Thread regarding Fidelity Investments layoffs

There's a difference between a scrum master that ONLY gives status updates, ONLY books meetings for scrum ceremonies, DOESN'T pay attention when in those scrum ceremonies about the work being discussed, and DOESN'T use the agile tools, but joined the team talking about all their certifications, and then when you ask questions to them related to their certifications, DOESN'T know anything to actually help. Those are some of the scrums the company hired and comments seem to be referring to. If you added value and didn't act that way, the comments are aimed at you

We heard the same whining about PMs. Yeah, we hired a lot lousy SMs in the rush to staff up. We’re hiring a lot of lousy engineers, too, and for the same reason. I’d you’re whine about your PM or SM or manager, the problem is mostly sitting between your chair and your keyboard.

I’m in CTG FMT and got hit as well as 3 other colleagues including my Chapter Lead. I was not a just a facilitator but was also guard rails to ensure that my squad delivered on our quarterly commitments. I do believe Fidelity has issues with expectations on how Scrum operates and it’s not about being faster, but delivering incremental value that meets the needs and expectations of the customer.

Yes Agile Roles were impacted and yes, unfortunately there is reason for it due to the way Agile was implemented. Politics, slow adoption, over extension and lack of accountability lead to it being an easy target. It does not justify disrespect to those impacted.

Unfortunately you have keyboard warriors like those comments below that take the time to refer to SMs as overlords or baby sitters when I assure you that for every mediocre SM there are dozens of inconsistent developers sitting behind turned off cameras, complaining when no one is looking and wondering why they don't get shares each year. Be glad throughput is not allowed to be tracked at the individual level. Had your oh so enlightening candid feedback been given in a retro earlier then SMs could have attempted to implement the feedback sooner.

I also know that SMs are often the first to help their squad mates through personal situations, conflicts and general issues even before their managers and SLs due to the level of trust. SMs genuinely care about their people and I doubt any of them would have the same negative sentiment when referring to developers on their team…even the critics below.

The more unfortunate part is that these people below possibly walk the same halls as myself and my peers. The Fidelity culture I chose to embark my career with many years ago emphasizes support for one another; “works across Fidelity”. Have some empathy for those impacted as they are human beings like yourselves.

Call me a shill, to drink the kool aid or whatever remark you would like. I will still greet you on Monday, smile and genuinely ask how your weekend was.

This is what happens when you have thousands people on Tiktok/YouTube PROUDLY telling everyone they don't have to know tech to be in tech in order to make a lot of money and the company sponsors it lol

Like comments below, can confirm my scrum master was an over paid baby sister facilitating meetings and an outlook meeting overlord. Glad I don't have to hear them read off a Miro board any more about our sprint review like I'm a little kid that can't read and then explain out loud what I mean to the whole group. Scrum masters should try to stop using Miro, Excel, and Word around our work when there's agile tools for a reason to review the work already lol. All those scrum acronyms after your name on LinkenIn to facilitate a meeting then not pay attention doesn't justify your grade 5-6 pay.

Things got done before scrum masters and agile, things will get done without them. The whole agile and scrum practice became a bloated institution and cost overhead just like what was called solutions delivery before they went full agile. Sure they had a few good folks who knew how to ship and get things done but the whole practice became a magnet for the mediocre coasters and hangers on. We all know who these people are/were.

If your scrum master only facilitated meetings, you had a sh---y scrum master. But it’s also the companies fault because they have no real measures for success. Scrum masters are problem solvers, mediators, and meant to look for improvements (like stop creating reports that no one reads). If developers had better soft skills, scrum masters wouldn’t necessarily be needed. But finding someone who has the dev language skills while also being able to reason with other groups (marketing, support, etc) is rare. Companies also need to have some kind of goal setup for each scrum team that every request to the team should be measured against. Meaning, these are our goals, you can’t relate your request to the goal, your request goes to the bottom of the list. The only reason scrum is a fad is because the majority of companies aren’t really practicing it. The just changed people’s job title and continued to do sh-t the same way. Hopefully with genai as a dev companion, startups can scale faster and compete with these large companies that can’t really change because of the amount of bloat roles they already have. I also think companies need to adopt a gig economy type roles. You don’t need to hire someone full time for a job that requires 2-3 hrs of work a week, or that’s only need for 6-8 weeks. Then it becomes easy for those people to be a fly on a wall and not a catalyst for what goal or change they’re trying to make.

Agile model perhaps getting scaled back significantly. In addition to cutting coaches and SMs, at least some Chapters being gutted, with members just reporting directly to their product areas. Like pre-Agile...

Scrum certs are participation trophies, comments below reflect that. If you have tech experience, then it I'm sure you added additional value, but for those who didn't, they mostly just sat on zoom facilitating meetings and were paid alot to do nothing. You got to try to dig in and understand the work as scrum master and not sit back twiddling your thumbs

Let's get rid of the agile tools with them, jira can't even manage all fidelity work, it's a dumpster fire

Highly Over paid baby sitters with no tech experience and no value to add. There's a reason it's a fad to get to these roles with non tech people. Do nothing, get paid alot of money to claim you work in tech, and then secretly tell your friends how easy your job is. Sorry we don't need you to baby sit us with your two week certifications that don't allow you to be able to contribute anything meaningful. Whatever will we do without our Outlook meeting overlords to schedule meetings for us? Probably get more work done without your worthless meetings. Project managers beware!

Our scrum master had certifications in PowerBi/Tableau but didn't know anything about using those applications when they were asked. Worthless Meeting Facilitators. Unless you have tech skills/experience to bring to the role you're not helping. Often scrum master was away when not facilitating meetings and even during meetings would be on their phone or not paying attention during scrum stand ups because they had nothing to offer in terms of input/value. The dev team often solved impediments through collaboration without the scrum masters help. Agile coaches during agility health facilitations often just used agility health tool to guide the conversations. High paying grade 5-6 roles making 80-100k and they're worthless roles branded with tech that added very little value. Doesn't help when they're terrible at using jira/jira align on top of it or refuse to use the agile tools the company promotes.

Which BU’s are the laid off people from ?

I still don't understand why that org still exists. No SM actually understand the work and many joined taking 2 days scrum certification with fake or no experience

A few too many coaches and many of them just weren't good and useless. And everyone and their mother wanted to be a Scrum Master but didn't understand the role. I love Agile and against popular belief, its not going anywhere. But some orgs didn't implement it well. Too many on the business side just wanted to throw work at teams with no priorities or planning. I hate to see some good scrum masters get let go. But its corporate america, no love for anyone but profit. It's the American way, I guess :-(

Overseers are overrated. Guess they thunk.