A Place to Work if You Don't Want to Work Hard and Don't Want to Get Fired
Pros
- Collaborative culture - In general, culture of respect - Opportunities for cross-organizational transfers and career moves - Offices all over the US with a lot of flexibility for working remotely (e.g., from home) in many locations and/or after having proven yourself. - For the most part, an excellent executive leadership team - especially the top dozen or so leaders in the organization. One level below that, the quality of the leaders declines. - A really strong business with strong retail, mortgage and commercial banking customer base that will make $ billions for years to come, regardless of Wells Fargo's strategy or what anyone working actually does - For those who don't want to work very hard, there is quite a bit of "fat" in the organization, so you can have a position without working very hard, and you probably can get away with it for years (if not an entire career)
Cons
- For those who do want to work hard, it can be stifling to work with people who don't want to work hard (see last bullet under "Pros") - especially when those individuals are part of executive management (and there are plenty of those) - Wells Fargo is very bad about purging bad senior leaders. Once leaders have gotten to a certain level, Wells Fargo sticks by them, and entire segments of Wells suffer under very poor leadership - A lot of fat. A lot of "that's not my job." A lot of provincial, very "inside the box" thinkers. Not the place for someone who is smart and motivated to accelerate a career. There are 280,000 employees, and very few of them, even if excellent, will rise to the top. - To be promoted, you have to be willing to let a lot slide and "go with the flow." Agreeableness is promoted. Anyone who rocks the boat is not. Anyone who is critical of Wells Fargo team members who are ineffective - will be blacklisted as "aggressive" - Much more likely to (get blacklisted) and get fired for raising your hand to alert management about problems; much more likely to be promoted for sweeping problems under the rug and saying everything is great - Takes a very long time to get anything done - Endless meetings with large numbers of participants where nothing substantial is decided - Very little accountability - especially for senior management