Vantaggi
Historically, Vanguard has offered relatively good job security. In 2001, when the markets went south, they didn't have massive layoffs, but first got rid of all contractors before starting to get rid of crew through attrition and harder performance evaluations with a competitive, "graded-on-the-curve" year-end evaluation system that pits you against all other colleagues on your same level in your department. The company does offer opportunities to work in other areas. Employees have an HR-backed "right to post" to another position, team, or division of/at Vanguard after serving 18 months in their current position. This enables any employee to move to a more desired position or get away from a bad manager or colleague. Upper management "walks the talk". It has been verified that Brennan has checked into economy class while not using first-class airline service when traveling on the company's 'dime'. Upper management is also very concerned about the shareholder in general and will do nearly anything to serve them while keeping well within the bounds of high ethical conduct that is expected from those with fiduciary duties.
Svantaggi
Ever since Brennan took over after the very highly respected Jack Bogle, things at Vanguard have been deteriorating. As they rely more on a six-sigma based performance metrics system internally called "VUE" (Vanguard Unmatchable Excellence), middle managers and project managers are under more pressure to make themselves and their numbers look good while "crapping" on other groups, managers, and employees. Doesn't matter how good you are anymore, but what ‘BS’ you give to look good to your upper manager. Honesty and following the rules gets you stuck in bureaucracy with electronic forms, requests, and approvals. Vanguard likes to get rid of older, higher-paid employees while hiring younger employees whom they can pay cheaper while sticking them on their newer "partnership tables" that don't give new employees the quicker and more lucrative "partnership payout" that more senior employees have enjoyed in the past. While tightening up on security, Vanguard has gone overboard by taking a lot of security away from people who may need it to get their jobs done. In their IT department, project requests and production maintenance usually always rely on request to higher groups with more security to get things done, thus slowing down project, maintenance, or rescue turn-around times. While IT management has recently adopted the 'Agile' project method approach to their work, they often stumble upon their own bureaucratic security access problems- so the message is, "you may work here, but we don't trust you." While it should be a standard business practice to separate duties, Vanguard goes overboard, making it harder for business and IT employees to get work done. Your experience working at Vanguard depends on which manager you work for. There are both kinds at Vanguard. Try to get the inside scoop on any manager from a current or former employee before signing the employment agreement. If Vanguard trusted and even empowered its employees more, (freeing them from the stupid middle managers and "principals") we would see even lower expense-ratios on their funds.