Not a great time to join, rumor mill has 1,000 layoffs coming in July.
Working for Liberty Mutual is entirely meh. It’s a fine place to work led by a milquetoast leadership team full of actuaries cosplaying as business leaders. This leads to the company with an identity crisis. The strategy of the month is whatever the latest big 4 consultant group says the way the wind is blowing.
Tim Sweeney, Jim MacPhee, Melanie Foley and the rest of the ELT are all fine people I’m sure, but they’re all personalityless victims of a corporate American system where leaders are driven by their inflating egos and wallets and Liberty is no different. It’s a large American coproration with the same problems as every large American corporation.
Every other year leadership comes out with some new jargon filled phrase meant to represent a new strategy. The strategy inevitably fails and employees take the brunt of the failures via layoffs and leadership refuses take responsibility or speak like a human. Meanwhile, their compensation packages increase. Honestly, I don’t blame them, it’s how America works. I also don’t blame Tim for forcing a return to office, he’s spent 30 years gunning to become CEO and now he has to walk from his back bay condo into an empty office. Not exactly fun for him. I just wish they stopped pretending like Liberty is some amazing company to work for. Every single one of them speaks in corporatism. “Win with purpose, together” is plastered all over every office and not a single person can explain what it means. Liberty wants to be a “best place to work” but the sweepingly large decisions made from Nantucket beach houses are far from inspiring. The leaders are completely out of touch. Melanie’s idea of “putting people first” is responding to pushback regarding RTO in an email at 4pm on the Friday before Labor Day. They announced the sale of LatAm market at 7am on a Saturday via email. Jim sent out an email announcing “a reassessment of GRM’s operating model in Mid-July” like that’s not supposed to mean a ton of people are about to lose their jobs and now have to stress for a month about it. In the past few years, the strategy of the company has changed far too many times. Teams are directed to take on pet projects of leadership leading to a smorgasbord of goals. There’s a club of people at liberty and if you’re in it, you’re fine. Nepotism runs rampant, but again, not unique to Liberty. Working here is no better or no worse than any large American company. It’s far from the “best place to work” that the company wants to be but it’s fine. Come here, get a few years of experience , and leave for Draftkings or Everquote like everyone else. Or just wait till you get laid off and get your severance pay.
