The company I work for has graciously given me stock RSU's and a 401K. These were given to me, no doubt, in order to heighten my level of loyalty and make me feel good about the company. After all, they are not obligated in any way and, indeed, I never asked for the RSU (I did expect there to be a 401K since every company has one these days).
Clearly, administering RSU's and 401K's falls outside the core competency of a High Tech company so they outsourced these to Charles Schwab.
Now, I digress. During my lifetime, technology has "evolved" rapidly (at least that's the term the enlightened people use). A long time ago (20-30 years), if you wanted to do something with a company, the best option was to call them and someone would eventually help you. Usually, they'd send a form in the mail and you could either send it back via the mail or, sometimes use this new thing called a FAX machine! Oh, and by 'mail' I mean postal mail - letters, envelopes, old school stuff. Think in terms of transactions like this taking weeks.
With the advent of the web, the new mode is to go to their website, snoop around for a while and try to find a way to do what you want. Most of the time, you can do your business instantly (assuming you find out how).
I prefer this new method because its faster and because I get irritated easily and it's socially acceptable to yell at the computer screen but not so much in regards to real people. Yet, the "evolution" of technology has enabled new complexities so that finding what you need and actually doing it have become enormously frustrating. This is due to several things such as inept user interface design, secret disincentives of companies to let you do what you want to do (ever try to cancel cable?), but mostly, the world has become orders of magnitude more complex. Before the emergence of the computer/web, the paperwork for most common things like buying a house, buying insurance etc were all much reduced compared today. Today, it seems like any purchase for anything that costs more than $1000 comes with a 10 page legal agreement.
As I watched the computer/web become first the dominant information media and then the primary interface for commerce, I noticed that older people who didn't grow up with computers would be very frustrated with these new forms of interface and moan about just wanting to talk to someone in person.
What does this have to do with my sounding old and my stock grants? Ok, maybe going off tangent in a conversation is an old persons behavior - damn it, it's happening to me!
Over the past few weeks, I've had a simple task to do: change the beneficiaries on my RSUs. It has been one dead end after another in trying to find out how to do that. I've tried contacting Schwab (through a chat) and my company (through email). Schwab says to contact my HR department and my HR department says it can be done on the Schwab.com website. In fact, the answer from HR was so terse it was maddening. Did the HR lady think I hadn't tried going to Schwab.com? If I asked for help, was it unreasonable for me to expect her to tell me specifically how, where, what forms to fill out? My guess is she didn't know or care. She has 100 other equally urgent issues so point me at the web and move on.
Now I find I want to talk to someone in person. Constant back/forth over email can be very inefficient. But talking to a real person may not be possible. The nearest Schwab branch can deal with the brokerage business but, my guess is they've never dealt with RSU's and probably are no better at searching the Schwab website than I am.
In regards to talking to someone in HR, I suppose that's possible. Before I do that, I need to vent a little and calm myself. Ok, done and done.
Have a nice day.
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