Why I Got Fired: America's Compliance Nightmare

http://www.gweezycapital.com/why-i-got-fired-americas-compliance-nightmare

by sfnx • 14 years ago

45 48 14 years ago

EvilTerran5• 14 years ago

"I was required to shut down my website [...] I was not allowed to make any YouTube videos or write any articles. I was most certainly not allowed to interact with anybody on the Facebook about investing."

... seriously? If I was told, during a job application, that they'd fire me for what I did in my free time, I'd accuse them of wasting my time, and walk out on the spot.

I've seen plenty of blogs etc run by people who're famously employed by big businesses. They all have disclaimers to the effect of "All content is my responsibility, not BigCorp's. Also, any effects of using this website are your responsibility."

And if you're worried about being sued for one of your phone jockeys giving a bad tip, tack a recorded message onto the start of any call: "our customer representatives do not give financial advice; we are not liable for the performance of your investments" or whatever.

I can't see how liberal use of such disclaimers could be insufficient to cover the business' arse. The "protection from liability" claim in the article seems like just an excuse -- I'd say the intent of their "compliance" policy is to give them an excuse to fire-at-will; no-one can follow all the rules, but you only need enforce them against the peons you don't like.

Well, that or to crush their employees' spirits in the hope of Stockholm Syndrome.

jwoah12• 14 years ago

You won't work anywhere in the financial industry without agreeing not to give investment advice or do anything that could be perceived as giving investment advice on the side. This includes having any side project (paid or unpaid) that remotely involves finance. Having been an employee of one of the big banks, I can say that I haven't seen these companies actually enforce the rules to the extent that the author details, but I suppose that varies firm to firm. I must say, though, that the author's description of the job gives me mental images of a worker at FoxConn. I think being fired was a blessing.

EvilTerran5• 14 years ago

Does that apply internationally? I've noticed that US-based businesses seem particularly concerned about what you do when you're not at work. (The uniquely American habit of drug-testing candidates, for example.)

"You won't work anywhere in the financial industry"

... yes, well. I'm glad of that, personally.

DanBC2• 14 years ago

He was employed in a heavily regulated sector. He knew the rules. He chose to break those rules. He suffered the consequences for breaking those rules.

The financial industry probably needs tight regulation; some parts of it are pretty sleazy.

mccoyst• 14 years ago

What rule did he break? What advice did he give?

jellicle• 14 years ago

> If I was told, during a job application, that they'd fire me for what I did in my free time, I'd accuse them of wasting my time, and walk out on the spot.

That's an unstated rule in every job, and a stated rule in some jobs.

chollida12• 14 years ago

> ... seriously? If I was told, during a job application, that they'd fire me for what I did in my free time, I'd accuse them of wasting my time, and walk out on the spot.

The thing is, in a lot of industries doing similar work on your own time is considered a very big no no.

Professional athletes aren't usually allowed to play other sports in their own time.

Hedge fund employees often have huge restrictions on what they are allowed to trade in their own accounts on the side.

Programmers usually can't write software that competes with their employers software.

Often what you do on your own time can be very material to your job.

EvilTerran5• 14 years ago

Okay, I phrased that a bit strongly, I admit.

I appreciate the reasons in the examples you give (atheletes: injury; hedge funds: insider trading/pump-and-dump/etc; programmers: well, your boss is paying you to learn to code better as much as to actually code - competing with him, given that, would not be playing nice), but I still don't get it for the original example in the link. I just don't understand how a business could be held liable for the behaviour of its employees when they're not at work, especially if there's a brief disclaimer appropriately placed.

If that's really the case, then liability law is screwed. If not, then the business in question is either being paranoid, or disingenuous about its reasons for these rules.

sswezey• 14 years ago

This is an article about compliance at a call center - they aren't expecting people with lots of experience to be working there. This guy shouldn't be working at a call center, he said he was overqualified, it'd be like a gourmet chef working at McDonalds and then complaining that they are forcing him to use their procedures to cook burgers. The procedures aren't written for experts and if you don't know what you are doing there could be severe negative consequences.

This article would be more effective if it was in something which requires creative thinking as opposed to something that can be accomplished through rote memorization.

sopooneo• 14 years ago

Honestly, I agree. It's too bad this guy had a bad experience, but if he's got the mettle for it, then to New York my son. And God speed.

endersshadow3• 14 years ago

An investment firm's call center. Investments and banking are some of the most regulatory-ridden businesses there are. Those compliance rules aren't there because the company said so--those compliance rules are there because the company is legally liable for that financial advice. It's the difference between a programmer and a lawyer telling you to sue somebody--the progammer's not on the block for negligence there. This post is sensationalist, and frankly, pointless. Ironic that one of his recent posts was about McDonald's automating everything so they won't need "chefs" any more.

darklajid2• 14 years ago

I'd agree with you, albeit grudgingly, when we talk about work hours, breaks and recorded (and checked) calls.

But taking down a private website is already a crap idea, this 'I got a peek on your Facebook site' thing way over the top. At that point they crossed the line and something like 'I overheard you giving financial advice to your wife in your bedroom' is on _this_ side of the fence. While not on call, outside of office hours, the employer has no rights whatsoever to check on his employees in my world.

chrisdroukas• 14 years ago

  This article would be more effective if it was in something which requires creative thinking as opposed to something that can be accomplished through rote memorization.

Great point, but in an industry requiring creative thinking, this issue might never come up. The point has been made in this thread: working in a call center requires strict compliance because it's an unskilled job with severe (legal, financial) consequences for deviating from the provided script.

It's likely a generalization, but a company demanding creative work may not exercise the same level of control as a call center or McDonald's, for instance.

dustingetz• 14 years ago

OP is an idiot. Clearly he was hired to be a cog in a machine - a repeatable, bottom-level, commodity. In the current litigious climate of America, a customer could turn around and sue over some stupid detail, and end up with legal costs far higher than a call rep is worth. so they fire you. "No, your honor, the call rep was speaking as an individual, against policy and training, and we fired him for it."

> Until compliance departments figure out how to conduct business without micro-managing every aspect about everything, the problem remains.

companies exist to return profits to shareholders, not in the business of fixing the litigious tendencies of Americans (let alone i-bankers!). if a compliance policy is the most efficient way to manage exposure to legal risk, it's a correct move.

edit: i work in pharma

daemon133• 14 years ago

>> Until compliance departments figure out how to conduct business without micro-managing every aspect about everything, the problem remains.

This is absolutely true. One can implement compliance that would drive everyone nuts and distract from business, or one could take a more practical approach.

> companies exist to return profits to shareholders, not in the business of fixing the litigious tendencies of Americans (let alone i-bankers!). if a compliance policy is the most efficient way to manage exposure to legal risk, it's a correct move.

Noone is saying that exposure shall not be managed through compliance framework, policies and procedures. The question is how to do it w/o driving employees insane and hurting business.

I am speaking based on my experience of CFO of with 7 years of pharma industry experience [regulated industry].

Kadrith3• 14 years ago

Presumably the organization has already performed a risk analysis and determined that the existing compliance program is sufficient to address the risks and threats while not being too burdensome. The OP and many others may disagree, but it is not their call to arbitrarily change how things are done.

I'm in charge of IT security and the designated HIPAA Security Officer for a health network. Some of my favorite conversations will typically begin with someone saying that they will follow the rules when they believe the rules make sense.

daemon133• 14 years ago

I wonder how the guy lasted so long.

FUCK THEM!

And find a better place.

smacktoward• 14 years ago

> I turned out to be everything the company wished they never hired. I had extensive knowledge of economics, currencies, financial markets, and investment strategies. I had interned at a former hedge fund manager’s website and learned to write about financial markets. I had my own financial website, and I tweeted with financial TV personalities on a regular basis. Worst of all, I had a YouTube channel chock full of rap videos I made about my favorite stocks...

Then what the hell are you doing working at a call center?

Call center workers have one job: to read from the script. That's it. People who want to be creative do badly in those jobs, because they are not creative jobs.

If you take a job on the grill line at McDonald's, they will not care if you can make the most juicy, succulent cheeseburgers on your backyard grill. They will not be interested in hearing how you do it. If you start trying to do it at work, they will fire you, no matter how good your cheeseburger tastes. Because the goal at McDonald's is consistency. They hire you to make a burger to the McDonald's standard. Not to make the best burger you can.

And that's perfectly reasonable! There's no way to build a business on the scale of McDonald's while depending on the genius of artisanal burger chefs. It only works if you standardize.

The only way to turn out burgers on an industrial scale, in other words, is with an industrial process. And the same is true of turning out information via telephone. You could never find enough people to do it if each one needed to be a financial expert. The only way to do it is to use less expert people and give them a script to read from.

If that's not an environment where you thrive, I can understand. But the problem isn't with the environment; it works for what it needs to do (answer huge volumes of mostly basic and/or stupid questions). The problem is with you for putting yourself there. If you want to be an artisanal burger chef, McDonald's is not where you should be looking for work.

EvilTerran5• 14 years ago

McDonald's wouldn't fire you for giving your friends burgers from your backyard grill, even if they all got food poisoning afterwards; while this business would fire you for doing anything resembling financial advice in your own time, even if nothing bad came of it to anyone.

It's the controlling attitude towards off-duty behaviour that strikes me as particularly insidious.

timwiseman3• 14 years ago

A company needs to protect itself from things that could potentially be tied back to it, even indirectly. This is especially true for employees that are presented as representing the company even some of the time.

I work as a SQL Server DBA and occassionally publish articles about technical aspects of SQL. But anything that rises above the level of a comment like this one gets vetted by the company before I publish it. I am quite comfortable with this because I agreed to it ahead of time and I understand why the company wants the right to review.

timwiseman3• 14 years ago

You make an excellent point, in many jobs consistency is valued far above outstanding results and should be. If that is not for you, do not work there.

But, having worked in a couple of call centers, I feel obliged to point out not all of them are that way. I have been in call centers for major products where there were no scripts, the representatives (or "agents") were expected to think and help solve problems for the customers as well as provide feedback to other departments making the products. But I will agree those are a minority and in some call centers they are separated out into "level 2" or something equivalent.

wisty• 14 years ago

McDonald's wouldn't fire you if a client asked you "why is the quarter pounder tastier", and you said "it's because it has a different sauce". Especially if the client was a professional chef, and you were fired because you may have given them potentially misleading advice.

The rant isn't about why he was fired. He got a "final warning" for giving useful information to a savvy client. He got fired because he restarted his blogging, taunting them to fire him.

His rant isn't about why he was unjustly fired - he obviously didn't give a shit at that stage. The rant is about how restrictive the compliance is, and how it hurts everybody.

The compliance rules are there for a reason, but the author clearly doesn't think it's worth the cost. I like eating at McDonalds, but I'd also like the option of going somewhere that's a bit sloppier, and a bit more creative. Yes, I might get food poisoning, but as they say - Caveat Emptor.

wizzard2• 14 years ago

> McDonald's wouldn't fire you if a client asked you "why is the quarter pounder tastier", and you said "it's because it has a different sauce".

Well, they would if the customer could turn around and sue them because they didn't get the right sauce.

wtvanhest• 14 years ago

This guy doesn't even know that it has nothing to do with being at a big company. It has to do with investment advice rules from the SEC designed to protect investors from situations like boiler room.

He should get an MBA from a top school then get a job as a sell side analyst and get paid for what he wants to do.

eli• 14 years ago

I'm not really sure I see how that this is a emblematic of some larger problem. This sounds like a terrible place to work. But there are lots of similarly terrible places to work even in industries where compliance is not a buzzword.

ecspike• 14 years ago

I had the same problems in the foray into call center work after graduating in a down market. Either you become a work horse that assimilates new skills quickly, easily beating your neighbors and depended on to "help" out the team or dinged for compliance.

Places that fall into the first category usually run out of new skills for you to learn. Places that fall into the second are like the place were this guy landed.

talmand5• 14 years ago

What I get from this is the guy was fired because he felt he was so special that the rules didn't apply to him. He knew the rules going in, he repeated them several times, and for him to whine about being held to those rules is the indicator of his huge ego. It seems he was going to describe this huge bureaucracy of compliance rules he had to constantly go through in his day-to-day yet the only thing he seemed to do wrong was he gave advice which he was specifically forbidden to do. Add to this the fact he knew the legal ramifications of him giving advice and yet he did it anyway. His big ego doesn't let him understand it wasn't just his job on the line if he gave bad advice, everybody sitting around him were at risk as well.

Those compliance rules may suck but they are there for one purpose, to protect the company. As he said, if he gives bad advice then the company can suffer legally. He was not hired to give advice, he was hired to answer questions with answers already printed out for him. Sounds like he really wants a job advising people on investments, why is he getting a job at a call center that is not allowed to give advice?

To stand out is to be fired? If your definition of standing out is to break rules you are clearly aware of that can have serious legal consequences for the company; then yes, your ass will be fired.

Also, if you are fired for breaking compliance rules then you are not the bottomless pit of compliance knowledge you think you are.

mcguire• 14 years ago

"Those compliance rules may suck but they are there for one purpose, to protect the company."

Not completely to protect the company. I'm sure the company would love to drop those compliance rules and return to the good-old-days. Unfortunately, they used the "but that was just a call-center guy, why would you listen to his advice?" defense too often, after too many pump-and-dumps.

talmand5• 14 years ago

In the context of the guy's post the compliance rules he was complaining about are there to protect the company. Right or wrong, that is why they are there and he was specifically told this as he admits. Any other example is a completely different debate.

wizzard2• 14 years ago

Yeah, I don't think he proved the point he was trying to make, which was (ostensibly) that compliance hurts everyone involved -- employees, clients, and the company itself. He shared one anecdote where no harm was done by his breaking the rules, and from that we're supposed to agree that the rules should not exist. I don't follow.

Plus, his constant assertions that he is god's gift to the financial industry were very off-putting.

th0ma5• 14 years ago

I personally feel this is a symptom of underemployment.

doktrin• 14 years ago

As just about everyone else has already pointed out, this position was clearly inappropriate for someone with the skills of the OP.

Why did the OP take the job? He strikes me as both passionate and of above average intelligence. Is the financial sector competitive to the point that the only positions available are at call centers?

While I'm not familiar with the financial industry, this strikes me as odd. I feel as though the OP is either overstating his skill set, or the job market is doing a very poor job of allocating resources.

This is all anecdotal, but the barrier to entry to banking careers has never struck me as insurmountable. While my friends who work in i-banking or PE have all jumped through the appropriate formal hoops to get there, financial advisors (especially retail) tend to run the gamut of educational backgrounds and intellect. Despite the fact that this is essentially a sales job, I would think it would be infinitely more satisfying that being a call center jockey.

edit / anecdotal source : I was approached for recruitment as an FA right out of college. I do not have a finance education or background.

Why I Got Fired: America's Compliance Nightmare

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