Good pay, fairly good office culture, usual corporate politics
Pros
One of the most generous pay and benefits packages outside of London Good working hours - some people work late but you don't feel obliged to work past 5pm and many people leave early and work flexible patterns. Occasional or regular home-working is possible in many teams A fair amount of 'fun' activities and training opportunities onsite to keep employee morale up Lovely new office building
Cons
- Typically male dominated workplace in tech organisation. A macho culture in some teams - if you're not into sports, cars and going to the gym, you might not have much to chat to your colleagues about. - Performance/year-end ratings process is tedious, draining, unfair and unpleasant, nasty feedback is given under the guise of 'constructive criticism'. - Frequent "restructures" - redundancies nearly every year, job doesn't feel secure - Have seen leaders bully employees, no easy way to report this without fear of consequences - American corporate culture - for obvious reasons - and a lot of the 'good stuff' happens over in the US so UK teams are often left feeling powerless or second-best. - Have also seen younger colleagues ostracized in teams of long-tenured employees - Lots of secrecy about all sorts of decision making, lack of openness, of course some things have to be confidential at a financial company but some decisions that affect employees, should be openly discussed rather than whispering about literally everything as if we're cold war spies! - Lots of incompetent people holding onto their positions by charming leadership - 'networking' seems more important than actual competence at doing your job - Likewise, incompetent people seem to feel threatened by employees who are actually talented, so some of these talented individuals end up at the bottom of the pile, of course the sensible ones leave for greener pastures! - The year-end rating system pits employees against eachother instead of encouraging collaboration, and again, charming your leaders and blowing your own trumpet loudly seems to be a faster route to success than actually doing a good job. - It's even worse the higher up you go, with VPs always trying to protect and expand their empire as if it's Game of Thrones, this is not immediately evident when you're lower down the ranks but have a frank discussion with a VP and you realise how much they're playing eachother for bonuses and survival. - Terrible food and coffee in canteen...