We can and should complain about the terrible leadership that takes over across the organization but I say it’s the terrible FTE they also inherit - people stuck in their ways , lack of skillset and energy to make a change , no real compliance and risk background just HOME GROWN cr-p every other team. Dont just blame leadership we lack the talent to implement the change. People in roles for 30 plus years and you expect them to know how to stay on top of industry standards ? Come on- big shake up is needed this is a vicious cycle. Go ahead thumbs down this post - but it’s true
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@1mvm+1vuvmP9h, what about the staff and principal engineers? Some in P&C and Bank have staff and principal engineers without doing any coding or just few several years back - Go and check it out in GIT, RTC or bitbucket on each of them. They must be on code everyday based solving extraordinarily complex problems and prove with their coding skills. That's what USAA preaches for the staff and principal engineers. You will see lots of surprises - all EMG favoritism circumventing the process they preach. They cannot be questioned. You get retaliated by questioning them. And don't be surprised if you see them with code on the source repositories after this post. They may be monitoring these posts, or their EMG may be and asking them to fake it after this post to cover their a**. Go and check it out, call out their names - Staff or principal and the EMG that helped them get the position that they don't deserve. Highly corrupt and toxic culture.
Those types of employee behaviors are because that's what's been rewarded (or maybe better to say, not punished) by USAA leadership. USAA culture (bullying, toxic groupthink, race to the bottom ethics) are why we see so much failure to launch of employees who have been successful at other institutions and most if not all USAA initiatives. Since there's no shareholders to keep leadership accountable it's just become a mechanism of unethical people looting the company for perks. Unbelievable what I see them boasting about on linkedin of pure wastefulness, hopefully regulators will at some point take notice.
Amala made it clear in the recent townhall that everyone will be measured. She's going to raise the bar next year to get cloud certifications at all levels from bottom up to EMG based on the area they work like application with AWS, data with GCP and all in management with cloud practitioner at a minimum. Mid-level management and some in EMG have lots of non-technical folks with either Project Management, System Analyst or non IT background. They are the easy targets when cloud certification is mandated.
It's micromanagement and need for real-time updates that turn leads into meeting summarizers and powerpoint jockeys.
Btw the onus is on leadership to hire, develop and retain good talent. It's not something that can be blame shifted down.
Wow, the one thing I always had a problem with was how worthless I felt our architects and tech leads were.
Then I get a job at a smaller tech company (Fortune 500, not 200), and was amazed to see tech leads and architects actually taking Spike tickets, working issues, doing peer reviews and providing hands on code guidance to help teams kick out the work.
Really made me realize just how good USAA’s architects have it. All they do is attend conferences, create design flows and get wined/dined by vendors. Probably using ChatGPT to do most of their work now.
""All problems are leadership problems" is the most immature, irresponsible statement I have seen so far. Learn to step up and be accountable for what you do.""
Obviously your not a leader currently or a team member. Good luck in you next 20 jobs as you bounce around being accountable to only yourself.
@3tnk+1vuvmP9h
"All problems are leadership problems" is the most immature, irresponsible statement I have seen so far. Learn to step up and be accountable for what you do.
Your comment is spot on. The word a few months back was that "Leads are going to code" and I still see Leads just attending meetings all day. Large swaths of USAA are a joke from a technical perspective.
Twas ever thus...
Coaching -> Threatening
Leadership -> Peer Pressure
Young with energy to run in circles through bureaucracy to get stuff done -> Older, experienced and jaded
Class hatred (young vs. old, poor vs. rich, etc) is a waste of time and ki-ls heart.
"What you are now, we once were.
What we are now, you will become."
except it isnt true. All problems are leadership problems. If they are ineffective at their job its up to a good leader to coach and move them to being effective or hold them accountable to if they are unwilling to respond to coaching and leadership.
It is true that both can be terrible.
Shout out cloud security.
I left many years ago because half the technical ftes weren't technical, especially the 'tech leads' they just assign work to third party and have no idea if they get a good product or not.
"Train people well enough so they can leave.
Treat them well enough, so they don't want to."
- Richard Branson
It’s been absence of this dogma since end of Robles regime.
When I worked there, my work and ideas were REJECTED by people that had been in their roles for many years and they got somewhat angry just that I existed as a new employee. I did not blame my colleagues for this however. I blame the toxic culture that leadership instills.
The workforce is a reflection of its leadership. You want engaged employees willing to learn, grow and be purposeful in effort? Pay them better, treat them right and give them reason to want to do it. Robles did that and that's why he's the last CEO anyone in this company enjoyed working under. Peacock has been the worst CEO in the history of the company at a financial level and morale level. We are simply living by the example set by who's in charge.