There are some truly horrendous first line managers at USAA. I guess that happens at all companies though. They are in the minority, however, when you are stuck working for them, it can definitely make you life with the company miserable for a while.
You also run into some slacker coworkers here and there. I'm amazed how some people manage to keep their jobs. Unfortunately USAA does not always attract the best and brightest.
The company changes strategic direction more often than I would like. For a while it was all about CMM, and then that died out. Now it is all about ITIL. In a couple of years we will switch strategic direction to something else. Sometimes I think management chases whatever the "hot" trend is without really thinking it through.
Management believes IT workers are interchangeable. That irks me. It takes quite a while to learn how a particular business area and the IT system associated with it work. More respect has to be shown by management to the workers that keep the systems going and update them with modifications that enhance business productivity.
Estimating projects at USAA is handled poorly. Most of the estimates are just gut feeling estimates by the workers. No history of the estimates are kept anywhere for the smaller projects. They do keep some estimates for the huge projects. More work in this area has to take place.
