Charles Schwab reviews

A couple years ago this company felt like it was making progress to stepping into the modern times by understanding that style of work and life was changing. Now they have mandated that you must work in the office 3 days a week-most likely to increase to 5 again- which was a huge step back into the 1950s mindset and micro-managing. In a company where the majority of the day is spent in meetings-virtually, why must we drive to an office to do that? Having laid off up to 40% of a single department, all that work has been put on those that remain with an insulting pay increase that doesn’t cover a quarter of inflation let alone the increased cost of having to come into the office. In addition to the added work there is a complete shift in procedures that isn’t defined enough for project managers to successfully do their jobs or help their business partners understand it as well. The leadership responsible for answering the questions of employees don’t have the answers and only ever say “it’s still being worked on and developed”. Multiple employees don’t feel they know what they are suppose to be doing and there is no support from upper leadership. There is also no career path clearly defined and discussions with people leadership yield no clear objectives to work towards either for promotion.

Since the TD buyout and now mostly completed transition, the company has been in a headlong downhill slide. Recent layoffs, sudden 180 on remote work flexibility, continually changing reasonings, lack of transparency from the executive council, constant poor decision making from upper management, terrible micromanagement systems, poorly compensated compared to our peers, etc. As a small example, we have been fully remote since March of 2020. TD and Schwab during this time exploded in growth, made billions in profits, upper management continually praised the remote environment and indicated we had never been this efficient, used so little sick time, worked this much overtime, etc. Associate engagement scores were higher than ever and people were happy. We were told we would not be returning to the office if we did not wish to do so, it was up to us and what worked best for us. Over 70% of the work force received approval to work 91-100% remotely. Fast forward to a few months ago. Upper management is still praising the remote environment and telling us all we will not be returning to the office. Suddenly the executive council sends out an email, over the heads of all people leaders including directors, and tells the company we will be returning to the office October 2023. They said this was because they wanted in person collaboration with our teams, that was the reasoning then. But, most of our teams are...remote. Working in other cities around the country. So who are we collaborating with? Now the reasoning has changed, it's the "culture" of Schwab to be in the office. Schwab's culture is apparently to dwell in the past instead of embracing the future and a major benefit to the entire company and downsize corporate real estate they didn't need any longer. Instead, they chose to disrupt the lives of more than 70% of the work force for no reason. And then ended up having to close corporate real estate anyway because they realized it was still a huge waste of money. The October date got pushed back because they didn't even have enough space in the office for everyone to return, so now they have to spend additional millions of dollars to build new buildings so everyone can come into the office to waste their time doing the same jobs they have done from home for nearly 4 years very successfully, in the words of upper management. The reality is, the removal of WFH flexibility was a poorly designed effort to get as many to quit as possible so they had to lay off fewer people due to their poor financial decisions. It also tanked the associate engagement scores into the ground, but they won't address it and keep pointing blame on other topics. But, don't worry, wasting your personal time, commuting to the office, further contributing to pollution and collaborating with some random other "Schwabies" in the office wasting your time yakking it up instead of actually working like you could at home will make that all better, right? Well done, Walt.