J.P. Morgan isn’t just going to let its technologists ignore its LinkedIn ban and continue to flaunt their credentials on social media – oh no. Following last week’s memo from CIO Dana Deasy demanding that all J.P.M. technology professionals simplify their LinkedIn profiles to the point of pointlessness, we understand that Mark Ashton-Rigby, co-CIO at the bank, has sent a follow-up demanding that Deasy’s command is complied with ASAP.
A quick perusal of LinkedIn suggests Deasy and Ashton-Rigby are mostly being ignored. We understand that their departmental LinkedIn policy contradicts J.P. Morgan’s bank-wide LinkedIn policy and is therefore unenforceable anyway.
J.P. Morgan isn’t commenting on the controversial LinkedIn memos, but its technology staff are complaining that the ban makes no sense and has an ominous provenance. “J.P. Morgan’s internal phone book encourages us to link our LinkedIn profiles to our internal contacts, so this is just weird,” says one.
She adds that the LinkedIn ban is seen as a dubious attempt by J.P. Morgan to stop its technology employees leaving as it prepares to move their jobs to less desirable locations. “Dana Deasy is in the Outsource Hall of Fame,” she says. “We’ve been joking that the plan is to make us technologists invisible in the market and then forcing us to move to Bournemouth or Glasgow.”
There are also unconfirmed rumours that J.P.M is about to make a wave of technology redundancies, starting March 16th. At J.P. Morgan’s recent investor day, the talk was all of ‘optimization’ and eliminating ‘overlaps’ in the way the bank uses technology.