USAA - Love it, or Hate it? - Advisor USAA Employee Review

Overall: Company as well as individual departments are constantly being reorganized. You are only as good as your supervisor / manager. If you have a bad manager you will be always on the hot seat and at risk of losing your job. Because USAA is large organization, many of its employees are grouped into 'pods' and at times don't even know or care to know what departments are doing. It seems you can spend more time organizing and attending meetings than actually doing work. Many departments are physically located / concentrated in one or two areas of the building so it becomes a nightmare to not only schedule meetings but to attend them as well because of the limited number of usable meeting rooms. You will sometimes have to walk 15 minutes to get to your meeting location. Work-Related: Most Folks I worked with were highly stressed and worried about their jobs. Of course, there were those people who'd been there years and knew how the system worked so their views and lax attitudes were much different. There are two types of people I worked with - Those that worked their butts and put the extra efforts in and those that 'punched' the clock and worked only until 5:00pm and then left. Coming from a previous employer where I was constantly 'remotely' working, USAA does not do well with its employees doing work from home. At the time I was employed there, our department was just starting to offer this option to some of its 'best' employees. Honestly, in an organization such as USAA, remote working does NOT function well and is unrealistic. There are too many issues around managers constantly wanting updates via con-calls/virtual meetings that it makes it more of pain than a benefit for the employee to enjoy the benefits of remotely working from home. Management Style: As previously stated, you are only as good as your manger. IF you are fortunate to have a good manager AND he or she supports you, are will succeed (in the short term). As you would imagine, USAA is highly influenced by its military culture. In some respects, this is a good thing when macro decision need to be made because middle management listens to its C-Level leadership and makes immediate changes when directed. That said, its military style leadership with its top/down approach is at times difficult to deal with in an organization such as USAA. Middle management as well as 'front line workers' are so concerned about 'rocking the boat' that they blindly follow whatever is asked of them. If you questions or do something other than what you are told to do, things can get difficult for you. In my limited experience, they tended to promote the WRONG type of personnel into management positions. Mobility: If you are on the hot seat, don't expect to be able to transferred into a new department. You will have to 'gut' it out until you are lucky enough to 'escape' a bad area/unit. Each unit / department is hit-or-miss with regards to suitability. Its a luck of the draw if you get into a good situation from the beginning. Most people I worked with tended to be in the same position for years. Unless you change departments or job duties, promotions were far and few.