Good benefits but too much internal mid management issues - Senior Marketing Associate Discover Employee Review

3.0
28 Dec 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Great benefits, health benefits, pto (25 days off for full time employees), work from home, downtown office, and on site gym with classes. People are friendly to work with, open communication between teams. Great volunteer in the community programs. You can wear jeans every day, across all levels of the company.

Cons

Too much red tape if you want to move from one team to another. You can be a new employee every year if you decide to change teams every year. Not all teams abide by the work from home policy that leadership has allowed to take place, so you have to be careful which team you want to move to internally. Middle management politics is there like any medium to large corporation. Some senior managers should easily be not be a manager, because they are just serving the purpose of seat warmers. There is some snootiness in certain depts, which makes it very hard to move within the company, people judge your capability on the previous teams you have worked on and the connections you have in the company rather then your skillset or education, which can become frustrating. Discover is known once you are in the company as the "discover way " that if you want a promotion, you will need to leave your team and go to a new team, do not expect a promotion to happen in your existing team unless you are favored by your senior manager.

Explore other reviews about Discover

5.0
18 June 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

There are still great employees working at Discover despite looming layoffs due to Capital One acquisition.

Cons

Morale is at an all-time low, integration with Capital One has caused significant anxiety and confusion.

5.0
28 Mar 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

One of the most significant advantages of interning at Discover is the opportunity to work with massive, high-stakes financial datasets within a highly collaborative and mentorship-driven culture. Because the company manages millions of consumer accounts, you gain direct experience in how data-driven decisions impact risk management, credit modeling, and fraud detection in real time. The environment is known for being supportive of early-career professionals, offering structured learning paths and exposure to modern cloud-native infrastructures like AWS. Furthermore, the company’s strong focus on work-life balance and a clear pipeline for converting interns to full-time roles makes it an excellent "foot in the door" for anyone looking to build a career in fintech.

Cons

On the other hand, the primary drawback often stems from the inherent bureaucracy and heavy regulation of the banking industry, which can lead to slower project lifecycles and "red tape." You may find that a significant portion of your time is spent on repetitive data cleaning and maintaining legacy reporting systems rather than building the cutting-edge predictive models you might expect. Additionally, because Discover is a massive organization, your scope of work can sometimes feel siloed, making it difficult to see the end-to-end impact of your analysis across different departments. Finally, the current landscape of the industry means that internal shifts or large-scale corporate restructuring can occasionally lead to uncertainty regarding team directions or long-term project stability.

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