There's a certain sadness in watching a company that once meant something turn into a shell of itself. All the potential, all the bright ideas, all the people who cared...it's all being wasted. Every reorg, every layoff, every bad decision chips away at whatever is left. I find myself mourning the place it used to be, even as I sit here watching it disappear.
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I am a CNE who worked for the company for a long time, I can attest to the slow death of the work culture what once was. It hurts to see the beloved company slowly diminishing!! Don't believe employees are the only ones noticing the change over the decades. All the great leaders either retired or moved on. People still are amazing but something changed in the core fabric that I can't fathom.
@dp “maybe it impacts the bottom line too much”. Bingo. They have brought in so many people from big banks who bring that bottom line mindset. “The Mission” is nothing more than a slogan, empty words not worth the figurative paper they’re printed on.
Lifelong members tell me the same story: decades of loyalty, rewarded with rate hikes. Rates rose across the industry, so I can't lay that at USAA's door alone, but the feeling is real, and loyalty was never one asset among many here. It was the whole business model.
Under the flag officers, trust and "freedom within a framework" set us apart. Today, layers of managers monitor and report. The military taught me this much: trust breeds excellence, surveillance breeds mediocrity.
By signing its own tribute, the organization shifts the spotlight from veterans to itself. True service is humble; most veterans never ask for praise.
Thank you both (OP and the first response's author) for posting this. I worked in USAA just prior to when Wayne Peacock took over as CEO and I remained for several years until I was recruited elsewhere. But (as retired veteran) I have also been a USAA member since '96. My role in the company was one within what was then - and only for a brief while - known as the "Complaints Department," (within Risk and Compliance) which was thrown together to deal with some aspects of the consent order being resolved back in 2019.
Fundamentally, and this is an honest question, what would USAA have to change to become what it once was? And, would that even be possible? Is it the business model? Is it bloated with unnecessary positions and processes? Is the organization too large and sluggish - in a business sense - or it is just poorly organized?
My first meaningful contact with USAA was some years after I joined as a member. Up to that point, my communication with them was minimal. Other than normal banking activities, I purchased my very first vehicle with their assistance. But, an experience that always stands out was when I was deployed overseas with very short notice (I served in SOF for the last 17 years of my career in the military). Some days after I was overseas I realized that I had not paid my car insurance for some weeks - it totally slipped my mind with all of the volatility of how we were being leveraged as a force as the time. Anyway, I called USAA to make my payment - which I did. When I asked if they had stopped my coverage up until that point, the MSR informed me that they had continued my coverage anyway, and there was therefore no gap in coverage, because they assumed that my non-payment must have been the result of a deployment and that this was in the notes (this was in the early 2000s just after the GWOT began). It was right then and there that I thought that I was a member of a special and different kind of insurance company and bank. But, it appears that this company no longer exists. Maybe it is unrealistic for any business to be that "nice" to the customers; maybe it impacts the bottom line too much, or maybe it is counter to some regulation (I do not know). But that company is long gone.
A monument to military service on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, funded by a company that recently separated employees who are themselves veterans, invites an obvious question: which of those two acts better describes what is truly valued? Recognition is cheap. Commitments are not. The difference is visible to those who experienced it firsthand.
Take the brand name off it, and I'd believe it was a true gesture. Almost no corporate giving would survive that test, which is fine; most companies don't claim their identity is service. This one does.