https://pittsburghquarterly.com/articles/the-selling-of-mellon/
12 replies (most recent on top)
boo hoo - another privileged one-percenter whining about his career.
We can agree to disagree on that.
Totally disagree with your take on it.
To comment or not comment, that is the question.
What kind of genius posts a comment about a comment but doesn't mention what comment they are commenting on?
Definitely in the wrong thread and the wrong era.
Actually @3jrl, Tom Renyi was CEO when I was hired and the bank moved us to another building. That was years before the merger and before Marty was fired.
Either way, my point is the top-down management wasn't and isn't ingrained in BNY or BNYM. It only goes from the CEO down a few layers which could easily be changed. My manager and the next level are very good at delegating and are more like team leaders than managers.
And while morale is extremely low at the bank, I don't know ANY co-worker who is only in it for themselves. People are real busy so you might have to ask a few times, but people are ALWAYS willing to help once they know it's a priority.
Your entire post is referencing the post Marty, post acquisition era. We all understand that to be a complete failure. From July 2007 on the culture completely disintegrated into toxicity and every person for themselves.
This article was an attempt to tell the story from his side, which has quite a bit of validity.
He's correct about BNY ignoring investing in technology back then. But I think he's overthinking the whole "different culture" thing.
It's true that BNY was/is way too "top down", but that could easily be changed by hiring a few managers to make things more transparent. That's the fundamental issue with BNY, everything is top secret so we have no idea the true direction we're supposed to be heading. They treat us like toddlers but we'd quickly step up to the plate if given opportunity.
We see it with the ambush style downsizing, closing of offices, forced RTO for professionals that have been working from home for years, etc, etc.
When I was first hired, they said all of IT was moving out of our building for a year or two until they constructed another wing. It was all top secret where and when we were moving to which can be a pretty big change for many employees. There was NO reason they couldn't have said "we have it narrowed down to these locations" and keep us abreast of their negotiations.
Then after we moved we heard NOTHING for 10 years until they closed the office they moved us to and the original office went hybrid to cram 1000 employees into 700 seats.
Interesting article.
The grass wasn’t greener on the other side as some people lead you to believe.
Very good read. There is no doubt that McGuinn was the most generous and employee friendly CEO ever and that he quickly built a great collaborative culture. I loved walking into work each and every day. But he sold the retail bank, which destroyed Cahouet’s balanced bank strategy and ultimately led to our acquisition and a toxic culture. It’s not hard to understand why Cahouet lost confidence. I knew, admired and liked both men and can respect their positions.
He was a good CEO. These were best years for Mellon employees.