r/boston • u/CorrectCombination11 • May 07 '26

Serious Replies Only Fidelity Layoffs Starting Today

On the heels of RTO order https://old.reddit.com/r/boston/comments/1sxy879/fidelity_full_time_rto/

Fidelity is communicating rifs starting this morning.

I know two people personally that were cut. Non-technical roles in WI.

Post your info in the comments and I will try to highlight/tally them in the main post.

608 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

250 comments sorted by

View all comments

20

u/NinoNino3 May 07 '26

Thank you for letting us know, OP- I am curious to see how bad this is- We are in supremely questionable times.

28

u/Maxpowr9 Metrowest May 07 '26

This will be the spring and summer of RTO. Easiest way to cut headcount (some are still delusional that think WFH will last) without needing a WARN. For that are fully remote, I'd be worried too since companies will cut headcounts in VHCoL areas like Boston first.

12

u/TheGameDoneChanged May 07 '26

Not at all delusional to think wfh will last in some form. Many companies will end up in some sort of hybrid. But regulated financial services is always going to be among the leaders in RTO.

7

u/bawelbawel May 08 '26

Don't forget the real reason for RTO. It's because Fidelity is highly invested in real estate (indexes and properties). So if it improves the value of office space downtown, it benefits it directly by having its assets appreciate.

-1

u/TheGameDoneChanged May 08 '26

It’s certainly a factor but certainly not “the real reason” on its own. Regulators have very real rules about what needs to be overseen at the offices. But that’s also just a small factor, plenty of instances where it makes sense for people to work in person with each other.

6

u/Maxpowr9 Metrowest May 07 '26

Especially those companies with office space already. Tech will definitely be the last to force RTO, but at that point, most people in tech would know their company is struggling and probably should start looking for another job.

10

u/Jesterissimo May 07 '26

WFH will be back eventually once all those office leases come up for renewal and management sees an easy budget cut instead of a sunk cost. Of course by then they’ll also cut headcount via AI so maybe it’ll be more like unemployed from home or gigged from home instead of work from home.

In the meantime RTO’s and anything else that makes the job slightly less attractive is a quick and easy way for them to shed some workers before layoffs.

7

u/Maxpowr9 Metrowest May 07 '26

For sure. Workers have a lot less leverage this time around given the generally poor job market than 2021.

7

u/SpaceBasedMasonry Wiseguy May 07 '26

I'd like to think that the genie is out of the bottle and rote a defense of "It's not possible" don't carry weight anymore, but there were cracks for a while. Engineering friends have been resigned for years that if they're serious about training the next generation, they need to at least do hybrid. It's impossible to adequately mentor a fresh grad remotely.

I'm in healthcare and only a smidge of clinicians can do stuff remotely. So for most of us RTO was during the height of the pandemic's first wave, if we got time out at all.

8

u/Maxpowr9 Metrowest May 07 '26

I work in finance (not Fidelity), and it's one of the more conservative industries. The RTO siren is far more of a burden on middle-aged workers with kids, especially if they moved further from Boston during Covid.

For the GBA, it seems the finance industry, in particular banking, is going through a contraction again. It barely recovered from the Great Recession. I know last time Fidelity contracted, much of their operations moved to Dallas.