When first I started at Transamerica eight years ago, I thought I was joining a progressive company and looked forward to a career with in stable industry with good benefits. Make Money, Have Fun, isn’t that what they used to say? And summer hours to boot. What’s not to love, I thought. There’s a company that values their employees, I thought.
Summer hours were taken away right after I started.
Since then, I’ve witnessed a constant stream of RIFs. I’ve seen irreplaceable product knowledge shown to the door and watch skilled technology workers replaced by hopeless incompetents. Salaries have stagnated, the cost of benefits has gone up astronomically (while their value has gone down so as to be nearly worthless to the average family) and morale has eroded away faster than a Florida sinkhole under a broken water main.
In eight years, I’ve been through 13 different managers, at least a half-dozen reorgs, and a complete and constant vacillation of values and methodologies.
I’m well aware of the difficulties the financial industry has faced since 2008, but the company’s solution seems to be to randomly pick some strategy which failed for other companies a decade ago. Even worse, Transamerica is now leading the way in questionable shadow insurance deals—the very sort of thing that led to the financial crisis in the first place. The only thing I can assume is that the company cares more about short term profits and CEO bonuses than creating a sustainable and quality product for consumers in the years to come.
