Deutsche Bank reviews

In two words - Low Calibre. Ineptitude runs rampant. Low quality hiring low quality in abundance. Center management woefully out of the depth and seem to be clueless about what we do. Computers and kit last decade. Desktop support is laughably bad - usually resort to getting under the desk to fix ourselves. "Agile" means something very different here: Lots of standing around whiteboards with posties. Ceremony over intended purpose. Town halls are a drag. No relevance and must serve only the ego of the center management who's apparent understanding of technology is utterly tangental to anyone developing software this century. Lots of side-way glances as we sigh WTF in unison. Project delivery is shambolic. Wins are rare as failure is accepted with a shrug. Long-termers stay as they are payed above market rate. Traditional relationship between low cost offshore and rich masters. Unfortunately we are the former so are regarded as a call center in a third world country. Lots of jolly nice people who should not be working in a technology office, but have created niches as "transition project managers" Lots of gossip about the next (then the next) round of redundancies. Apparently lots of people have more lives than cats. Promotion seems to be linked to age. % of staff are fired every year. Candidates are selected through comical darwinism. Secret meetings are called, their desks are cleared whilst they are in the "meeting", asta la vista. Then another meeting is called by management to say firings have stopped, consider yourself lucky and get back to work fast. They try to make this seem compassionate, but everyone is just pleased the wheel of (mis) fortune didn't stop with them. Lots of back stabbing amongst senior management - all fighting to ensure nobody discovers how little work THEY do. Usually the wrong person is whacked. All of the above would make a great comedy show and that would be funny. Living it is another story.

The center is in a constant state of flux of hire and mostly fire. In the past year almost the entire leadership team has either been fired or departed and what is left is almost constant haggling amongst middle management to own teams and step into dead mens shoes, regardless of being qualified. The bank has chosen a SAS import who is completely uninterested in what we are doing and creates authority through fear leaving most quaking and the rest kissing it. Most of us are unclear how this guy does as we take all of our direction from the London domain leads. I'm sure he is as nervous about his own position as we are so he is kissing his respected asses and not delivering utility down to us. Then we have a hired a Chief Development Officer - what Development is this role responsible for and where is the proven calibre? Our recent town hall said it all: we want to "reverse the pyramid" which means our management are fixated in adhering to organizational shape over finding the right people then incentivizing the good people to stay. This week a further 15 heads were culled, which followed similar exercises over the past 5 months leaving many scared about their future. Why not take a look at why these people didn't achieve success and question whether the organization provides an environment where success is achievable without politics and back-stabbing?? I do not believe Deutsche Bank understands the locality or the technology profession. Let's say it possibly did at one time, now this is in full reverse. We started with a message of work/life balance, a table tennis table and a relaxed dress code and now the latter being recently stripped so we look nice for our new New York matrix managers who have no clue about what makes technology people tick. North Carolina is not about double-breasted suits, politics and "greed is good" - if we wanted this we would get paid a lot more to live in New York. There are so many other technology companies to work for in Raleigh. My entire team is talking aloud about interviewing elsewhere which means this place is heading south.