If you join NYLife as a CVP, especially at the MG2 level, this place will drive you absolutely nuts! You’re nothing more than a babysitter of incompetent employees working under the direction of politically conservative isolationists who operate from an old-school top-down management approach. Expect to inherit direct reports that are snarky, entitled, con artists and disrespectful brats. They have no concept of critical thinking or any desire to do real work. Most of my inherited troublemakers (MG1’s) had been with the company for several years and bounced around between various departments, thus by the time I became their babysitter they were accruing over a month of annual vacation. Combined with sick leave, jury duty, summer fun days, bereavement leave, personal days, FMLA and any other ADA or additional extension on accommodations made it nearly impossible to ever hold a staff meeting with my direct reports. The role was basically nothing more than babysitting delinquents and someone to handle angry client calls and correspondence that my boss or anyone else above me in the hierarchy would punt my way because they were too busy with their own political infighting. To make matters worse, NYLife is still on Lotus Notes, which is a navigational nightmare. When hired, I was provided a laptop almost 12 years old that operated antiquated applications. It was nearly impossible to stay connected outside of the office network without having to jerry rig my way online haphazardly. There is not an enterprise CRM solution so most daily correspondence and operations are performed through Lotus Notes or green screens (i.e. antiquated databases). Expect to be inundated daily with hundreds of emails containing tons of chains/threads that you must read through in order to even figure out what is the current topic of discussion.
While NYLife does a mediocre job of sourcing talent I was underwhelmed by the level of intelligence with these people (be aware, you will only be sent resumes for what they think is the correct diversity candidate to join the company). Employees hired will spend so much time manipulating how to get out of work that I could never see any substantive value or production coming from anyone.
The IS&O organizational leadership (SLT) would promote a top-down management agenda and are all self-congratulating ego maniacs. The leader of this organization himself has a zero open door style and an extremely unapproachable demeanor (E.g. I was partially hired by this person but never once had a skip-level interview, albeit I was required to consistently perform the task with my own teams). He mandates a no work-from-home policy among staff but resides at the Dallas office maybe one day per-week while spending the remainder of his schedule aloof, flying around the country in First Class and enjoying company-paid accommodations/incidentals. In converse, my own boss would scrutinize every T&E transaction from a once per-quarter economy business trip and nominally priced, necessary office supplies. Of course, double standards are the norm and to be expected as NYLife remains a private company with zero transparency. This is not only with T&E but as others on this review board have pointed out, vast majority of promotions and new hire decisions are based on nepotism. If unlucky enough to gain employment outside the nepotism track, expect to have a witch hunt performed on you by both your lifer boss and peers as you will be labeled not part of the insiders’ clique. Combine this with the laddering (E.g. employee stack ranking annual review process) which does nothing but position peers against each other and play shenanigans with allocated bonus and merit dollars - expect to go nowhere except quickly ran off. This will be compounded if you reside and work at a service center based outside of the corporate office as anyone located outside of corporate is viewed as beneath their NYC counterparts. During your recruitment phase, when discussing the bonus program with the less than forthcoming talent team, be sure to inquire where you must stack rank for the year to hit your target bonus illustrated in your offer letter.
I actually thought I was going to get dumber working here. The lackluster management training classes (MDI) and so called “success factors training” curriculum my boss would mandatorily enroll MG1’s and CVP’s into, just so he and other SLT leaders could check off on satisfying their yearly KPIs were viewed as pointless and painful. It was a brain drain and distraction from my day-to-day duties of being a productive babysitter.
Meetings - the sheer volume was mind bending. None of them critical to doing actual work, more cascading from the SLT on their self-congratulating unearned awesomeness.
Bottom line, being political and grandstanding at NYLife is far more important than doing anything value-add while you are there. Anyone serious about doing meaningful work need not apply. You'll make it a few months, maybe a year at most and then quit out of frustration.
