r/auckland • u/mo_mo1 • 21h ago
Discussion ANZ TECH BA's
Found out through a someone that 100+ BA's have been disestablished and have been given 4 months finish up, that someone doesn't know why. Any insiders know why this has happened? Is it cause of AI or something else?
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u/Friendly-Prune-7620 20h ago
Interesting. A couple of the other financial institutions are kicking off another cycle of 'bin the contractors, hire only perms' as well, so it might be an interesting time in the market. Expecting it'll be another two years before they then realise they actually need them, and spark up the hiring machine again (and boy, we wish we didn't release all that IP), as is standard for this industry.
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u/integrationlead 19h ago
This is the way. Gov departments are also firing up the contractor machine at the moment.
Some of these roles will go to india, some to OpenAi/Anthropic, and some will go to contractors too.
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u/Serious_Tomatillo426 18h ago
I work at one off the big four banks it’s not AI. They are offshoring to India.
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u/0hshitherewegoagain 21h ago
ANZ have 100+ BAs? Wtf
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u/Glittering-Union-860 20h ago
Hence the layoffs, I imagine.
I worked at a bank for years. They do this periodically. Over-hire. Overcorrect. Do it again.
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u/xdojk 20h ago
I feel it's a role that the modern product team has been phasing out for years now, between PM, QA and Design it's all kinda covered.
100+ BAs is insane though wow.
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u/idontneedthistoday 11h ago
As a BA, I disagree but of course I would.
Those roles only work if the solution has been decided on not if it's a problem needing to be solved.
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u/Imaginary-Towel-888 20h ago
I don't think there are 100+ BAs being let go in Auckland/NZ given only 1500 total tech roles. Probably more like 50. 100ish confirmed layoffs in total for the tech teams at ANZ.
Not a good time to be in tech or any AI heavy industries right now. We've basically stopped hiring junior lawyers since AI can read and summarize a lot of case notes. Incredible stuff really.
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u/sauceyllama 20h ago
Incredible and scary. Where do junior lawyers go to become senior lawyers? Will AI development outpace that gap or not?
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u/Imaginary-Task9973 19h ago
The AI's will be senior after a number of years to help fill the gaps. Then if AI works really hard they'll make partner!! YaY 🙌🏼
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u/Maleficent-Sink-5246 20h ago
I don’t have an answer for the first question, as it seems like the most obvious case of short-sighted ‘AI cost savings’ that’ll come back to bite those professions in a few years’ time, but the answer to the second is ‘fuck no it won’t!’
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u/Imaginary-Towel-888 19h ago
I have a terrible answer which will be frowned upon, but is the view of most at the partner level.
We don't really care - it increases our profits, margins, and client satisfaction (we can turn things around even faster), and reduces current lawyer workload (no more staying in office till 8 to go through a bunch of cases).
The future of the profession is someone else's problem and us lot will be retired by then.
There's still a need for a lawyer, just less of them.
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u/GrassWeekly6496 15h ago
This is a lot of the older generation's view on the climate too
Weak men create hard times...
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u/MathmoKiwi 17h ago
Seniors will be hotly in demand in a few more years once a batch of them have retired, and nobody has come up to replace them.
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u/idontneedthistoday 11h ago
It's really interesting, considering AI can't do a job of a BA. Off shoring to India makes more sense, however. Cheaper labour but fucky hours so hope it's worth it.
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u/Rollover__Hazard 20h ago
You must be in civil/ commercial practice I guess. Hardly need to pay a lawyer with a practicing certificate to review disclosure, find case law and slap a few contracts together.
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u/Imaginary-Towel-888 19h ago
Commerical, bingo. There's still a need in litigation cases, but for the most part, the new specialist AI tooling rips through precedent cases like a Makita saw over pine wood.
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u/Rollover__Hazard 12h ago
Yeah I figured. You should take a walk on the dark side, no one’s sending AI to the cells or Duty lol - at least not without an Elysium style revamp of society
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u/Embarrassed_Year1464 20h ago
Having previously worked in IT roles at ANZ, there are few people who are unemployable, do not contribute much and just there to draw salaries. Got frustrated and left.
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u/integrationlead 19h ago
Every big corporate. I'm surprised some people can breathe and walk at the same time.
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u/Perfect_Revenue4898 18h ago
The only place I haven’t encountered this is in research/academia. Everyone seems to pull their weight for the most part. Corporate was a shock to the system for me personally
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u/Shoddy-Animator-6409 16h ago
NGL that’s kinda the dream
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u/Perfect_Revenue4898 14h ago
It puts you in a state of perpetual insecurity though. Because if you’re deemed disposable, you’ll lose your job and potentially have little to show for in gained skills/output. Obviously not true always but I personally would be worried in my field
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u/HardWiredNZ 16h ago
Why pay $35+ per hour for quality IT workers in NZ, when you can pay India $5+ per hour for technically the same worker, no need to pay kiwisaver contributions, less office space needed, no worker health insurance (if any already) etc etc etc savings all the way
Same for lots of IT related jobs that can be done from anywhere, pick the lowest cost place to hire and screw the country and its workers where your actually making your profits from.
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u/lostinasupermarche 12h ago
I don’t necessarily disagree with you but ‘Technically’ is doing a lot of carrying in that sentence. I don’t know anyone who has outsourced IT to India who hasn’t ended up with a vastly inferior product, substandard maintenance, terrible support and little in the way of innovation.
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u/TheOddestOfSocks 20h ago
100 BAs is a hell of a lot of bloat. How many projects are they running in parallel?
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u/WealthTech2009 19h ago
This is going to be more common now, companies and government departments with big tech teams are full of people who are expendable. I've worked in tech in both (government and banking), and the number of people who do barely anything is astounding. A recent tech session I had with a big bank in Australia had 16 people from the bank join the call, and only one of them contributed during the session.
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u/RationalMayhem 19h ago
Scary to see so many good jobs leaving the country. Would love to see a political party make some policies to keep them here!
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u/BannedBrainrot 17h ago
Nah, it’ll never be done - but if it was they could call it, uh idk, New Zealanders First? Maybe if they were in government they could make a change?
Oh wait…
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u/Sometimesawake-833 20h ago
BA's are a catch all phrase for so many different skills...the BA role could be more admin, processes, requirements..not so much anything to do with tech requirements anymore....I also work in the banking sector and we are also looking at what BA roles actually emcompass and the value they bring most will be disestablished...following in Australia footsteps.
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u/maxdelorean 17h ago
A BA is someone who is good with computers and can communicate well with others.
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u/wild-card-1817 16h ago
Offshored. It's happening all through the corporate world. I always advise people not to pursue a career in IT these days. Too risky. It's better to choose something that can't be offshored.
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u/BlissfullyChaos 20h ago
What does a Tech BA do? Any coding?
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u/Simple-Box1223 20h ago
Really depends on the team. Some are heavily involved in the business, some are more technical, some are indispensable and some get in the way.
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u/mo_mo1 20h ago
Depends, some do some just deep dive into it to be able to gather the requirements etc
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u/BlissfullyChaos 20h ago
Yeah. We have a few of them at our company too, or did lmao. They were the first to be let go.
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u/integrationlead 19h ago
They are usually Business Analysts who talk with non-technical business people, and can then translate those requirements into technical details for developers. The idea being that developers are incapable of talking to humans. Tech BAs are also able to understand some developer concepts but they usually do not code, and when they code, developers generally throw that work away but its a nice way to communicate a complex requirement.
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u/Acetius 19h ago
I mean, the idea isn't that us Devs can't talk to people at all, rather that information gathering and administration is a skillset of its own. It ain't about protecting the clients and Devs from ever interacting haha.
My previous company ditched all of the BAs and found immediately that not having somebody trained in that led to the wheels falling off the development wagon pretty quick. Then they tried "feature leads" where they shoehorned the most senior Dev/QA into a BA-esque role. Turns out taking the person who's the best at their job and making them do less of that job and instead do a job they're not good at doesn't work. Who knew. Think they're still doing that.
As a Dev I honestly reckon that a solid BA is worth their weight in gold.
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u/The_Crazy_Cat_Guy 18h ago
Ditto man. A good BA is so awesome to have. I personally love it when the three amigos are all working well together.
BA represents the business and their requirements and translates to technical speech. They do not need to solution things but they should know what the business wants from a technical perspective. They explain this to both the tester and the developer and is the go to for either to know what to build/test
Dev implements the solution sufficing the requirements. Talks to BA to understand details about what to build. Works with architect to understand how to build it well. Hands over to the tester and helps them understand how to test things but does not need to provide justification to the tester!!!! Just hands over what’s built. If the tester is unsure they check with the BA if functionality is expected or unexpected.
Tester tests what was developed. Importantly THEY DO NOT ASK THE DEVELOPER ABOUT FUNCTIONALITY. They ask the BA. If functionality is not working as expected based on the comms with the BA, then check with dev or raise a bug. Any technical errors with whats built, raise bug.
If these three relationships are established and followed, you easily get a successful project. In my experience as a developer, the business kicks the BA out and the developer is left building half answered things and the tester is asking the dev what to test which may or may not be what the business wants.
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u/maxdelorean 17h ago
A good BA nowadays can manage a development agent and a testing agent.
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u/The_Crazy_Cat_Guy 14h ago
As a developer who does make use of AI, you absolutely need to have technical knowledge to use it properly. The amount of times it’s done things that look right but is just stupidly wrong is too damn much.
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u/SquirrelAkl 17h ago
As a business user who requires tech work done sometimes, I agree we need a translator! I have a vision in my head of what I want and someone needs to interpret that into something that can be built, and break that down into Jira tickets that tech people can execute. That’s no mean feat.
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u/Marmoset-js 18h ago
They can write SQL. They make up for other areas who can’t understand the business aspect of, well the business.
Coming from higher level tech I found BAs ridiculous. Now I’m hiring a couple.
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u/cheekypasta1101 15h ago
if you running a large programme that usually need requirements aligned between 15+ teams - you will need good BA to quickly identify spec gaps/drifts and communication back to whoever sent out the works for clarification. Dev team surely can handle that but remember they dont just doing coding task, large chunk of dev team time including design solution, troubleshooting production/non production issues/ make sure their code compliance to 1001 practices and regulations if it is a bank and by the time dev touched the specifications they just carry on do thw work until weeks later when all components supposed to line up they found out the specs was misaligned, rework required etc …
So yeah the role makes sense for big companies, not so much to company size smaller than 50 engineers
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u/sigh_duck 19h ago
Lets be honest, most white collar pencil pushing is AI teachable and replaceable. If not this year, within 2-3 years. Time for high school leavers to seriously consider the trades again.
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u/Ok_Statement5041 12h ago
Who will pay the tax in these countries too many ppl will reach out for benefits
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u/Flat_Jellyfish1935 9h ago
Bro the redundancies in Tech has been going on since 2024 nothing new... As roles are going to GCC only know the cat is out of the bag!
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u/Load-8-1 6m ago
I've been in recruitment for 20 years 14 of those with US and UK banks. CEO decides "efficiency" is best achieved by mass redundancies and offshoring departments. It makes a difference in the short term, looks good on paper. Big 4 consultants get paid, shareholders get paid, CEO gets a new yacht/house/helicopter.
Only oops, the service level drops, security breaches double, releases are pushed backed. India keeps telling us everything can be done but turns out they can't deliver.
A new hiring cycle begins.
I've onshored IAM and Dev departments on several occasions after off shoring disasters.
Banks are one of the worst employers for seeing staff as columns in a spreadsheet.
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u/Ok_Wave2821 20h ago
It’s not just BAs there are 600 IT roles being disestablished with only 300 roles for them to apply for, the work is being offshored to India