I've never worked in software for banking however I have worked in a large TelCo in the UK.
The bosses up the top were so abstracted away from what developers were working on, even the MDs of tech departments were in the dark.
This was due to a thick barrier of (project, delivery, platform) managers between devs and execs.
I can remember one time a director of "innovation" came in for a surprise visit. Most of the managers had went out for a team lunch. So I was left with my other socially awkward colleagues babysitting this exec, along with the head of testing.
After about 5 minutes of showing the exec what we were actually working on, his eyes lit up, as though we had just discovered fire. In the end he was really happy and amazed on what we were working on.
All he had ever seen were some mockups and a video demo.
We also got a chance to mention some of our grievances.
About two weeks later, our team had magically had some "extra" budget to buy Macs and 24inch monitors.
The bosses up the top were so abstracted away from what developers were working on, even the MDs of tech departments were in the dark. This was due to a thick barrier of (project, delivery, platform) managers between devs and execs.
I can remember one time a director of "innovation" came in for a surprise visit. Most of the managers had went out for a team lunch. So I was left with my other socially awkward colleagues babysitting this exec, along with the head of testing.
After about 5 minutes of showing the exec what we were actually working on, his eyes lit up, as though we had just discovered fire. In the end he was really happy and amazed on what we were working on.
All he had ever seen were some mockups and a video demo. We also got a chance to mention some of our grievances.
About two weeks later, our team had magically had some "extra" budget to buy Macs and 24inch monitors.