As MetWest management continues to take over, all that was good about TCW is no longer there. TCW was started by a billionaire, so requests were liberally granted, people were generally happy, and the founder considered the dining room as a place for ideas to flow across groups and people to interact with colleagues they might otherwise communicate with only by email. Was there waste, yes. Was there stinginess, not really. While the dining room isn't indispensable, it was a little perk that differentiated TCW from the pack, and people stayed at TCW for this very reason!
MW culture is the opposite. They are the startup that made it through hard work to get to $30B, and sheer luck to get to $120B, but the core group is still just as cheap, except with themselves. What is slowly creeping in is a pseudo-PIMCO culture, where even admins and HR are expected to put in "face-time", and are certainly not compensated for it. There is the perennial carrot stick, yet few ever receive their dues. MW employees are not allowed to eat in the dining room - Lippman has made it totally unacceptable, pitting lower level MW employees against their TCW counterparts. This does not make for friendly integration.
One of the worst characteristics of the MW culture is the cult of the trading floor. Support functions, like legal and compliance no less, are harassed and lambasted, and if a lowly IT person dares to call a trader on the floor, they're brought up, paraded around by Lippman for all to see the person who's about to get chewed out, and taken into his office. Lippman has no concept of how to use his authority, and instead chooses to rule through fear. A sign of a poor leader indeed.
