Thread regarding Wells Fargo & Co. layoffs

Not new.
In many areas, attrition rates have stagnated.
Poor performers, which is the highest percentage of workers, are not leaving.
Good performers are. And even good ones at times are not valued by poor managers.

Thus, layoffs and letting go will be based on any mechanism that works.
But other factors will also be part of the picture.

In reality, there is no plan, no vision, and many manager transplants in Tech are also part of the chaos.

Some of this is reasonable, a lot of it is not.

They have been doing this for several years. My own group got rid of several people over the last couple of years, while at the same time hiring new people. I kept in touch with some of those that were let go, and fortunately, most of them were able to get new positions fairly quickly.

Wells Fargo forced ranking policy will be the "doom" of the company. It is so unfair and unethical. It brings down the morale and team cooperation of the employees and forces the employees to sabotage each other.

If they are stack ranking and needs to have one exceed and at least one NI . Then Charlie needs to do the same with his leadership and whack the bottom performers. I know it would be hard but he has plenty of NI’s and the Board should rate Chucky as NI . What is funny is that those who keep getting exceeds are a joke and those that get NI. Well is that a just lately rating while before they had Meets and exceeds in previous years. HR is a joke

Sorry @2mrw+1ppSmFJR, I meant to direct my comments at @1fyd+1ppSmFJR.

@2mrw+1ppSmFJR

Do you know who the worst performers are? Many deadwood executives and managers who are making so much money by contributing nothing. Remember Carrie T? She started the chain reaction many years ago by creating fake customers accounts and the company is still suffering for the damages reputation. Even today, Wells Fargo has been on the news every few weeks because of the incompetent leadership that continues to create new scandals. Does Tracy K ring a bell? What has she accomplished since she took over the current position? Charlie has been with Wells Fargo for 4 years, he still cannot fix the problems. All he does is downsizing and share buybacks. You sound like one of Charlie's cronies who contribute NOTHING. You guys need to go.

"Lol @ everyone mashing on stacked ranking and the JO crying about getting re-org’d as a “20 year top performer”. You are EXACTLY the problem with this place and precisely who needs to be let go. Your self-proclaimed “top performer” can’t be realistically held for 20 years. There is always someone better than you and eventually you will cross paths with them and they will outshine you. It’s natural."

Oh, the wails of the mediocre have been heard. Consistent excellence is clearly not easy or common, but it's also not impossible. The truth of the matter is, a lot of very high end performers that could potentially knock someone off their little mountain top simply refuse to work at an S show like WF, so it's not as competitive in a lot of situations as one might think. In any case, I'd welcome some Uber performers to the team. Last thing I'm concerned about is competition. Either way, long time top performers are not the problem at this company. Our horrible expense management and $h!tty execs are the problem here. The good people at this company go out and earn $5B every quarter, then Hudson Yards makes it their mission to waste it with stupid ideas, "investing" in things that will have zero return, and scandalous practices that result in more fines and legal liability then they could ever hope to earn in profits.

So Jack Welch is the one who started the Hunger Games at GE. I am sure it wasn't his original intention, but his Six Sigma and other stuff all became dinosaur. Now Charlie is beefing up Jack Welch's Hunger Games with the RTO strategy. But Wells Fargo's environment is much worse than GE's because every time our executives create a scandal, the company gets penalized by the regulators for a few billion bucks and we are the ones who get laid off. Wells Fargo is more self-destructive than any other companies because our leadership is toxic and stupid. This whole performance review thing is just a bunch of none-sense.

@2yxd If there's one industry that rewards and thrives on toxicity, it's banking.

Absolutely agree we could only have one exceeds and one had to be inconsistent. Manage to a curve regardless of actual performance. Irony is all the orgs that did this historically abandoned the practice once the toxicity set in - GE started it and it is one reason GE went downhill

@1xoq+1ppSmFJR

I don't disagree that COO is the worst of the worst at Wells Fargo. Their leadership is rotten to the core. You can't trust anybody there.

In the end, it's all about "Favoritism" folks. That's how your managers ultimately allocate performance ratings among the team members. This is not new, it's been happening at every company for many decades.

@1fyd+1ppSmFJR

I left earlier this year, but my manager was very upfront with us and told us directly that the org had to average only one person per team being rated above meets and one person per team being rated inconsistently meets.

It literally didn't matter if multiple people were top performers; only one could be ranked anything above meets. Everyone on the team could literally exceed the given expectations and one person would be ranked inconsistent meets. A manager can hire well, train well, and have a high performing team, only to see executives force incorrect rankings in a team. If people meet or exceed the expectation, they should be ranked as such.

If Wells wants to look at a high performing team and say the ranking must be too low, that's fine. Change the standard for the next year. But what is worked out to is that people are meeting or surpassing expectations only to be ranked lower than they deserved. I say this as one who has always been either exceeds or meets, but had fantastic people on my team that were ranked inconsistently meets for trash reasons.

Lol @ everyone mashing on stacked ranking and the JO crying about getting re-org’d as a “20 year top performer”. You are EXACTLY the problem with this place and precisely who needs to be let go. Your self-proclaimed “top performer” can’t be realistically held for 20 years. There is always someone better than you and eventually you will cross paths with them and they will outshine you. It’s natural. If that hasn’t happened to you then there was a cancer in your org and you were moved to flesh it out.

“NI is the new way to get rid of older workers, smart people, workers with a brain that refuse to drink the kook-aid”.

Extra LOL at this guy. Enjoy reaping the fruits of your non-labor. It is comically easy to be a meets in any role. But you stick it to The Man tough guy by not submitting your time sheet or Stamp on time, never finishing the mandatory training, skipping meetings.

@1fqu+1ppSmFJR

You may be a good manager, but I have seen bad ones. COO is the worst. Many of them are totally corrupt and they lie all the time. There are a lot of toxic politics among the executives and managers, and they do retaliate.

@1upe+1ppSmFJR
"The only thing that can improve the mass layoff/termination in the cards for tech using performance below inconsistently meets, is to make this a corporate wide practice that will finally weed out all of the deadwood that permeates this entire enterprise from top to bottom."
I love it. I can't wait for the day they sh-t-can you for IM because they stack ranked your azz.

@ilk+1ppSmFJR
Absolutely. I have been a top performer for more than 2 decades at WF. I know lot's of people who are. I was re-orged into a new job (no, they didn't ask me if I wanted it), not welcomed, no onboarding, cycled through new managers during subsequent reorgs, but still got a meets. I feel it is a matter of time before they stack rank me with IM and kick me out. If that happens, I'll resign.

problem is that all of the low performers will be hired by other groups and miraculously become top performers. this company will never get rid of these low performers.

Finally, Wells Fargo is actually doing something right!

The only thing that can improve the mass layoff/termination in the cards for tech using performance below inconsistently meets, is to make this a corporate wide practice that will finally weed out all of the deadwood that permeates this entire enterprise from top to bottom.

Clean house once and for all!!!!

Cybersecurity is an example. Incompetent leaders. Exceeds and was let go.
So nothing matters if they got their eye on you.

The ppl on this thread implying ratings are legit are hilarious. These are absolutely stacked rankings/forced distributions. 2 years ago myself and 2 teammates were all put on an "analytic team" against our will. We did not choose to move or want to be on this team. The entire team, manager included, were all friends that were brought over from BoA by our exec. None of these ppl, mgr included, could code or do anything remotely analytic... could barely even use excel. When we decided to tell her we'd all like to post out and move to a different team, magically we were all given 1s and zero bonus. I went top HR who even told me, on a call I recorded, that I didn't remotely deserve a 1 and I even provided them an email proving this woman lied on my eoy perf review. Well...2 days later, HR did a 180 and I was told to move on. But sure...no retaliation and we all deserved 1s lol.

I am a manager in tech and in my department we are preparing to lay off those below meets. There is not anything nefarious going on. We’re not retaliating against anyone nor targeting those that are remote nor shipping the jobs to India nor pushing people below meets to fit a curve. These people are all low performers and we were given a lay-off target that approximately matched. We followed this same process several years ago. None of the managers in my area want to lay of somebody who works hard, works well with others, and has visible outcomes - and we aren’t.

Managers/Executives do retaliate. If you ever question their authority or disagree with their views, no matter how wrong they are, they will absolutely retaliate you. You have been told that Wells Fargo instituted no retaliation policy, but that's name only, not being enforced at all. You are never protected. Do not contact Ethics line, they are being paid to protect the company, not to protect you. I have seen many good people who became a victim of dirty politics and got kicked out of the company. How do they do it? The toxic executives/managers manufacture fake accusations/criticism in the employees performance reviews and make it either inconsistently meets or does not meet. By the time you find it out, you are out, there is not much you can do about it.

Yep. CSBB and WIM are doing it. IT&V is doing it. So is risk. Audit is on board. Inconsistently meets is the new meets. NI is the new way to get rid of older workers, smart people, workers with a brain that refuse to drink the kook-aid (kool-aid), etc.

I’m a new manager at WF (but not new to WF). I personally know three people right now who are at NI due to retaliation. Their mgrs are denying that is the reason. The leadership is turning a blind eye. Outside of this place, these employees would be superstars. I’m sickened by it, but it’s happening. And, it’s blatant. When I voiced disagreement in the “calibration” meetings, the other managers and leadership quickly circled the wagons on me. (Managers are constantly “reminded” that “we do not stack rank,” but that’s absolutely what’s happening.) I’ll probably be targeted next. Anyone who’s ever made a complaint to HR knows that everything—especially legitimate complaints and concerns—always come back “unsubstantiated.” These three employees given NI don’t “deserve” it. They’re not lazy or incompetent. They should be in the roles of the mgrs who are down-rating them. This place is toxic. I’m interviewing now for outside positions. For the people who “know” these things are happening but can’t prove it, you are NOT crazy. These are deliberate acts to drive headcount down and boost attrition.

@oqk+1ppSmFJR As posted it SHOULD be Bank Wide. Previously called out if you get a needs improvement you should be cut as a default.

• Churros

: @1pjt+1ppSmFJR

Yeah, but the OP is talking about BELOW inconsistently meets. I get that there are areas with some degree of stack ranking happening, but I seriously doubt there is a good employee somewhere getting a needs improvement rating. With 200k employees, ok, maybe there is one, but as a systemic / institutionalized kind of thing? I'd have to see it to believe it. I'm a manager and have never once rated someone as NI. Those people usually don't last long enough to get a rating and no senior person has ever told me to rate someone a NI.

@ilk+1ppSmFJR

Many groups are subject to stack ranking, so even good employees can get stuck with an Inconsistently, especially if they're new to a team. Basically, the manager has to give someone an Inconsistently Meets, and they'll stick that on the new person who is trying to learn their new job. It's brutal. Especially since some of these employees who are new to these roles may be some of the higher performers in the company, as evidenced by the fact that they just got promoted. People are quitting over this. Really sad. But good for attrition.

I heard the same thing. I have also been hearing that if you are managing less than 8 people, you will be demoted and/or forced out.

Is this bank ("firm")wide? Or just the U.S. tech employees?

8bwouod bet too that those not meeting RTO will be inconsistently meets. That'll really pour salt into the wounds.

If you're below inconsistently meets, it means you are rated needs improvement and you SHOULD be canned. Seriously, you have to actively be trying to not meet in order to get that bad of a rating.

Is Jack Welch running tech? Not saying I disagree with it. What su-ks will be tye following year when they need to fill up the quota again.

Aka you Jared tech is affected

You mean below meets?
I heard aswell but from unreliable source