Thread regarding Wells Fargo & Co. layoffs

The location strategy affects all Californian employees. No more job openings for Californian. Californian employees are doomed for the career advance future. While the cost is expensive in CA but jobs in a higher cost place, NY, is allowed.

• Not just IT area, my 60 day notice ended Friday. Located in non-hub big city. Location reduction Phase 1?

We need to act or no one will speak up for us. In the current pandemic situation where

1. Government is helping out small and hard hit business to keep their employees
2. other financial companies are taking care of their employees by promise to not lay-off any
3. Companies including wellsfargo are asking works to work from home
4. States are starting to closing boarders and more strict isolation implementation is on its way

Wells Fargo is FORCING off to relocation or lose our jobs. This can’t be done at any worse time. This decision should not be postponed, it should be CANCELLED. Read the following to let your voice be heard.

To all Location Strategy Phase One Impacted Employees: Complain to Board of Directors and EthicsLine

Wells Fargo executives will ignore all pushback through the normal channels (I.e. HR, Accommodation Management, etc). There is no exception process. HR is going through all the motions of this "process" but the result will always be "exception denied."

Recommendation for those impacted by Phase One of Location Strategy ("Forced Relocation")
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1) email the the Board of Directors - boardcommunications@wellsfargo.com

2) report this incompetent and unethical conduct to EthicsLine: https://www.tnwgrc.com/wellsfargo/

Saul Van Beurden's inconsistent and contradictory messaging is unethical conduct. It is morally bankrupt, misleading and rapidly destroying morale during a crisis. His Location Strategy is detrimental and ignores pandemic threat. It has caused severe harm already by creating Reputational, Financial, Operational and Legal Risks for Wells Fargo.

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Again, Wells Fargo executives will ignore all pushback through the normal channels: it would likely take an class action lawsuit and coordinated effort by all Phase One impacted employees to get their attention.- i.e., Phase One likely targeted and discriminated (illegally) against employees by age and perhaps by other protected criteria (e.g, ,disabililty). Proving discrimination and disparate impact is uphill battle. But in this case, the selection criteria and data model for Phase One look pretty shaky - pretty flimsy pretext for what it is obvious strategy to get experienced and older employees to quit.

Related "Ask Me Anything" thread: (https://www.thelayoff.com/t/141KT8k7)

"Location strategy will continue, even thought there is a setback from Saul's view. Also, if you have a special situation - sorry - go and look for another job if you cannot move.To the guys who ask that question because there is a very sick family member - get a lawyer and see what your options are."

I am one who is impacted as a remote employee , when I received the notice I have to say that what they offered was reasonable. Plenty of time to transition either way how you decided to do with the offer. But things changes quickly, we now have a virus war that is impacting worldwide economy with no end in sight. companies and government are all stepping up to support their employees, customers, and the working people. Most of the companies asking people to work from home now For extended periods I time, I don't know why wells fargo can't live their own words of support employee at this difficult time and consider indefinitely extended this location strategy until all dust are settled. Currently. Wells are giving us 3 more months to make our decision, but honestly I have been losing sleep ever since the virus started, there are hiring freezes everywhere, How can we make a sounds decision in such environment.

Please respond here if you are in the same boat and let's support each other during this time.

Thank you and be safe.

Paid leave for 2 months, PLUS severance sounds like a good deal to me unless you are an old timer and will have a difficult time finding alternative employment

Some of the information provide seems to be inaccurate, so I would like to take a moment a provide an accurate account on what is really happening within the walls of Wells Fargo. I know first hand, for I am one of the affected. First, it is almost 800 people who have been affected by the relocation strategy being implemented. All of those affected by the first wave (yes, there are more) have been notified. Second, those notified have until April 15th to sign and return the relocation letter informing Wells of the decision. Those accepting relocation will be provided a relocation package. For those who decline the relocation package, the last day is October 31st. Before then, they can apply for another position within the company and move themselves at their expense to the hub of their choice. Those who do not wish to remain, October 31st is their last working day. They will be paid with leave for the entire months of November and December. In January of 2020, their severance package will begin (2 weeks pay for each year). Third, the locations for the relocation strategy dont seem to coincide with what the employee relocation strategy states. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to where people are being asked to relocate. Many, who are in my shoes, have been asked to relocate thousands of miles away, even though, less than hundreds is a Wells Fargo hub. So, the relocation strategy as it is being called seems to be nothing more than a smoke screen to reduce the head count without actually terminating employees, which in one sense, for I get a 2 month paid vacation and several months with my current salary to look for a new position. As scary as this seems for me and my peers, I think it is a blessing for all. Who knows how well Wells Fargo is going to weather this transition amongst its many lawsuits and government fines. I really hope this was informative as to what is truly happening within Wells.

Saul has no problem cutting 650 good paying US tech jobs. All those EGS folks are going to commute from India to scrum? What a joke.

This is very true. The first round laid off 600 people. They started in the Manila and India . They have until October to make their decision. They also cut jobs in other locations. They are only hiring for the hubs. The hubs do not have enough real estate for the relocation strategy. The hubs are Tempe, Phoenix, Des Moines , Charlotte and Minneapolis(??). If you decide to move you will reserve a cube bi-weekly.

@Zya5I8x-3hzwt.... Biggest regret? Because he came in here talking about the location strategy without having all available information and without knowing how messed up things are in terms of knowing where people are located, space utilization, etc. It's a mess.

Why do you think we have a COO now?

I fully expect them to conduct a space utilization analysis for our real estate footprint. Easily done. Who is assigned where based on MAC code... Cross reference MAC code with the person's actual location because there are instances where people are gaming the system (big surprise). Once that is done, check space utilization by looking at badging data. Find the offenders (people assigned to a desk but who never come to the office) and convert their space to open work area.

Some people here are so arrogant that they do not come to their desk to work (they stay at home) and them complain when they hear that their desk is being taken away.

In his last meeting Saul mentioned that his biggest regret of the year was being too open about location Strategy. Not sure what exactly that means.

The I.T. employees only have two choices: 1) Relocate or 2) Lose your job! Either way the employee is screwed! If you choose to relocate it will be on your own dime! Not too many of the employees can afford nor do they want to uproot their family! But of course, those who are high ranking leaders, get an exception! Do as I say and not what I do!

These leadership and high ranking managers has lost touch (and control) of the company. All they see are $$$. The culture at Wells Fargo simply stinks! Want proof? Simple, in the past few years, how many times has Wells Fargo been in the media and of those past few years how many times have Wells Fargo been sued? Wells Fargo has committed numerous frauds against their customers! Why? It's because of the Wells Fargo CULTURE!

Let's take for example the fake accounts. Wells Fargo blamed it on a few rogue employees! It would be understandable if it was limited to a branch, a state, or even a region! But it happened throughout the states! Those who were fired claimed it was due to the unrealistic quota and were told "this is how you do it!" It didn't matter to Wells Fargo as long as they were making money! They were only "sorry" because Wells Fargo was CAUGHT! Leadership KNEW it was happening and did NOTHING.....until they were caught. Those employees who did it were fired while those who mastermind the scheme got to retire with a "golden parachute!!!"

So now it comes to this, so leadership has this bright idea. Let's make it a miserable situation for employees so they will quit on their own.. We'll just string them along and keep them in the dark. Those that decides to relocate will do so at their own expense. The others will quit on their own and we'll save money by not giving them a severance package! It's a win-win situation for Wells Fargo!!

Because of the lack of leadership or more like bad leadership the employees are the ones who suffer. Their lack of vision for the company and the terrible culture played a major role of how dysfunctional Wells Fargo has become!

Is San Francisco a pay area zero even a "hub" that is offered at this point?

Seems the plan is to cut costs by getting rid of everyone who had built enough seniority and trust with the company to telecommute.
Surely the low performing, and junior people that stay will have more success under the same sort of top down direction that tenured and skilled people couldn't actually get things done under, due to the absurd process requirements of such a large and bureaucratic organization.

I was recruited by WF a few years ago. Since then:
Big account opening scandal saw light (they knew it already)
Big repossession scandal saw light
Big systems outage in Michigan taking down almost everything
People quitting are never replaced
Layoffs of about 1 in 9 in IT
System plans not carried through with
Location strategy hung over our heads for 18 months now with basically no info. You’ll have to work in one of these five (mostly freezing) cities but we won’t tell you which one yet so you can make no plans, just worry, and we won’t tell you when it will happen so good luck making any major decisions
And we won’t tell you if we will pay relocation expenses.
And this is “transparent”
They even said they would make a major announcement in July — but nothing that you can plan for specifically
The laughing (sad) point was when former head of Finance and IT (now just Finance) talked about how he has had to move several times as part of his career. Yeah but he’s paid in the millions and doesn’t have to worry about losing a few thousand dollars on the sale of his home — and no concern about people who need to be near their parents etc.
Only sympathetic item i heard was that if you have a special needs child you can get an exception. That’s great, but basically the bank will uproot thousands upon thousands of people to accomplish a goal that their gut says will work. It seems to be all the rage today among top execs, but no proof is ever offered about how it works better. It certainly doesn’t help provide more security by having risk distributed. There are natural disasters, etc. that make collocation a high risk game. But this doesn’t play into the risk strategy.
So I conclude it’s all about downsizing without looking like the bad guy. If they lay off, then recruits would choose other companies.
As for me, I do just enough to justify my pay at this point.

To the person who said "GOOD! WF technology group is bloated at 24000..."

You meant to say "GOOD, get rid of the senior managers who do not understand what is needed and take shareholder profit out of the decision making process..."

Rank and file IT people almost always know what is needed for high availability and security, but getting funding and headcount is usually denied, because "things are going well enough now".

This applies to pretty much every company, ever. And it's why you see data breach after data breach in the news.

The cost of saying "we're sorry" is cheaper than keeping enough staff around or keeping up on patches/tech.

There is some standard of 4% of revenue, or something close to that, that is used to judge how much to spend on IT. It's based on some averages and not on real life needs.

So accountants and shareholders call the shots instead of IT folks.

I've seen CIO's brag that they're spending less than 4% on IT, only to have a major security breach after, and no one puts the two together.

They've tried that 15 years ago and it didn't work in getting IT to be located at hubs in SF, Minneapolis, Phoenix but now includes Charlotte. It didnt work.

GOOD! WF technology group is bloated at 24000! It makes it one of the largest technology employers that can’t get technology the regulators are satisfied with.

Hope they make good on offering the opportunity to relocate to a hub....and that there is transparency around the decision making process.

mentioned couple times during both q&a session. reason is to support shift to agile

Major reorganization in WIM , St. Louis Aug./ Sept. with new management Nyron Latif any other news ?

Source?