Software Engineer without Software Engineering - IT Analyst Goldman Sachs Employee Review

4.0
Jun 11, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

It's the most famous Investment Bank in the world, so you're so proud to work inside. It's not a typical high-tech company which you develop one huge project after another. You're mostly maintaining its huge database and complicated software systems. So you won't need to always stay up late at night trying to finish the project. However, the database is so huge that even maintaince and performance improvement is a significant job. The company is best for you to develop skill in database system and distributed/network system since it also operates database in London/Tokyo/HongKong, which is quite magnificant. It's using a lot of different languages so you won't bored down by using only Java/CPP all the time or just doing web programming. Also, all the works are done in teams, so there's always someone to back you up if you're screwed (cuz it's financial company, if you screw something very important, it probably means millions or billions of lost to the company, scary). It has many many departments, so if you're bored with one department, you can switch to another department and get some fresh works. There's no programmer tester here, you're responsible from development to testing if you're developing a software, that's pretty challenging.

Cons

Like I said it does not have many research and development projects, so it may not be a good place if you're a R&D type of person. The software they use are pretty losely organized and not documented very well. When I start to work there, I found it so hard to find a useful documentations for their internal languages and interfaces and I end up asking my managers a lot. Also, because I'm in the tech department and most of my job is supporting the trading they're doing, the project I get is mostly supportive, so you don't receive practise in Software Engineering a lot.

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5.0
Jun 3, 2026
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CEO approval
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Pros

Best in class; great people

Cons

None that I can think of

2.0
Feb 23, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

You’ll get to work with the latest technologies depending on the team you’re in and also have a decent work-life balance. They give you a good amount of vacation days and let you use them whenever you want. You get to work with people who are good and smart and barely hear of any bad people who make your life hard. Taking internal mobility to other teams would also be super easy out here and they encourage it.

Cons

The pay increases are very bad. As you get promoted and grow, your pay will only increase about 3-5% no matter how good your performance is and you’ll feel like you’re barely beating inflation if you’re lucky. Your pay will be massively under the market for your role. Not to mention, there’s a huge risk of layoffs and it happens twice a year. You’ll end up being a part of it if you’re working from home a lot or express your dissatisfaction with your pay (although they mostly brush it off as a performance or a budget/role issue). The risk you take from the layoffs is not worth the reward you get. If you’re taking this job and reading this review, just consider this job as a stone you can step on while looking for another job to switch to

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