Looks like USAA is opening a new office in Plano, TX. How’s wlb and benefits package at USAA? How is the culture? And wfh policies?
The Plano office has been open for a few years. Just expanding to the office next door. WLB is good. Benefits package is also good but don’t count on the bonus being high for long, it’s been under attack for the past 5ish years. The culture kinda sucks for the engineering side. The tech stack is good, but the company is being bombarded with fines and compliance issues so you’ll barely touch the new stack, they will bait and switch you with that stuff. They want to be a career destination so those who play politics well get promoted. Those in higher positions were pretty under-qualified. WFH depends on the team. If you need to WFH outside of Covid time you can, but managers are pretty intrusive about your reasons for WFH and some can be very picky about it. Post-Covid they may become more flexible but I doubt it. Feel free to DM me if you have any more questions.
USAA is obviously not a top tech company, but it’s good for what it is. I tech lead teams and my wlb was terrible, by my doing, to save my teams for some time. I have found those I work with to be pretty average to below average so far. Most of my team does almost nothing and our manager does nothing about it! So now my wlb is great because I stopped trying to do the work of 5 people to save us. I’m trying to get out of here!
To piggyback, it’s easy to be a star developer, but just don’t vocalize your feelings if you expect your teammates to pick up their slack. That “goes against the culture.” I was completing a very large chunk of a very large team’s workload and was fucked over at every opportunity because I was vocal about how some people did literally nothing.
+1 I'm spread across 3 workstreams as a lead and they all expect me to have the same capacity across the other teams. Looking for a way out as well, but market is slow right now (holidays) and the tech lead work doesn't seem to translate over well to other technical jobs. (Again YMMV... If it's for a junior dev position, it's great here. If you're a senior or a lead, it's pretty rough as you'll be picking up slack from the people coasting)
How’s the TC in Plano for a SWE?
Depends on your industry. It varied a lot at USAA. I had 90 base at 2YOE but knew people at 4YOE making like 78 base. New grads make like 63 base. The COL adjustment for Plano is like 3% above San Antonio despite DFW being like 12% more expensive to live in. If you’re a Jr you get time and a half OT too. If you’re worried about TC and ok with banks, you have far better options within a few blocks of the Plano office and throughout the metroplex.
With all the negative stuff I've said in replies... USAA is a great company with nice people, great benefits, WFH opportunities, and good technology. There's pains being felt due to fines and industry compliance oversight that is affecting funding, tech debt, and staffing. Plano is a cool office to work in as well. More of a startup feel there. WLB is generally great and PTO is awesome.
Worked there as a contractor in their San Antonio office for an year as a Business Manager. 9-5 job with low stress. Obviously not a tech company, very much runs like a “bank”. Very strong military-like culture which was quite offputting for me personally. Everyone wants to act like they are doing great things for the military, when they are very much a “for project” organization.
Heard their bonus structure is moving from guaranteed to performance-based, can anyone confirm? Sounds like it would be great if it enables top performers to earn another buck but not so much if they use it for cuts across the board.
That’s correct. This was in place for managers and above in 2020 and in 2021 all non-member facing employees will have a similar performance multiplier for bonus.
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WLB is very good. You won’t be overworked. Good yearly bonus, it can be 15-20%. Currently fully remote (obviously) but the company as a whole has been moving to more remote. A recent poll showed 75+% wanted to stay remote or half remote.
Haha... YMMV... I'm overworked. Averaging 50 hours/week and get midnight production calls too. Depends on your team and how busy the workload is. I'm in the Bank, though. I'm sure other places are better at USAA