Forgive me for my rambling!
I’ve worked at vanguard since early 2017 and thought I was entering a company and job that was a strong entry level role in a top standing company. A Big ole' Donald Trump "WRONG".
Vanguard put so much effort into pushing this grand image of the role and the department that, thinking back on it now, makes me want to VOMIT. I turned down two other jobs at Fortune 500 companies for this role after I was convinced by their brainwashed ferrets that this was a superior career path. “YUGE” mistake. I thought it’d get better if I put my head down and sought out some type of pride from doing this job without complaint or quitting, because it was truly a difficult GRIND. My first TL was one of the most negative individuals I’ve ever met, and I don’t have the personality to be ok with that. She was completely incompetent from the ground up. She sure was a Vanguard Policy Master though! -___- But, I did my time in the slammer and got promoted to a more “specialized” brokerage role. I did my research and asked many Team Leaders what the role was like and I was told something that I could potentially see as better. Not great, but better (I didn’t want to HAVE to leave a company, Hopeless Romantic I guess). 1 month in to the role and Vanguard decides to change everyone’s job description without a new contract or even a conversation. It became Donte’s Inferno there. Pure H-E-double Hockey Sticks. When we confront the TL’s about it, we’re told “deal with it” “it comes with the job” “its our job to jerk off our clients with both hands” “Hey, it could be worse, we could lay people off like TIAA or Wells Fargo” lol! You can’t make this up. Once that happened and partnerships were paid out, the second wave of attrition hit. A massive amount of the RIG department, both promoted and un-promoted staff, left the company ASAP. This made everyone else’s jobs exponentially difficult. Triple the calls, triple the trash, triple the excuses from management, and zero additional pay. Anyways… I’ll stop there to analyze each category individually….
THE ROLE:
If you went to college for 4+ years, you’re incredibly over qualified for this job. This is not what the recruiters will tell you. If you have a finance degree, you won’t be doing finance. You’ll be doing tech support for 85 year olds that act like children when their fiduciary company tries to help them. You will take 60-80+ calls a day on normal days now that they want each employee’s “occupancy” metric at 89%. Which means, if you aren’t on your timed break or lunch, you are back to back all day. If you do call avoidance, you can possibly stay under 65 calls. The metrics in this role are soul crushing and defeat even the most ambitious, intelligent, hardworking individuals. I’ve seen good people change right before my eyes and before I left, I didn’t realize how much this role drained me. Everything you do is timed and scheduled. Zero autonomy. You are there to answer phone calls regardless of what they’re about. You will do this for about a year and hopefully get promoted to a new role marketed to you as a specialized role and of great value. Wrong. You will promote out, train, and then be placed on back up for every other department in the RIG side. Which means you can never escape trash calls or trash clients. Unless you’re favored by your TL, you won’t get off the phones. Even if you do, it’s for some arbitrary and redundant project or pilot with other associates that just do it to get off the phone. If you have any projects, self-development time schedule and it gets busy, it will be canceled and you will be told to get on the phones. If you take this job, GAIN YOUR TL’s FAVOR IMMEDIATELY…I’ve seen people go far VERY quickly because of this. We were also told that the days that our lunch was taken from us, we would be provided a lunch. This is true for half the time. It was disgusting food that doesn’t belong together and makes you sick. I had to use TWO PTO days from the lunch they provide. HR didn’t even respond to my inquiry. Also, after tax season, they stopped doing that all together which left you getting in trouble for trying to retrieve your lunch from the Galley.
THE FACILITIES:
These are basic chicken coops for the peasant masses; stockpiled with cubical walls, desks, and chairs from the late 1990’s, and computers from 2004. If you’re on of the lucky ones coming to work in the morning, you have a 25% chance of either getting stranded in the one revolving door for the entire building or have the fire department help you out of the elevator that consistently breaks down. The campus is mediocre and parking is limited. But honestly, I see that for many places. They have an on-site cafeteria which only makes you sick 30-40% of the time as well! It’s like gambling in Vegas but you always lose. The Bathrooms are disgusting and it’s clear they only care about anyone not in RIG. Without pointing out micro-issues, I’ll leave it at that.
BENEFITS:
They’re either mildly average or below market compared to other equally large, and even smaller institutions. Depend on you situation in life. BTW, they have the longest legal vesting period you can have…6 years. They want 6 years of your life before they let you have what they claim is part of your income and benefit for working for them. Lol what. A. joke. That tells you they are betting you wont stay around
-PTO is ok with 18 starting days but that quickly becomes diminished from taking time off to not go insane. You also lose the chance to use it if Vanguard fails to manage staff well.
- HEALTH: no bad, still only market average though.
- Other Benefits: all normal offerings that can be found elsewhere.
PAY:
Client Relationship Specialists start at 43k a year and each individual contributor goes up 3k each promotion. That means you need to be there, and hopefully actually promote 4 times (4+ years), before you’re paid what you should be paid to live in a city like Charlotte. And the value added with the required licenses. A comparative role is at TIAA for similar licenses and they start at 53k and have excellent bonus and overtime potential. Merit increases are reserved for the finest 5% (the favorites), everything is a joke. Not even 1 %. I’ve heard they are potentially working on this and I don’t know the specifics but still, the adjustment wasn’t even at inflation. Also, for your partnership bonus which you should be entitled to for working all of 2018…WONT even be paid out to you until the end of June 2019 and only if you are still in good standing. LOL they make you wait 7 months for the previous years’ bonus.
MANAGEMENT:
This one is my favorite. They don’t fire, they manage you out. Defeat any sense of accomplishment or success and hope you leave before partnership payout
1. My first TL: again, she was a total moron who almost no one liked or agreed with. Didn’t know much about finance and actually made me feel like crud on a daily basis. I was told a month on the phones that I didn’t have any characteristics to be promoted at this company. From day one, being yelled at by clients for issues I didn’t cause and having a manager that didn’t say 1 positive thing to me in a full year defeated me. That doesn’t happen often. I’ve never fake smiled so much in my life and unfortunately, I sat right next to her. She would peak over my walls and listen to me on the phone with clients and while speaking with them…would email me things I should say and correct me on what I was saying. She couldn’t even hear the client’s questions…
Anyways, I heard she’s being watched by management for horrible performance so…lol bye felicia
2. My second TL: he was educated and a visibly intelligent individual who was someone that you could possibly grab a beer with. This is what I thought at first. I quickly realized it was a “buddy buddy” strategy to make his metrics better or ease his pushing of the vanguard kool-aid on you. Simply put, insincere. This became clear when things weren’t going his way or teammates were becoming very upset about aforementioned issues above. Then he started acting careless, crass and cold. Not a great management skill. All he could do is regurgitate vanguard brochure lingo and told us to “deal with it”.
3. All upper management: Vanguard is by definition a kingdom of the mediocre, An empire of illusion, and the Masters of Average. These people are weird, have poor communication skills, and seem oddly satisfied with themselves to the point they all jerk each other off in their offices. Most of management walk around with their lil laptops all day laughing and playing with one another in meeting rooms or where-ever while hundreds grind through call after call. Then you’re told you’re lazy or absuive for trying to rest for a minute. Vanguard Managers are massively over paid for their effort and don’t do much during the day. That being said, there are some that are very good at managing and I wouldn’t mind working for. Most are NOT. They send out mass emails congratulating each other on how well they held their plebs to their metrics.im ranting now.
CULTURE:
One word…CULT. Every manager is stuck being a babysitter and vanguard cheerleader instead of being a proper leader; You know, someone who supports, inspires and builds their team. I remember how I had a schedule “training” with another Team Leader and for the first 30 minutes, he took it upon himself to tell me about himself….no questions about me…just talking about himself. He stated things like “Vanguard has changed my life as a black man, I’ve struggled my whole life and been discriminated against, blah blah blah”. Mind you, I’m a White male…how’s that for a spit in the face? Like, did I ask??? Screw the white hierarchy, right? Lol
Anyways, you’ll notice the associates that drink the Kool-Aid because its almost like their soul left their bodies. The eyes are open but the light went out. Lol this becomes amazingly clear when you have to call higher up departments with tenured employees and they all sound dead inside. Lol
One positive thing is, I’ve had the opportunity to work with some of the coolest people I’ve ever met, and some truly intelligent professionals. We had to band together to fight through the muck of Vanguard.
Discrimination is also ALIVE AND WELL HERE. But not the kind you think… I see many people of color making it to training who clearly don’t have the tools or skills necessary to perform the job at a high level. This is true for all races and genders, but its important to call a pot a pot. This company will hire, promote and push through individuals based on the quota needs that HR has set. I’ll leave it at that.
