An anonymous reader responds to "Empire Regressed," the recent Scene story about the troubles of Progressive Insurance.
Great article! A few years back, after nearly 20 years of working at Progressive and each year receiving outstanding performance evaluations, they decided to let me go, "because they wanted a different perspective." Progressive touts itself as a young company. There's a reason for that ... once you hit 15 or 20 years, there's a good chance you'll be gone. There was a point when they valued their employees; now there is literally no commitment of any kind on their end. They replace long-time, knowledgable employees with Harvard and Wharton MBAs at the drop of a hat. I don't think Peter would have laid off a 20-year person "just because." If you look into it, you'll see these types of individual "layoffs" happen much more than you'd think. Look at where it's gotten them. Since Glenn has been in charge, Progressive has lacked the innovation that made them great, and it shows in a stock price that's a few cents higher than it was 5 years ago. Anyway, great article and definitely on-point.
