HSBC

I am an old timer with HSBC, with the bank for many years. I started as a fresh grad developer, moved into many teams, and now work in IT in one of the businesses that the Bank wants to grow.

HSBC is always making changes, and senior managers always come and go. But the culture is always nice to its employees, and we know our objectives. But things have changed badly recently.

A new CIO joined two years ago. This CIO has a very strange strategy: IT should only do coding in low-cost locations. They want to get rid of everyone and just keep developers in China. Previously, they couldn't implement this strategy because other managers and the business could control and say no.

But with the big reorganization announced by the CEO, a lot of change is happening, and the CIO is using the opportunity to fire all managers who ask questions. They are now hiring yes-men, very inexperienced managers who can't oppose bad ideas. They have fired a lot of IT staff all over the world without reason or communication. Even in China, people are asked to leave, and we don't know the reason. No one is giving us any plan or explanation.

We have to submit code, and we are checked on how much. Even senior team members who manage people have to do that. Instead of doing smart work, we spend time thinking about how to increase code commitment, and management spends time thinking about what controls to add to check us. I don't have time to guide my team anymore or work with my bosses and the business to improve and bring ideas. We are very stressed to meet the targets.

The culture is now fear. Anyone who doesn't know how to do development thinks that they are going to get fired. Who is going to talk to the business if we don't have project managers, business analysts, or bosses that understand what the business wants and can explain it to us?

There is no motivation left even in China, even if the strategy is to move all IT here. We don't want to be like robots doing development without a brain. And we need other countries to collaborate to build good solutions for international business.

Don't make it like a manufacturing chain.