Countrywide Financial Reviews

Former Employee – worked at Countrywide Financial

Pros – Good pay compared to peers and responsibilities in other mortgage banks. Varied opportunities to try different careers in the organization.

Cons – Basically, a cowboy culture combined with nepotism. Long hours, no work/life balance once you moved pass VP title.

Advice to Senior Management – Review the corporate culture and start living the values it is supposed to represent.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Countrywide Financial

Pros – Aggressive growth slowed as the business grew; same happend with the culture. Some areas were rough, but most areas were just a normal company.

Cons – Bad reputation will hurt my resume going forward.

Advice to Senior Management – Should have kept your interest rate hedges.

Former Employee – worked at Countrywide Financial

Pros – Large company with many different perspectives and varying degrees of talent and skill to learn from.

Cons – Those in cushy positions are sometimes impossible to deal with.

Advice to Senior Management – Politics is inevitable in any environment. However some of this should be monitored and the skill-experience-compensation relationship should be baselined to make sure those with valuable skills are compensated accordingly.

Former Employee – worked at Countrywide Financial

Pros – If you're smart and willing to seek new challenges/responsibilities, you'll often get them. Networking is key - who you know (and who likes you) matters.

Cons – Long hours, tight deadlines, unrealistic expectations from executive management - all of these things are a factor in the day-to-day environment (not just once in a while.)

Advice to Senior Management – Listen to your in-house experts, especially the ones who don't agree with everything you say. They likely know more than you do and are probably right.

Former Employee – worked at Countrywide Financial

Pros – The only reason I would ever want to work at Countrywide again would be the fact that they got bought out by Bank of America. The company name "Bank of America" would be a good stepping stone for people to move into smaller companies with better pay.

Cons – I could go on forever about how terrible this place was. The managers never had any work to do, yet they tried to act like they were really busy. The same went for most of the employees here. We were given lots of "drive around the parking lot" work. I felt like I was becoming dumber every day I went in. The work that we were given was hardly ever challenging. The salary and bonuses were also terrible. I would avoid this place at all costs. Bank of America made a dumb move in acquiring this run down company.

Advice to Senior Management – Cut down the number of VPs and SVPs you have in the company. A 3 to 1 employee to manager ratio is just ridiculous.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Countrywide Financial

Pros – The particular Countrywide group I worked in was great, senior management was extremely knowledgeable and had a great track record of success. Additionally, we were compensated well and given room to grow.

Cons – There wasn't a path to management within the company. Additionally, the crisis proved that things were not as well as they seemed.

Advice to Senior Management – Too late now..... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Former Employee – worked at Countrywide Financial

Pros – great advancement opportunites and compensation, very collegial workforce, a number of long term employees, pride in the company, growing fast

Cons – very fast paced, never enough staff to do the work needed, seems as if all communications, programs etc were focused on the LCD (i.e. lowest common denominator) employees, short cubicle walls

Advice to Senior Management – to many levels of VPS

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Countrywide Financial

Pros – Most people were good people which made the environment nicer. The salary and benefits were in line with similar jobs both in the banking industry and outside.

Cons – Lack of direction by upper internal audit management. Huge disparity between groups within internal audit from everything to quality of deliverables to time off. The department was very top heavy with lots of elevated titles for people who were doing administrative tasks.

Advice to Senior Management – Maybe if all internal audit groups were held to the same standard, some of the things that caused the collapse may have been uncovered sooner.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Countrywide Financial

Pros – Met some nice co-workers that I've remained friends with.

Cons – Worked Holidays and never received doubletime. We were paid hourly. Management would tell you you could take a day off another time to make up for the extra day. It was a payroll nightmare.

Advice to Senior Management – The only people that made money here were people in top management; otherwise, you are used for the most part.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Countrywide Financial

Pros – laid back environment in some offices,

Cons – Some offices are like cattle farms, there are too many VPs, SVPs and other middle managers, many of whom don't even have anyone reporting to them

Advice to Senior Management – improve quality of work environment for lower level workers (below SVP level).