-Pay not up to standards.
- Office turned into open concept filled with beanbags, desks setup in Rows, like a daycare. Each desk has 1 monitor and 4 chairs.
- Office floor is slick finished concrete, (joy when it is snowing)
I do not think I have ever worked for a more dysfunctional, toxic IT organization in my life. It starts off with an unqualified CIO hire December 2023 who does not have any idea how to run an IT organization. No plan, no roadmap, no guardrails other than the Strong-arm philosophy. The SVP’s, VP’s and Directors have all been replaced within months and have also adopted the same philosophy and will use employees to better their agenda as they are viewed as just a number. Look I get there will be layoffs due to new CIO and in most cases companies and employees will appreciate the opportunity they did have together and would go back if an opportunity arises but the way CoBank is terminating employees is unethical and uncalled for, offering the employees a chance to do a job completely different than what was hired, become an expert by reading online books in 4 weeks, pass an online exam and pass an in-person evaluation and you get to keep your job for half of your salary, meaning work both current and new job for half of your current salary or Opt. to get laid off in 30-days without a severance package. As an insider, there is no way a current employee will ever pass the in-person evaluation, even if the employee knows the skills to do the new job and will immediately be laid off. The new position offered was a formality and just a way to protect the company legally from having to pay out severance packages.
The other issue I see is the ‘new IT leadership’ are going the way of layoff ‘the whole team’ method without truly understanding or ever asking current employees what they are responsible for or how their respective owning piece is configured, let alone the employee’s skillset. This is causing more high priority issues (outages) than I have ever seen. I have even seen a new professional employee hired, within a week thrown into a high priority situation, because the ‘new IT leadership’ decided to layoff the team that owned that application, and then immediately get terminated the next day because new employee could not solve the high priority issue within the allotted time frame. The current employees who are still working are afraid to step up and help fix anything even outside of their department, due to layoffs, because they immediately get thrown under the bus by the ‘new IT leadership’ which leads to a disciplinary action plan, get the ultimatum or get fired. You would think the ‘new IT leadership’ would look at themselves on how to improve morale and encourage employees to step up to help but they choose to pound their fists and you will respect me approach who also don’t even follow their own policies that has been set for employees (which change daily).
I, like most of the old employees that are left, dread waking up in the mornings and going into work, which is a complete 180 from the first five years of my employment. I just cannot in good judgement follow this ‘new IT leadership’ anymore, they have no vision, no designs, nor roadmap to make the company better. The Company itself will now have IT issues in future and how much longer will the executive board continue to be fed that it is the employee’s fault before they realize that the issue started with CIO. I am sure I will be gone within the 2024 year and I promise you I will NEVER work for despicable CoBank again.
