American Express reviews

4.1

81% would recommend to a friend

(18,632 total reviews)
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Stephen J Squeri

89% approve of CEO

79% positive business outlook

American Express has an employee rating of 4.1 out of 5 stars, based on 18,632 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an excellent working experience there. The American Express employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Finanzas industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

19K reviews
2.0
Jun 10, 2010
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

I worked in AMEX for four years right after my PHD studies. My first year experience was good, second year was ok, in my third year I was trying to get out and in the fourth year I couldn't take it anymore and was ready to accept any job offer outside the company. The pros is you can learn some basics about cards business and there are lots of young people, so if you are a young person you would like it. There are lots of employee activities and you can participate in any of them provided that you complete your work on time. There is also an Asian Employee network.

Cons

The culture there requires you to find a place to transfer internally after a couple of years. If you cannot find a place then you would be stuck there for a while and do things that create no value for your career and the company. The management looks democratic but actually similar to dictatorship. There is too much politics going on there and there are many very talented, knowledgeable people who have never been promoted because of all these politics. Do not expect to climb the ladder in AMEX unless you are a minority or know someone in high position. The pay is very low for New York City standards but since most people commute from NJ this is not a big issue. You work with internal business partners and their bad opinion about you counts but good opinions are ignored most of the time. If you have low rating because your boss thinks that way, you are given some time to correct your performance but I never witnessed anyone who went through the process and able to keep his job. In other words if they don't like you for any reason -non work related, they find a way to send you away.

2.0
Jun 9, 2010
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Global company Opportunities to work internationally

Cons

Leadership immaturity- Many employees are promoted to leadership positions in recognition of the good work they do but that does not necessarily make them good leaders.

1.0
Jun 8, 2010
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Other business units and groups seem to be great places to work

Cons

In this particular group, teamwork and work ethic at the manager level is fantastic (manager at American Express is entry level with a post graduate degree). I've met some incredibly intelligent, hard working, and positive people who are managers. However, move up one level to the Director leadership and quality of integrity deteriorates. Go up another level to VP and integrity seems to be the exception rather than the norm. Senior leaders have zero people management skills - despite the fact that most managers are working 80 hours/week, the Directors and VPs constantly berate the team for not working hard enough (while they leave at 5PM on the dot). Additionally, we spend the majority of our time fixing system and data issues which have existed for years (and is not actually part of our jobs) - meaning the people that are currently VPs are the ones that made the mistakes and are not taking any accountability for it. All they do is blame us, even though we didn't create the problems and we're working twice the amount of hours they are to fix it. I could go on and on but the bottom line is that as the economy improves, the managers doing the work will leave for better opportunities and all you'll have left is a bunch of "leaders" who have no understanding of the day to day activities that allow this company to function. Additionally, a lot of great ideas were brought up at the Senior Management summit a couple weeks ago - in particular Ken Chenault's urge for employees to have a digital mindset; this is the kind of thinking Amex needs to stay ahead. However, nothing is happening regarding this in my group - when I asked my VP why I was told that "it wasn't a priority." How can it not be when the CEO said it was?!

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