A JPMorgan techie whose question at a company town hall triggered an extraordinary work-from-home rant by the chairman claims he was briefly fired over it.
Nicolas Welch was sitting front row at the meeting in Columbus, Ohio, on Wednesday and asked the third question of chairman and chief executive Jamie Dimon.
The self-confessed ‘old hillbilly’ said he, a tech analyst at the bank since 2017, worked in a team with members across four time zones from India to Argentina.
‘There is no way that being in an office makes any difference for us specifically,’ he said, in audio that lit up the internet this week over Dimon’s response.
‘So, all I’m asking is that – I’m not suggesting you rescind such an order – but suggesting it be left up to managers of individual teams themselves on [the] necessity of an office workplace.’
Dimon responded with a long rant against working from home, and defended his earlier order dragging all employees back into the office five days a week.
‘That’s it? I’m going to give you a complete answer. There is no chance that I would leave that up to managers. Zero chance,’ he said.
‘The abuse that took place is extraordinary. You may be a great manager, but… I’m going to give you examples of how bad it got. OK?’
JPMorgan techie Nicolas Welch, whose question at a company town hall triggered an extraordinary work-from-home rant by the chairman, claims he was briefly fired over it
Dimon responded with a long rant against working from home, and defended his earlier order dragging all employees back into the office five days a week
Welch told Fortune magazine that after the town hall, he was summoned to a meeting with his former boss Garrett Monaghan, now a vice president but still with the same division.
‘I don’t know what the f**k you just did, but come to my desk immediately when that town hall ends. Please,’ the text read.
Welch said when he arrived at the office, he was pulled into a meeting with Jeffrey Merrill, another of his former bosses from 2018 to 2021 who was now a VP.
He claimed Monaghan told him he ‘just dragged our whole organization through the mud. Go and clean off your desk and get the f**k out of here’.
Welch grabbed what little he left in the office, which as he worked remotely two days a week was just a coat and headphone, and walked outside.
He texted his direct boss, IT support Customer success manager Richard Cundiff, from the car park – who, like Dimon said in the town hall, had moved to Florida.
He told him Monaghan had ‘threatened my job, so I’ve been ordered home’, to which Cundiff replied, ‘Thanks for letting me know.’
Welch asked to speak with Welch’s boss, but she was on holiday and Cundiff told him ‘I will inform her in our next meeting’.
He went home and assumed he no longer had a job.
JPMorgan’s offices in Columbus, Ohio, where Welch works
But hours later he got a call from, Megan Mead, who heads up all of global IT support as part of the Technology Employee Support Services division, and outranked Monaghan, Merrill, and Cundiff.
Mead told him he wasn’t fired and she had ‘smoothed things over’ with Monaghan, during the 45-minute conversation from 4.30pm.
‘I appreciate you, Nic and I am really proud about how you responded to a pretty unfair circumstance,’ Mead wrote in a follow-up text message.
Monaghan, chastened by his boss, sent a text at 5.14pm to apologize for overreacting and admit he owed him a beer.
‘I agree with your message, if not the delivery. We good?’ he wrote.
JPMorgan insisted Welch was never actually fired, regardless of Monaghan’s outburst.
‘He didn’t say anything wrong in the town hall,’ the firm told Fortune.
Actually firing Welch would have required filing paperwork and executing other procedures that appeared never to have happened.
Dimon’s long, expletive-laden answer to Welch’s question was leaked within hours and widely reported by news outlets.
CEO of Chase Jamie Dimon (L) and wife Judith Kent arrive for a State Dinner in honor of Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, at the Booksellers Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on April 10, 2024
The longtime boss clarified that he was not against working form home as a concept, and 10 per cent of JPMorgan staff worked from home in a way that worked.
However, he said he came to the realization that hybrid working wasn’t working for the rest of the company, and was causing huge inefficiencies.
‘Now, your manager moved to Florida. We never made a promise that it would be forever. That’s their problem, not mine,’ he said.
‘So people said, ‘We moved, we didn’t move’ – we always told people that we were going to be a work-from-the-office type of company.
‘And so we allowed three days and two days. But here are the problems, OK? And they are substantial…the young generation is being damaged by this.
‘They may or may not be in your particular staff, but they are being left behind. They’re being left behind socially, ideas, meeting people.
‘In fact, my guess is most of you live in communities a hell of a lot less diverse than this room.’
Welch was sitting front row at the meeting in Columbus, Ohio, on Wednesday and asked the third question of Dimon, prompting his now-infamous response
Dimon also railed against the ‘rudeness’ of staff fiddling with their phones and not paying attention during Zoom calls, which he said ‘slows down efficiency, creativity’.
‘When I found out that people were doing that – you don’t do that in my goddamn meetings. If you’re going to meet with me, you’ve got my attention, you’ve got my focus, I don’t bring my goddamn phone, I’m not sending texts to people,’ he said.
‘It simply doesn’t work. It doesn’t work for creativity, it slows down decision-making.
‘And don’t give me this s**t that work-from-home-Friday works. I call a lot of people on Fridays, and there’s not a goddamn person you can get a hold of.’
Dimon acknowledged the need for flexibility, particularly for mothers and caregivers, but said managers failed to manage to properly and it got out of hand.
‘They didn’t manage, they were making exceptions, and people making exceptions for exceptions, and meanwhile, head count has gone up by 50,000 people in four, five years,’ he said.
‘We don’t need all those people. We were putting people in jobs because the people weren’t doing the job they were hired to do in the first place. It simply doesn’t work.
‘I will not be responsible for a company like that, OK, and I’m sorry. Now – you have a choice. You don’t have to work at JPMorgan. So the people of you who don’t want to work at the company, that’s fine with me.’
Dimon then went off on a tangent about the firm having too much bureaucracy that needed to be reined in, and asked for suggestions from staff.
‘We’re going to build a great company, and we’re going to be disciplined and detailed and factual and honest and hardworking, and that’s how we’re going to do it. And honest with each other,’ he said.
‘So, anyway, the bureaucracy stuff – if you have brilliant ideas, send them to me.’
At another point in the town hall, Dimon was questioned about a petition against his WFH policy change that garnered more than 1,200 signatures.
In a recording reviewed by Reuters, Dimon said: ‘Don’t waste time on it. I don’t care how many people sign that f**king petition.’
JPMorgan’s profits surged to a record in 2024, and its share price roughly doubled in the past five years.
The strong performance prompted some workers to question why they needed to spend more time in the office.
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