6 ms·

JPMorgan employee questioned Dimon's RTO mandate, fired, then told he could stay

64 points by libpcap 2y ago

duxup 2y ago
Don’t ask questions at JPMorgan… > When Welch got to the meeting with Monaghan, he says he found the VP standing in a small conference room, along with another executive, Jeffrey Todd Merrill, Vice President – Global Dedicated IT Support, who was seated. (Merrill was Welch’s boss from 2018 to 2021 but is no longer.) Welch says that Monaghan told him he had “just dragged our whole organization through the mud. Go and clean off your desk and get the fuck out of here,” Welch recalls. Such a strange reaction, did these guys really make this call on their own?
- bediger4000 2y ago
  If you can't ask questions and make observations, or you're told you're not being paid to think, you're being paid to take the fall for some executive director or above. Huge red flag.
  - kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
    Hopefully the NY DoL and AG will deliver them a fresh proctological exam.
    - lotsofpulp 2y ago
      The employee in the linked article works in Ohio. New York’s government would have nothing to do with this. Also, absent a contract stating otherwise, there is nothing illegal with terminating an employee in the manner described in the article, except in Montana.
      - bediger4000 2y ago
        My observation does not pertain to labor law, but rather to work environments, and how interpersonal dynamics work when there's a large power differential, if the more powerful person acts in particular ways. As long as I have some personal freedom, I will avoid employment where I can't ask questions and receive honest answers, or where I'm told I'm not paid to think.
- NomDePlum 2y ago
  For context VP is not really a senior position in JP Morgan anymore. There is such a thing as a Senior VP too, but even that is usually gained by time served as opposed to suggesting someone with real decision making power. Obviously the VPs in this case may have sway, but it sounds more likely they overstepped, creating a particularly unsavoury mess.
  - ravoori 2y ago
    There is no official senior VP title at JP Morgan. The next rung on the ladder after VP is Executive Director
  - jdlshore 2y ago
    That’s pretty typical for banks, as I understand it. VP is a low-level management position.
    - curtisblaine 2y ago
      AFAIK, they split VP in two seniority levels, and they also split tech jobs into two tracks, manager and IC. So now, in practice, you get 4 flavours of VP. Same for EDs and, I think, MDs.
  - Ologn 2y ago
    Yes, the average VP at JP Morgan makes less than $200k. The VP title at banks does not mean what it means at other companies.
blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
Isn’t this illegal? Discussing work conditions and policies is protected by labor law. Also something about Dimon’s aggression doesn’t sit well with me, considering the position of JP Morgan is entirely dependent on the public since banks rely on regulatory capture, are too big to fail, tied to the federal reserve, and so on. He pretends he and the company are above their employees in an undeserved way.
- __loam 2y ago
  There's been a resentment brewing in the leadership/ownership class for a few years about this. My theory is that the isolation of lock down kind of drove a wedge between these guys and their employees, and now they're majorly out of touch and fundamentally aren't interacting with the regular people who work for them, resulting in cruel policy like RTO and mass layoffs even at well functioning and profitable organizations. Just a lack of respect or knowledge of what their employees actually do.
  - blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
    I wonder if this is all just to protect Dimon’s ego. He was quoted saying he was unhappy that he was going to the office everyday and no one else was there. Or is it just to protect the value of their office buildings?
    - ggm 2y ago
      > Or is it just to protect the value of their office buildings? I have a very strong belief it's the latter. Every corporate entity is doing wierd shit with Listed Property Trust investment on their own buildings, and if it can't rent refuse to rent below rate because it affects the asset value, and associated loan-to-value costs. Nobody wants to be the grown up admitting they bought at top of the peak and the office is worth 10x less. (fictional amount for illustrative purposes but I read that city buildings are selling way below buy cost)
  - insanehn9 2y ago
    [flagged]
sidcool 2y ago
All's well that ends well.
- rob74 2y ago
  Did I miss something? The RTO mandate is still there, isn't it?
  - sidcool 2y ago
    As in the fired employee was retained.
blindriver 2y ago
Sounds like a VP is under a tremendous amount of stress, and took it out on this one employee. This is not professional behavior in the least. The good news is that he manned-up to his mistake by acknowledging it and apologizing and trying to make amends. I've seen many execs never acknowledge their mistakes for yelling, swearing etc, so I give this guy credit. People make mistakes, and unless this VP has a history of doing the same thing, I would take him for his word and it feels like the firing is water under the bridge.
- tyre 2y ago
  His VP apologized when their skip level boss got involved and forced him to. He wasn't doing this voluntarily.
- _bin_ 2y ago
  yeah this is not atypical in finance orgs. sounds like it's a culture clash of "analyst in tech ops" getting the first-year IB associate treatment. apologized and offered to buy him a beer, seems fine to me and hardly worthy of any sort of article or reporting.
- starspangled 2y ago
  > Sounds like a VP is under a tremendous amount of stress, and took it out on this one employee. It doesn't really sound like that to me. > But his day soon took an ominous turn, when he received a text from Garrett Monaghan, a Vice President – Branch HelpDesk. “I don’t know what the fuck you just did, but come to my desk immediately when that town hall ends. Please,” according to a message that was viewed by Fortune. Monaghan was Welch’s immediate supervisor in 2022 and 2023 and, though he is no longer his direct boss, they both work in Technology Employee Support Services, or TESS, a division of JPMorgan Chase. > When Welch got to the meeting with Monaghan, he says he found the VP standing in a small conference room, along with another executive, Jeffrey Todd Merrill, Vice President – Global Dedicated IT Support, who was seated. (Merrill was Welch’s boss from 2018 to 2021 but is no longer.) Welch says that Monaghan told him he had “just dragged our whole organization through the mud. Go and clean off your desk and get the fuck out of here,” Welch recalls. [The VP eventually, hours later and presumably after the issue being escalated above him, begrudgingly sent a dishonest "apology" (why would he have told him to GTFO if he 'agreed with his message' as he claimed).] This was not just a momentary unprofessional loss of temper. He took an employee's honest question as a personal affront "for making the VP look bad in front of the boss", and arranged a lynch mob so he could throw his weight around and humiliate a subordinate. This has the character of a devious sycophant with a personality disorder. He may or may not be under stress, but I would bet that has little bearing on this kind of behavior and also that it is not the first time he has done something like it.
pimlottc 2y ago
Headline is a bit butchered, it should read “was fired”: > JPMorgan employee questioned Dimon's RTO mandate, was fired, then told he could stay
3eb7988a1663 2y ago
Less than an hour after Mead’s call to Welch, at 5:14 pm, Monaghan texted Welch and apologized, saying he owed him a beer and a handshake. “I agree with your message, if not the delivery. We good?” Monaghan said in the text. What a complete snake. Fires Mead for speaking truth to power, but then when a bigger dog tells the VP to back down, Monaghan wants to pretend that nothing went amiss? Edit: also, apologizes by text! Could not even man up enough to verbally apologize.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- nubinetwork 2y ago
  I would have told them to go pound sand.
  - Joel_Mckay 2y ago
    Indeed, the problem is blame always travels down the corporate ladder. Being targeted by upper power-structures means your career is unofficially over regardless of what clowns say for PR. Guy should resign while it is on his terms, and go someplace less hostile. Rule #13: "Never reach out to a drowning man", as in their desperation they can push you under as well. =3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prcJg7ZzXh4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prcJg7ZzXh4
    - lotsofpulp 2y ago
      Why resign? It seems more beneficial to phone it in at work and let the employer keep paying you while you find another job, or at least collect more money until they fire you again.
      - 3eb7988a1663 2y ago
        Agreed. That VP is going to be butthurt about how you made him look the fool. The opportunities there are going to disaapear, but you are safe from obvious reprisals for many months. Best to lay low and exit as quickly as possible
rob74 2y ago
> Dimon then complained of employees wasting time during Zoom meetings, and how headcount for JPMorgan Chase had ballooned by 50,000 in the last four to five years. “We don’t need all those people. We were putting people in jobs because people weren’t doing the jobs they were hired to do in [the] first place,” This left me scratching my head. If you work with people from other offices, with RTO you are now not only wasting time on Zoom calls, but also annoying everyone else around you. And the second part is pretty revealing for the strategy actually - why don't they just get rid of the people that aren't performing? Probably because that would involve severance payments (at least in some cases). Much better to do RTO and let them quit on their own if they don't like it...
- matwood 2y ago
  > why don't they just get rid of the people that aren't performing? The other secret is that outside of really bad performers, no one really knows how well people are performing in a large company. And even if those people are performing well, are they doing a necessary job? This is why so many promotions come down to if your boss likes you, aka ‘team fit’.
  - echelon 2y ago
    > no one really knows how well people are performing in a large company. And even if those people are performing well, are they doing a necessary job? Attempts to measure and quantify this have been unsuccessful thus far.
  - aianus 2y ago
    Elon and his team seem to have succeeded at figuring this out at Twitter. Or do you think Twitter was a unique case?
    - bonzini 2y ago
      Elon didn't remove bad performers, he pivoted from social network to political platform. They removed moderators not because they were unnecessary or performed badly, but rather because they were actively harmful to the new mission.
linotype 2y ago
Such weak men running these companies. Their ego is unbounded.
helsinkiandrew 2y ago
https://archive.ph/I5eM2 https://archive.ph/I5eM2
stefanos82 2y ago
Just from the humiliation this man went through, he should have asked for a severance package, compensation, and then sue them for many reasons, primarily for mental anguish that he asked for the obvious as a newly divorced parent who wants the best for his children.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  US employers do not owe any of that to their employees. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment
1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago
http://archive.md/20250215175832/https://fortune.com/2025/02/15/jpmorgan-chase-firing-rto-work-from-home-technology-zoom-welch/ http://archive.md/20250215175832/https://fortune.com/2025/02...
hnbear 2y ago
Nothing says big bank more than being yelled at by your ex-boss, with a different ex-boss in the room, while your real boss has no idea what's going on, and being maybe, but not really fired. Bank VPs have no discretion to fire people - they'd need to work through it with HR. That would take weeks to months, unless it was really egregious, or came from someone 4 levels higher. Dimon could have told HR to fire him and it would happen instantly, but some mid-level idiot VP can't just fire anyone, especially not their own direct report. I'm guessing the Director (Mead), who was on vacation, got a rude awakening and had to clean up the mess. Director is still not a big title at a bank the size of JPMC either. But, I'm assuming she got the story many times from different people, had to come back and tell the first two VPs how stupid they were for yelling at someone and throwing them out of the building, and then talk to the guy's direct manager (Cundiff) and straighten things out. Guessing the other two VPs got a shouting at for generating far more risk to the firm by swearing at and fake firing an employee.

64 points by libpcap 2y ago

Don’t ask questions at JPMorgan… > When Welch got to the meeting with Monaghan, he says he found the VP standing in a small conference room, along with another executive, Jeffrey Todd Merrill, Vice President – Global Dedicated IT Support, who was seated. (Merrill was Welch’s boss from 2018 to 2021 but is no longer.) Welch says that Monaghan told him he had “just dragged our whole organization through the mud. Go and clean off your desk and get the fuck out of here,” Welch recalls. Such a strange reaction, did these guys really make this call on their own?

bediger4000 2y ago
If you can't ask questions and make observations, or you're told you're not being paid to think, you're being paid to take the fall for some executive director or above. Huge red flag.
- kevin_thibedeau 2y ago
  Hopefully the NY DoL and AG will deliver them a fresh proctological exam.
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    The employee in the linked article works in Ohio. New York’s government would have nothing to do with this. Also, absent a contract stating otherwise, there is nothing illegal with terminating an employee in the manner described in the article, except in Montana.
    - bediger4000 2y ago
      My observation does not pertain to labor law, but rather to work environments, and how interpersonal dynamics work when there's a large power differential, if the more powerful person acts in particular ways. As long as I have some personal freedom, I will avoid employment where I can't ask questions and receive honest answers, or where I'm told I'm not paid to think.
NomDePlum 2y ago
For context VP is not really a senior position in JP Morgan anymore. There is such a thing as a Senior VP too, but even that is usually gained by time served as opposed to suggesting someone with real decision making power. Obviously the VPs in this case may have sway, but it sounds more likely they overstepped, creating a particularly unsavoury mess.
- ravoori 2y ago
  There is no official senior VP title at JP Morgan. The next rung on the ladder after VP is Executive Director
- jdlshore 2y ago
  That’s pretty typical for banks, as I understand it. VP is a low-level management position.
  - curtisblaine 2y ago
    AFAIK, they split VP in two seniority levels, and they also split tech jobs into two tracks, manager and IC. So now, in practice, you get 4 flavours of VP. Same for EDs and, I think, MDs.
- Ologn 2y ago
  Yes, the average VP at JP Morgan makes less than $200k. The VP title at banks does not mean what it means at other companies.

blackeyeblitzar 2y ago

Isn’t this illegal? Discussing work conditions and policies is protected by labor law. Also something about Dimon’s aggression doesn’t sit well with me, considering the position of JP Morgan is entirely dependent on the public since banks rely on regulatory capture, are too big to fail, tied to the federal reserve, and so on. He pretends he and the company are above their employees in an undeserved way.

__loam 2y ago
There's been a resentment brewing in the leadership/ownership class for a few years about this. My theory is that the isolation of lock down kind of drove a wedge between these guys and their employees, and now they're majorly out of touch and fundamentally aren't interacting with the regular people who work for them, resulting in cruel policy like RTO and mass layoffs even at well functioning and profitable organizations. Just a lack of respect or knowledge of what their employees actually do.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
  I wonder if this is all just to protect Dimon’s ego. He was quoted saying he was unhappy that he was going to the office everyday and no one else was there. Or is it just to protect the value of their office buildings?
  - ggm 2y ago
    > Or is it just to protect the value of their office buildings? I have a very strong belief it's the latter. Every corporate entity is doing wierd shit with Listed Property Trust investment on their own buildings, and if it can't rent refuse to rent below rate because it affects the asset value, and associated loan-to-value costs. Nobody wants to be the grown up admitting they bought at top of the peak and the office is worth 10x less. (fictional amount for illustrative purposes but I read that city buildings are selling way below buy cost)
- insanehn9 2y ago
  [flagged]

sidcool 2y ago

All's well that ends well.

rob74 2y ago
Did I miss something? The RTO mandate is still there, isn't it?
- sidcool 2y ago
  As in the fired employee was retained.

blindriver 2y ago

Sounds like a VP is under a tremendous amount of stress, and took it out on this one employee. This is not professional behavior in the least. The good news is that he manned-up to his mistake by acknowledging it and apologizing and trying to make amends. I've seen many execs never acknowledge their mistakes for yelling, swearing etc, so I give this guy credit. People make mistakes, and unless this VP has a history of doing the same thing, I would take him for his word and it feels like the firing is water under the bridge.

tyre 2y ago
His VP apologized when their skip level boss got involved and forced him to. He wasn't doing this voluntarily.
_bin_ 2y ago
yeah this is not atypical in finance orgs. sounds like it's a culture clash of "analyst in tech ops" getting the first-year IB associate treatment. apologized and offered to buy him a beer, seems fine to me and hardly worthy of any sort of article or reporting.
starspangled 2y ago
> Sounds like a VP is under a tremendous amount of stress, and took it out on this one employee. It doesn't really sound like that to me. > But his day soon took an ominous turn, when he received a text from Garrett Monaghan, a Vice President – Branch HelpDesk. “I don’t know what the fuck you just did, but come to my desk immediately when that town hall ends. Please,” according to a message that was viewed by Fortune. Monaghan was Welch’s immediate supervisor in 2022 and 2023 and, though he is no longer his direct boss, they both work in Technology Employee Support Services, or TESS, a division of JPMorgan Chase. > When Welch got to the meeting with Monaghan, he says he found the VP standing in a small conference room, along with another executive, Jeffrey Todd Merrill, Vice President – Global Dedicated IT Support, who was seated. (Merrill was Welch’s boss from 2018 to 2021 but is no longer.) Welch says that Monaghan told him he had “just dragged our whole organization through the mud. Go and clean off your desk and get the fuck out of here,” Welch recalls. [The VP eventually, hours later and presumably after the issue being escalated above him, begrudgingly sent a dishonest "apology" (why would he have told him to GTFO if he 'agreed with his message' as he claimed).] This was not just a momentary unprofessional loss of temper. He took an employee's honest question as a personal affront "for making the VP look bad in front of the boss", and arranged a lynch mob so he could throw his weight around and humiliate a subordinate. This has the character of a devious sycophant with a personality disorder. He may or may not be under stress, but I would bet that has little bearing on this kind of behavior and also that it is not the first time he has done something like it.

pimlottc 2y ago

Headline is a bit butchered, it should read “was fired”: > JPMorgan employee questioned Dimon's RTO mandate, was fired, then told he could stay

3eb7988a1663 2y ago

Less than an hour after Mead’s call to Welch, at 5:14 pm, Monaghan texted Welch and apologized, saying he owed him a beer and a handshake. “I agree with your message, if not the delivery. We good?” Monaghan said in the text. What a complete snake. Fires Mead for speaking truth to power, but then when a bigger dog tells the VP to back down, Monaghan wants to pretend that nothing went amiss? Edit: also, apologizes by text! Could not even man up enough to verbally apologize.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
nubinetwork 2y ago
I would have told them to go pound sand.
- Joel_Mckay 2y ago
  Indeed, the problem is blame always travels down the corporate ladder. Being targeted by upper power-structures means your career is unofficially over regardless of what clowns say for PR. Guy should resign while it is on his terms, and go someplace less hostile. Rule #13: "Never reach out to a drowning man", as in their desperation they can push you under as well. =3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prcJg7ZzXh4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prcJg7ZzXh4
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    Why resign? It seems more beneficial to phone it in at work and let the employer keep paying you while you find another job, or at least collect more money until they fire you again.
    - 3eb7988a1663 2y ago
      Agreed. That VP is going to be butthurt about how you made him look the fool. The opportunities there are going to disaapear, but you are safe from obvious reprisals for many months. Best to lay low and exit as quickly as possible

rob74 2y ago

> Dimon then complained of employees wasting time during Zoom meetings, and how headcount for JPMorgan Chase had ballooned by 50,000 in the last four to five years. “We don’t need all those people. We were putting people in jobs because people weren’t doing the jobs they were hired to do in [the] first place,” This left me scratching my head. If you work with people from other offices, with RTO you are now not only wasting time on Zoom calls, but also annoying everyone else around you. And the second part is pretty revealing for the strategy actually - why don't they just get rid of the people that aren't performing? Probably because that would involve severance payments (at least in some cases). Much better to do RTO and let them quit on their own if they don't like it...

matwood 2y ago
> why don't they just get rid of the people that aren't performing? The other secret is that outside of really bad performers, no one really knows how well people are performing in a large company. And even if those people are performing well, are they doing a necessary job? This is why so many promotions come down to if your boss likes you, aka ‘team fit’.
- echelon 2y ago
  > no one really knows how well people are performing in a large company. And even if those people are performing well, are they doing a necessary job? Attempts to measure and quantify this have been unsuccessful thus far.
- aianus 2y ago
  Elon and his team seem to have succeeded at figuring this out at Twitter. Or do you think Twitter was a unique case?
  - bonzini 2y ago
    Elon didn't remove bad performers, he pivoted from social network to political platform. They removed moderators not because they were unnecessary or performed badly, but rather because they were actively harmful to the new mission.

linotype 2y ago

Such weak men running these companies. Their ego is unbounded.

helsinkiandrew 2y ago

https://archive.ph/I5eM2 https://archive.ph/I5eM2

stefanos82 2y ago

Just from the humiliation this man went through, he should have asked for a severance package, compensation, and then sue them for many reasons, primarily for mental anguish that he asked for the obvious as a newly divorced parent who wants the best for his children.

lotsofpulp 2y ago
US employers do not owe any of that to their employees. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment

1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago

http://archive.md/20250215175832/https://fortune.com/2025/02/15/jpmorgan-chase-firing-rto-work-from-home-technology-zoom-welch/ http://archive.md/20250215175832/https://fortune.com/2025/02...

hnbear 2y ago

Nothing says big bank more than being yelled at by your ex-boss, with a different ex-boss in the room, while your real boss has no idea what's going on, and being maybe, but not really fired. Bank VPs have no discretion to fire people - they'd need to work through it with HR. That would take weeks to months, unless it was really egregious, or came from someone 4 levels higher. Dimon could have told HR to fire him and it would happen instantly, but some mid-level idiot VP can't just fire anyone, especially not their own direct report. I'm guessing the Director (Mead), who was on vacation, got a rude awakening and had to clean up the mess. Director is still not a big title at a bank the size of JPMC either. But, I'm assuming she got the story many times from different people, had to come back and tell the first two VPs how stupid they were for yelling at someone and throwing them out of the building, and then talk to the guy's direct manager (Cundiff) and straighten things out. Guessing the other two VPs got a shouting at for generating far more risk to the firm by swearing at and fake firing an employee.