Good place to start a career, terrible place to grow one
Pros
- People are for the most part genuinely nice - Great brand name means your CV will get you an interview at better firms where you can finally get paid/promoted - Benefits (pension, health care, etc...) are great - Work/Life balance is fantastic but that's not a great thing if you're young and ambitious I'd argue. I'd rather work longer and get paid more, but no real link between performance and pay makes this a moot point. - Decent opportunities for internal mobility (if you want another job or to work somewhere else, you can get one...it just might not be any better) - Pretty tough to get fired from this place. If you just want to sit somewhere collecting a coupon for the next 45 years, this is the place for you.
Cons
- Terrible pay and bonus compared to competition and sell side with very few pay raises. - Extremely top heavy makes career progression very difficult and promotions tougher to come by these days unless you're in a right place - Strong preference for external hires for premium investment jobs, internal hires usually preferred for more support related jobs in portfolio management - Generally very little link between performance and compensation/promotion. All about which team you end up in and the level of that team's influence. - Lots of Soviet-like propaganda which is more annoying than anything - So much fat at the top sitting there and getting paid while barely putting in any real work