Commonwealth Financial Network reviews

If they dangle a 20% bonus in front of you as part of their offer package, don't be fooled. Hardly anyone gets 20% due to shady changes leadership made last year to make it impossible CEO and partnership are mostly older white men, very little diversity. Pay is extremely low for a company with a rigid 3 days in-office policy in the most expensive state to live and work in, most expensive state for child care and worst state in the country for traffic. The Waltham, MA office requires one of the worst commutes to get to. It's nowhere near Boston and is a very dated work environment. Furniture is old and falling apart, workstations are all open making it loud and impossible to focus or take calls. There are very few opportunities for employees to advance or grow into higher paid positions, but managers will happily give you more work and make excuses for shoddy bonuses and no title change. You have to be fingerprinted and background checked to work there. Bureaucracy and poor technology partners make progress challenging. Lots of wasteful, nonsensical spending. They're moving even farther west of Boston to a nicer office that will be even harder for most employees to get to and from. They should go to Boston instead. Most employees are quietly miserable. Overall, the leadership is stuck in the past, refuses to embrace and evolve with workforce trends. I don't miss working there.

Plenty. "Who you know" atmosphere, perks that do not add value to the paycheck (vacation properties COST you money to use, and are time gated, as well as gated by seniority), skeleton staffing (they do not back fill positions, they expect employees to "step up"). Location is a NIGHTMARE in terms of traffic, morning and night. It is situated right next to a very busy train station, as well as a college campus (Brandeis). Make no mistake about it. Commonwealth is a financial services company, but the roles offered are generally Customer Service roles. Most positions are customer facing to one degree or another. The customers are Advisors and advisor offices around the country. Expect your "expertise" to be questioned daily, by both internal and external customers. I cannot emphasize this enough. The roles generally found on the career site are CUSTOMER SERVICE roles. This is not exactly a con, as there are plenty of people this works for, but they are not up front about how much customer interaction there truly is for most of the roles. Bear in mind that the company is PROUD of their service model, which works at the expense of the employee. i.e. If you ask for help with a particular advisor/office, you're generally a man on an island until the Advisor/office complains. Exceptions are the RULE, not the exception. Promotions are GIVEN to those who schmooze with supervisors and managers. You could be a top performer (I never tried to be) and be passed over for someone who spends their day shooting the breeze with the Sup/Manager crew. In at least a few instances, no job req was EVER posted, however an announcement was made regarding several promotions. Metrics. METRICS. You are judged solely by your ability to achieve arbitrary metrics. Your numbers must "make sense" and will be picked apart by your supervisor. You might be told you're doing great one meeting, then told you're not meeting the "make sense" metric in the next. Truly frustrating. Lastly, pay. They will SWEAR up and down that they pay a market rate. I would counter and say no, that is a fallacy. Pay is abysmally low for the industry and geographic location of both home offices (Waltham, MA...very roughly 10 miles from Boston, and San Diego, CA). Please keep this in mind, as the Boston Metro-West area is not known for being particularly affordable. I have heard San Diego is very similar.