Goldman Sachs reviews

3.7

66% would recommend to a friend

(19,403 total reviews)
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David M. Solomon

63% approve of CEO

65% positive business outlook

Goldman Sachs has an employee rating of 3.7 out of 5 stars, based on 19,403 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Goldman Sachs employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Finanzas industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

19K reviews
3.0
May 18, 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The bottom line is that Goldman Sachs is not for someone who is passionate about software development. There are a few departments (enterprise platform for example) that are more focused on advancing the technologies in the firm, but most software engineer positions are tightly coupled with business teams and they dictate what you do and what you work on. The pros are: - Goldman is definitely one of the better financial firms in terms of experimenting with a wide-variety of technology stacks. In my short year there, I was able to experiment with HBase, Mongo, Vert.x, Angular JS - Many opportunities to learn. A lot of talks with many interesting people (one of the talks was with David Benioff from Game of Thrones). Classes for different technologies offered year round - Great people, friendly

Cons

- bureaucracy, had to constantly fight with business to do things that would benefit them in the long run - extremely out-dated code base, so you would be spending most of your time fixing other people's code instead of working on cool new projects - Slang (enough said) - Bad management - most senior level managers are too complacent or have given up

1.0
Feb 9, 2014
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Goldman offers fantastic training seminars that anyone is welcome to attend. Also, I really did feel like I was learning from the best in the banking industry. The wealth of knowledge that the business leaders have is unbelievable, and if you can manage to schedule some time with them, you'll probably learn more about the industry than you could anywhere else.

Cons

Constant fear. Every person in the office I worked in in Salt Lake knew that only a few missteps could cost them their job. Once a year management picks a bunch of employees they want to replace and walks them out the door (keep in mind, these are all brilliant, hard-working people). Management will remind you of these routine expulsions as means of motivation. Working at Goldman is an intense scramble to be better than your co-workers, because you know that if they happen to be better than you, you will be treated as expendable. I was more anxious and stressed at Goldman than I've ever been in my career, and developed constant, throbbing headaches and had a very hard time sleeping. If management thinks they can replace you with someone better, they won't hesitate to do it. Firing dedicated employees is a very common and cavalier occurrence at Goldman. A culture of rudeness and extreme passive-aggressive behavior is pervasive throughout the company. If someone thinks you aren't important, they often won't respond to your e-mails or calls, regardless of how desperately you need their help. This kind of behavior is completely accepted. Also, expect business leaders to be extremely critical and demanding.

1.0
Dec 10, 2012
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Excellent Brand - Good Pay - Excellent and brilliant people

Cons

- Too much politics - Very unpleasant hours (90-120 each week) - Good performance of juniors not rewarded and recognized - No guidance of the client - the client gets everything, no matter how useless (e.g. translation work) - The bigger the client, the larger the deal, the more weekends you spend in office - Consider that your life is sold to the bank for the time of your employment - No loyalty to employees - the higher you are up the easier you are out

Viewing 55 - 57 of 19,403 Reviews

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