Pros
- Good work-life balance - Really liked the team I worked with. People would take proper lunch breaks and chat in the canteen or sometimes go out of the office for lunch. - Pay is reasonably competetive - Great office location in Canary Wharf. Everything you need close by - restaurants, take-away, shops etc. Good travel options, even better now with Elizabeth line. - Clearly defined corporate ladder to climb if you care for that.
Cons
- Most people are just there to collect paycheck. - Tech is quite outdated. Due to tight security measures, it can be a challenge to onboard new software that isn't already "firm-sanctioned". Starting to onboard cloud technologies but mostly still messing around with bare-metal and VMs. Not for you if you want to work with k8s/serverless etc. - Due to above, tech at Morgan Stanley has developed fairly separate from modern cloud/internet tech stacks. Can be frustrating to deal with niche issues that arise from their tech setup, means that the skills you develop may be less transferable. - Crazy amounts of red-tape to deal with, need to get sign-offs for so many things. Lots of useful tooling is not usable due to paranoid security measures. Can understand why security is tight but very frustrating compared to working at a startup! - Aside from pay/bonus, company is very tight with money. Don't expect to be given a high-end Macbook to work on like with FAANG! Company expects MDs to pay for social events for the team, so depends on what your management line is like. - When I was there, WFH setup was very poor - needed to connect remotely to desktop in office to access anything. Not sure if they've improved at all with lockdown. - You are made to agree to some quite severe restrictions on your personal investments, not sure if this is legally enforceable as it impacts fairly basic financial freedoms.