat gpt to come up with reverse interview questions about new VPs merit is sophmoric. This was why they were placed originally — upper execs paid for the Spotify consult and needed to see it through, and covid allowed them to execute this. knowing it would fail and THAT was a valuable point enough to justify future layoffs.
There are MANY cases of well accomplished VPs choosing a demotion, strategically. To stay at the firm, embrace the change for a temporary 5-7 years until the next wave of “leaders” try to make an impact. When Kathy and bill were here, this was well understood but not widely discussed because there was an actionable conversation happening about what long term associates LIKED about why they stayed for so long. There was a long run of success with their combined approach, and unfortunately gave a lot of younger employees a sense of stability that would soon change.
All of the outrage of covid hires and thinking you can reverse engineer something that was intentionally designed to fail in the first place is a waste of your time. Stop being tricked into thinking they actually believed this re-org would work. Or that it was a disguised effort to implement DEI.
Your leaders didn’t tell you the truth, stop whining about DEI when it was intentionally used to distract you and blame your peers, and not the execs.