Did I hear it wrong? No. Emily P really called layoffs “culling the herd”. She said it many times during her Pittsburg town hall.
That’s all they think of us. Cattle. This co has lost the plot. Time to revolt
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I’m not bereaving until I know who passed.
Great, but I’m not understanding why you needed piers… Did you go on Robin’s yacht or something.
@3tao, I'm was the best basketball player on my HS team. So the GS Warriors should fire their 17th man and put me on the team.
You mean forced rankings, not forced ratings of course.
I completely disagree. Forced Rankings are the only way that you can measure directs against one another. Of course there are winners and losers.
Anyone who has ever played organized sports understands this. Why wouldn’t you reward the best, and likewise make the hard displacement choices based upon competitive performance?
I’m confused. Why did they need piers?
@2mas, no, it did NOT work. We threw away a lot of talent by showing them the door just because they didn't rank as high as others in their group. My boss was canned 4 years ago because they apparently didn't think he was as good of a manager as his piers. But he was doing HR stuff PLUS doing as much work as I was. He was awesome. Knew exactly when to leave me alone and was always there to help when issues came up.
You don’t get to be most powerful anything in banking by being a decent, or even tactful person …
Only BNYM could sc--w up a simple forced ranking system, the most perfect system for people management ever. Jack Welch must be Turing in his grave.
If we can sc--w up a simple forced ranking system, how can we manage platforms and Pods whatever the heck they are?
Here’s another reason why the forced tanking system is bad: if you have an employee who needs to be terminated, they will make you wait so they can be included in your BE numbers. So you get stuck with them for much longer.
I inherited an employee whose performance was below terrible. This was at the beginning of the year. I was supposed to fix the situation. After giving them a little time under me to fully assess, I came to the conclusion we needed to package them out.
Nope. We needed him in our mid-year and year-end numbers, as we had to have 10% BE (and they would all subsequently be let go after year-end) and we didn’t have enough who warranted that.
So I was stuck with said terrible employee for the year, with everyone picking up some of their work. It was miserable for the employee in question, who deserved a quick and decisive end, and for me as manager, for his teammates and his clients.
Prior to the adoption of that forced ranking system, I’d have been able to take immediate action and bring in someone much better.
Of course rankings work in groups of 8 and smaller. Heck, it even works in a group of two.
That is disgraceful. A executive committee member referring to employees as cattle and their sla-ghter. Anyone who’s ever worked with that crazy woman knows what a sociopath she is. Spouting stuff like this should get her on the front page of the Wall Street journal for being the most disgraceful woman in banking. A 100% evil human being.
@1lak, I think you mean forced RANKINGS. RATINGS should be based 100% on merit and should not be affected by other employees.
@1mmg, did they really let you hold people accountable? My offshore people are forced on me and there's nothing I can do except live with it. I wasn't involved in hiring them and my input into their reviews seems ignored. I had about 2 or 3 out of 10 that were decent and another one or 2 that were acceptable.
Forced rankings have cost countless decent BNYMers their jobs.
I managed people there, and I didn’t tolerate subpar workers. But it wasn’t long before I was being pushed to let go good people because of the system, and I saw it all around me.
The solution? Leaders need to more actively manage their managers to ensure they are holding their teams to high standards. (And the Exco needs to demonstrate it in how they manage their direct reports, which they always fail to do.)
They need to become more involved so they can ensure the right people are being rewarded vs managed out.
A nonsense one-size-fits-all system is a lousy substitute that undermines the culture.
And the rewards are not there. My strongest people were routinely getting flat bonuses, at best, for outstanding work and tireless effort (this after often taking on entire second and third jobs because we’d let people go or not refilled leavers).
When the upside is, “You’re lucky you have a job,” it’s a poor culture.
I don’t know anything about Emily so I am not going to comment on that. I left in 2023.
However, there are other ways of forced rankings. The new company I work for only does it for small incentives such as bonuses instead of yanking you out of a job. I am happy I left BNYM voluntarily as management just seemed out of touch.
@ 1uwe
Forced ratings make sense if everyone is working on an assembly line and you want to keep the fastest or most accurate workers.
BNY Mellon teams are often made up of people doing different jobs or getting assignments with varying degrees of visibility. The person with the least visible assignments or least critical role is often going to be the person getting the lowest ranking.
Being voted the most important woman in Banking is meaningless.
Your statement that “You cannot be the best if you have less than the best employees, right” is equally meaningless.
@1uwe, rankings don't work when groups only have 8 people, genius. Just because someone is ranked last in their group doesn't mean they aren't better than a lot of people in other groups.
I actually agree with Emily P.. I always refer to it as culling the herd as well. I like forced rankings for that reason. When managers and/or supervisors are forced to order their staff by value we retain the best. We have way too many people working way too inefficiently.
I remember when I hired a superstar software engineer and we were lucky to land him. I began to sell him on the bank from the moment we started talking, he was that good. At my review my manager told me that he made more money than me and how did I feel about that?
I told him that he was better than me, and I’m damn good, and I expect to learn a lot from him. Of course I don’t mind that he makes more than me. He was happy with my attitude and both of our work was great and our stars rose quickly. We were working around the clock for years (80 hour weeks) and couldn’t have been any happier.
Nobody today would ever work that way but we were driven.
Competitive Forced Rankings are the only fair approach.
I work expect nothing less from Emily P. After all, she was voted one of the most powerful women in banking.
You cannot be the best if you have less than the best employees, right.
While I was not there, unfortunately this is common at all investment banks. Rank and Yank is another name for it. JPMC has been doing it with increasing intensity for 30 years.
(Hate it personally, but it is the way it is).