Great Brand Recognition, Looks Good On Resume, But That's About It
Pros
When I first interviewed and was offered my job at American Express Technologies in their Markham, ON., Canada office, I was very excited. American Express has a stellar reputation as being one of the best places to work -- they recently won yet another award as one of the Best Places to Work in the world. The company has been around for over 150 years, and is recognized everywhere. It isn't like working for some small, medium or large company no one has ever heard of -- everyone knows who and what American Express is. And that's the best part of working here, you feel a sense of pride and prestige in working for one of the largest and most elite credit card companies in the world. The company itself takes great care to protect it's brand, and maintains a highly visible pro-customer profile to maintain that prestigious image. The company will go out of its way to make things right with a customer or a merchant (a company which accepts the American Express Card) no matter what it takes. The company also does have a sense of fun at times, creating social events among employees and contractors to embody the company's brand pride into its workforce. There are the usual seasonal parties, and various sporting and cultural associations to be a part of. There is a cafateria on-site, as well as a small gym, so if you forget your lunch, you can buy a decent meal, and then work it off by pumping some weights or running on the treadmill. Management is pretty hands-off, you are left to your own devices to do what you were hired to do.
Cons
If you are looking for a company where your manager stands behind you, listens to your concerns, and works with you to resolve them -- don't go to American Express. American Express' corporate culture is very individualistic. If you need to rely on someone else to get your work done, good luck. That's just the way it works here. Everyone works in isolation from one another, which leads to another problem -- informational drain. When I first started at American Express, someone who had been with the organization for over 15 years told me that most things aren't written down, they are stored on individual hard drives, or more likely in the heads of the few that work with that information daily. Information sharing doesn't exist. That's partly because of the idividualistic corporate culture, and partly because people fear that if they give out their knowledge, they risk losing their projects, or possibly their jobs. Turn-over is a constant, there are always people coming and going, probably because the pay is below market values, and also driven by the individualistic work environment. Also, as with many large global corporations, the company is farming out much of its work to third-party contractors. Of the over 300 people in my department, only about 25 are full-time employees, the rest are contractors, mostly from Asia or India. American Express isn't the company it once was -- it may go back to its glory days one day -- but in the interim, it has a long way to go.