In an attempt to reduce its expenses by roughly $2.7 billion, Barclays recently announced that it planned to eliminate at least 3,700 jobs in 2013.
This was sour news from an industry that had begun to back away from the heavy layoff days of 2011. Nonetheless, the company has tried to avoid being thought of as the bad guy.
"There will be no going back to the old way of doing things," Barclays CEO Antony P. Jenkins told reporters, as quoted in The New York Times. "We will never be in a position again of rewarding people for activities inconsistent with our values."
However valid his words may be, they do not help those who will be without employment in 2013. Those individuals will have to look elsewhere for work. Some of them will find new jobs at other large institutions. Others will end up at a boutique or startup, such as Motif Investing.
Glyph, a fresh financial firm that specializes in helping individuals maximize their credit card rewards, is currently looking for talent to add to its growing team.
"We've got seven employees today," Mike Vichich, co-founder of Glyph, told StreetID. "It's a very small team that will continue to grow. One of the things that we think is really important is our culture. First and foremost, we like to have fun. We think that having a fun startup environment where people like coming to work is how you get the best results out of people."
Vichich co-founded the company with Tyler Felous. He said that Glyph is "data driven in everything that we do."
"My opinion only matters so much, and Tyler's opinion only matters so much," said Vichich. "But to the extent that we possibly can, we test things, we test our hypotheses and look at the data and let the data direct us where we're heading.
"I think passion for the game -- really caring about Glyph and helping consumers is something you've got to have. Check your ego at the door, because one of the things you've got to swallow is, 'Look, I might not be right.' And the whole, what happened if the data proves out in the other guy's favor, even if I'm a co-founder at the company and we've got a summer intern that turns out to be right, it doesn't matter. So checking the ego at the door is something that is valuable to us as well."
Unlike most financial firms, Glyph resides in an unusual location: Detroit, Michigan.
"That's a huge thing for us, being in Detroit," said Vichich. "And there are business reasons and there are brand reasons. If we're building a brand of helping consumers with their finances, everything that we do as a company should revolve around that. In our opinion, Detroit is a city that could use that help. We think we have an opportunity to make a difference here, so we are actively hiring for our team."
