Pros
VERY STABLE The job is pretty stable; even in the economic crisis there were little to no lay offs. I bet as long as you pull your share, you could probably work until retirement. LOTS OF OPPORTUNITIES! Because the IT group is bunched together in one location, you will find that you will be talking to a lot of people while waiting in line to get coffee. This opens doors to new opportunties and can gain a wide variety of technical knowledge and skills provide that you take your personal time to talk to people. EASY GOING If you are skilled then you probably won't have to break a sweat to get the work done. This means you will have a lot of free time to talk with other people about what they do.
Cons
Please note that this relates only to the IT portion of Scotiabank. LACK OF LEADERSHIP Management is incompetent and there are more politics than getting work done due to the lack of clear rules and goals. You hear stories of micromanagement in the office a lot. LACK OF COMMUNICATION Communication seems to be an issue; we had learned about a new person starting the next week from other people in the team rather than from management! LACK OF INNOVATION From a technology point of view; it is really lacking innovation and is very slow paced. Technology does not get updated until the vendor announces end of support for the product! This is due to the risk adversed culture and lack of IT funding in the Bank. LOWER PAY THAN INDUSTRY AVERAGE The low expectations of the job reflects the low pay that you will get. Expect the standard 2% inflationary raise each year until your next promotion (which you will have to work hard for!). Their review does cover the raise; but for the few years that I've worked here, I only have gotten a max of 2.x%.