Pros
- Plenty of growth potential (when the market is up) - Competitive pay (when the market is up) - Some very smart peers - Exposure to people working in GS offices in almost all developed and many developing countries
Cons
- Politics, politics, politics - Bad reputation in the world - e.g. regulatory, press, general reputation amongst people. - The amount of red tape is astounding - Very non-competitive pay in down years (essentially everybody took a large pay cut and many took a 20% or more 2011--no, that is not an exaggeration) - In most groups within Ops Technology, software engineering and tech in general are very much a second-class citizen to banking and trading and it shows in the way the groups are treated. - Long hours and very poor work-life balance. Wide-spread acceptance of this as the standard operating procedure. If people complain (and one needs to be careful to whom you complain), the typical response is something along the lines of "this is Goldman Sachs." - That said, there are some very, very talented software engineers at GS (including and especially the CTO, who is on the board of the Java programming language). But broadly speaking Ops Technology is not a very talented group. Many of the very talented people are leaving, making things worse. - The way layoffs are handled is very much without integrity. When I first started with every person who was let go -- either fired or laid off for some reason -- there was an announcement and an explanation. In 2011 there were so many rounds of layoffs (at least 3 major ones, and several smaller ones) management simply acted like nothing happened. You might be in the middle of a project with somebody and send them an email only to get what we've jokingly started calling "The Layoff Autoreply" -- their mailbox is "full". Invariably mailbox full meant it'd been disabled and the person was laid off. No word from management. Just an empty desk and bounced emails. Asking a manager for details about so-and-so would only get a "yes" or "no" to the question of whether they still worked at the firm--no details, explanation, etc. so lower and middle management had clearly been instructed not to discuss in any detail. So it ends up just ominous chatter and gossip about who is the most recent person to be laid off. One can imagine what this does for morale... - Steady trickle of technology jobs -- not just support roles, but real software engineering -- out of NYC to Salt Lake City or Bangalore. They're euphemistically called "high value locations" in GS lingo. - Production support at night and on weekends is very widespread. It can easily ruin a weekend. This is fine, but coupled with the machismo "This is Goldman Sachs" mentality, it means there's no comp time and frequently not even a "thanks" for sacrificing the weekend. - A culture that encourages distractions. Focusing on one thing for an extended period is very, very difficult. The cubefarm is very loud -- you need noise cancelling headphones if you're easily distracted by loud chatter or phone calls nearby. - Dated technology is very common. I came to GS a few years ago expecting it to be a cutting edge place, but discovered my group had just switched to Java 5--in 2009! - Budget cuts are brutal. There's no more travel. No more firm sponsored happy hours. No Blackberries unless absolutely necessary. There are zero perks now. - There is currently (first / second quarter 2012) an exodus from Technology at GS -- the talented people are leaving for startups, tech firms, or hedge funds. Google is the number one firm snatching up talent from GS, but there are many, many startups doing so too.