I was an intern at MSSB for almost 3 years so I know this company pretty well.
Pros
- good work life balance. if you are a financial advisor, you can use your time as you see fit, including not coming in the office on Fridays or whatnot, which is total flexibility. if you are a CSA, you can leave on the dot everyday as long as you have your work done/managed. - although people are generally very uptight/impatient during the hours when the market is opened, they are generally very nice and friendly people when the market closes or on Fridays, where everybody is more relaxed. people are mostly open to conversations and laughs. - very stable job because MSSB generates steady revenue unlike other parts of the bank. yes there were headcounts but it's pretty stable compare to other divisions/banks.
Cons
- MSSB doesn't pay me; the advisor who I worked with pays me, so I don't get the "ibank internship" rate. I get whatever the advisor chooses to pay me (which is very low) - bureaucracy, bureaucracy, bureaucracy! i don't blame them because it's a huge company, but literally everything is about bureaucracy and doing things by the rule = huge amount of paperwork and phone calls to solve 1 problem - most people are complaining about the new system that they just implemented, which is obviously created by somebody who doesn't work in MSSB because of various non-user-friendly programs.