Vantaggi
Decent benefits. I am paid fairly but I think that only happened because I insisted on a good starting salary. The atmosphere is quite cordial until you start challenging the conventional wisdom. Days are not long by financial services standards. You can work as hard as you want to, or not, if you choose. There is little direct management oversight.
Svantaggi
Just a complete lack of direction from the highest levels of management down through the ranks. Lack of ability of management to identify issues and problems at all levels and devise remedies to address them is quite glaring. Lack of strategy exists to address what they incorrectly perceive to be the most signiificant problems. Management is concerned with checklists, scorecards and numbers but does little to demonstrate that these have anything to do with improving the business. Often, it seems that the solutions to problems have come from the latest MBA textbook or worse, the latest management fad. Senior management through high middle management has no connection with the workforce. They only communicate through emails and "Town Halls", which are 1 - 1 1/2 hour meetings often with hundreds of people in the room. They never show up in the actual workplace and never spend time with individuals on the bottom rungs of the ladder like me. I have never met the man three levels above me and I doubt many of my colleagues have had the pleasure either. These people show no interest in what the day-to-day issues are and what they can do to facilitate productivity at the individual level. The idea of "management by walking around", introducing yourself, sitting down and finding out what's happening "on the ground" is completely foreign to management here. They like their "information bubble" and "management echo chamber" and rarely, if ever, venture out of it. Quality work pretty much goes unrewarded. Bonuses are small to non-existent in some areas of the company and the bonus money is awarded inconsistently throughout the company. A 3% bonus is given for outstanding work in many cases. In other parts of the company, 12% bonuses exist for those at the same level, even for new hires. Organizations are very much siloed from each other. This exists between organizations across the Mellon-BNY divide but also within the heritage organizations as well. There is a lack of communication and collaboration. When new software or procedures are established, often there is no or very little indoctrination into the new procedures. Rollout is poor. Management follow-up where collaboration is required is poor to non-existent. Often, high middle management appears to be responsible for failure to collaborate. Real education is nearly non-existent where I work. Although there is lip-service paid to education, it often consists of vendor sales indoctrination. Serious technical education delivered by outside parties that the company has to pay for is very hard to come by.. .