Ok I was one of many of at least 175 people laid off, and it likely is more. They have sites in Oregon, Ohio, California, and Georgia and others. Layoffs took place in at least 3 of these states. Fiserv layed people off near the end of January and paid out part of the package earlier on and took until the end of Feb to deliver the final payment. After you signed some agreement that says they cant be blamed for anything even if you figure out they lied to you, fact or fiction doesn't matter we're free of any and all blame or else you don't get the money you need to survive. [Blackmail of a kind]
You're already hell being dumped into a market with a large number of your fellow employees who were just your team members who are now instantly all your competitors for any current jobs in the market. In Fact something even more shameful is the pace of the payments made by Fiserv. I actually was caught quite off guard, and needed the monies quite bad. Fiserv fumbled my payment process up so badly that they were soundly defeated in speed and effectiveness of their payment processing by my State Unemployment agency. That's correct I had my first payment of unemployment prior to Fiserv paying out my severance. And Fiserv prides itself in speed and ease of electronic payments lol...
I was doing quite well in the company and had even won a few living proof awards. They were very disorganized, and sold products before they were ready then have to back peddle because of poor internal processes. Then they switch all the project managers around and all the engineers around so that everyone is on new projects and no knows sh-- from shinola. Then all the PMs look to the lead engineers and the LE's look to the PMs. Then the finger pointing begins and no one knows anything and thinks everyone else has the answers. The LE's are brought up in vastly different ways and learn what it is to be a LE in radically different ways and learn the Fiserv Tribal knowledge by piecemeal. This means extreme variation of the way they create and bring up lead engineers. Then they have Horrible PMs that think engineers are a lower form of life and kiss the upper managements butts and throw engineers under the Bus especially a PM with the initials SS. These projects get mishandled then everyone gets moved around then its the blind leading the blind and the PMs cannibalize the engineers in the process of attempting to figure out why things are behind and who does what and when and what's already been done or not done that was assumed done.
They keep attempting to have their eye on the bottom line or a value add proposition, yet they ignore their internal process improvement to the detriment of their external value adding propositions. They end up with SEV calls and lost revenue and angry clients like BofA that will not tolerate such folly. They fall behind in their projects and wind up cutting corners getting exceptions for all their broken processes. Rather then proactively attempting to look at their internal processes. The lack of a consistent output to the business units makes the engineers look like fools to the BU all the time because of all the projects changing hands and everyone coming in blind on projects. Even if they pull new talent in off the street to learn Fiserv way it take 6 months to 9 months to learn according to lore, but in fact people can be their for years and get pigeon holed into projects that reuse the same processes over and over and never gain proper tribal knowledge.
You never learn all needed Fiserv processes and have no sand box to practice any of these other processes either. You can watch Service now videos, but all the documentation pertains to Remedy. The documentation is all over the place and only the engineers in the emerald city [Alpharetta] have the exposure to Tribal knowledge to have the best chance to succeed at Fiserv as a LE. Unless they have been around 12 years. The new remote engineers hardly have a chance being so isolated. Know one knows what they don't know and no one tries to find out or teach them they are left on their own to teach themselves what they don't know. Very bad form and no way to train LE's. Should be same for all.
Another sad feature was the fact that engineers had to beg for work. IF you didn't get given enough work you had to go bum it off other engineers. Like HEY BUDDY got any spare CHANGE!? Any bones you can throw me off your plate? The management did not know how to hand out work and the tracking process they use in clarity is JOKE. You are told to BILL like a Lawyer! IF you think at home about the project bill for it we were told. Then you had to make up all your hours at time to meet a certain number of hours whether you worked it or not, or throw in hours for learning and education to shore up the hours. So you could meet the 35 hours billed to projects they failed to properly vet. But if they gave you only one or two projects and they were stuttering then you were left with huge gaps and were expected to beg up other hours off other engineers off their mis-managed projects. OR worse had to purely invent hours to make up the gaps or else risk looking irrelevant on paper due to not being doled out a proper amount of work to do. It was like an unspoken rule. It was terrible. People were quitting because they didn't want to get thrown under the bus because of this or due to poor internal process or by being pigeon holed into projects with little Fiserv exposure to other processes. They sent people to 6 Sigma classes and got black belts to improve processes then killed it all and then chopped heads shortly their after.
The new CIO is to blame Jim Gretch, his idea is hack people off at the head. At least the old CIO Cliff Skeleton was not known for this. This new guy comes on board and all hell breaks loose. Now all kinds of people are out of work and competing against each other and its terrible. Its better to be fired or quit so at least you face a market with more job potential vs all hit the same job market at once, which is where old Gretch the super wise has left many loyal associates.
Don't fix it, just throw people in the gutter and go get others as needed if needed. Save money and fix the value add like that! Brilliant idea! NOT! Dumb a--! You need to fix internal Fiserv Processes to get the value add but you're not wise enough to realize that and took the Easy road. Well now all the left over Fiserv employees know your low grade and are running to the hills in expectation of more of the same. Why serve a man of such an ilk. NO more then a common sociopath or perhaps psychopath with little to no concern for the well being of others. a CEOs top choice in America it would seem. Anyway they took a major turn for the worse and tried to fix the problem in precisely the wrong way... Hope it pays off...
It didn't pay off for me and to think I saw a future for myself at this place... Now I'm left struggling looking for a job in a saturated market. Left of unemployment and the hopes of state training, its shameful. My wife had had to take a job at Jack in the box for Christ's sake.
Well there you have it my 2 cents about my recent layoff from Fiserv and their behavior before and after. Take it for what you will, but that's what went down for me...