Pros
The company is well thought of in the marketplace.
Cons
Inside is an absolute disaster. The entire company's IT infrastructure is powered by the IT equivalent of a hamster running on a wheel. Then, to boot, the company tried to overcompensate for this by spending $50-100MM to build a custom IT infrastructure. Which would be great except for 1) That is an insane amount of money for a company that size to spend and 2) THEY'RE BUILDING IT INFRASTRUCTURE THAT ALREADY EXISTS FROM THIRD PARTY PROVIDERS FOR PENNIES. They're trying to do things like custom-build an online banking platform, custom-build a data warehouse, custom-build a wire system. It's insanity. The politics here are also absolutely out of control. I could never have imagined the politics of a 100,000 person company (paired with the lack of resources of a small company). No one cares about work quality or results. It operates more like a country club where you are promoted for good social standing. Some people have worked their way to impressive levels within the company for lots of brown-nosing and can't answer basic questions about their job or banking generally. The company constantly brags about its "culture" but from what I have seen you get rewarded for BS'ing around all day and people who try to tackle real issues, propose real solutions, and solve real problems get reprimanded for "stirring the pot" and making people think the bad thougths. Zero expense control. Zero. A management team who have zero experience in banking (entire management team is made of up consultants, investment managers, and marketers). This is the type of place that has more SVPs than entry/mid-level associates. It's like an upside-down pyramid. The amount of people getting paid over $200k at that company to do little or nothing is staggering. If you are VP-level or above your job is to run around and go to pointless meetings all day. It is beyond bewildering to me that an activist investor hasn't gotten involved and asked the company to sell itself yet. It's such a shame because the company has a lot of very talented salespeople and an impressive client list and just completely fails to stop shooting itself in the face. I have seen people lose half a million dollars from blatant stupidity or just failure to read a contract and seen the finance department shrug. Not a business decision, not a judgement call, just failure to understand a document they were signing. The person in mind even got promoted at the end of the year because he/she was "in" socially within the bank. And the best part is: anyone who is in control at this company does not give a flying fart. There is a cabal of people who have been there for 15, 20, 25 years who "run the country club". If you try to complain, it dies with them. If someone has been at the bank for that long, it's not because it's such a wonderful place to work, it's because they're people who are fearful of change and have found a place where they can get paid above market to do no work and have built a fiefdom for themselves and won't leave now. The company's culture is so messed up I honestly don't even think it can be saved.
