Where finance careers go to die
Pros
- The culture has improved drastically since the Accounting scandal and leadership change - If you built a good brand and work hard there are still long term progression opportunities, but you will be expected to work long hours under intense pressure for many years to get there
Cons
- People are much more likely to be promoted for who they know rather than what they know - Systems are atrocious - Tesco is famed on building it's past success on the Clubcard and customer insight this provided. Finance teams have no access to this data at all, which seems like a massive missed opportunity. The data you do have access to is limited and extremely hard to access/manipulate - A large volume of work has been offshored to the Bangalore based service centre - this has added huge inefficiency to everyone's day jobs as communication between the offices is awful and you will likely spend more time receiving frustrating emails and in frustrating meetings with colleagues in Bangalore than you will sharing your ideas and insight with management - Extremely hierarchical culture - some managers are great, many will take your work, pass it off as their own and present it to directors. Many (not all) will be unlikely to offer you the opportunity to present to directors yourself - Benefits have been pared back massively over the past few years. Pay is uncompetitive. Forget about pay rises after you join.