Count on annual layoffs, regardless of how massively profitable the company is. It's been my experience that this is the preferred way of topgrading the talent vs active personnel management. Compensation increases are awful, and you will work your rear off each year only to be shocked at how low your increase is. And, if you're a people manager, you'll find that you're really not a part of the comp and bonus conversations, which leads to gross disparity and incongruence between members of your staff who performed similarly --one will get a higher comp increase and 2-3x the bonus of their peer who did the same level of work. I personally attribute this gaffe to ED's and MD's who call all the shots but don't know the work of the individuals, only their favorites. The company is shifting more and more work offshore to Chennai India and Manila, Philippines, with increasing numbers all the time. They'll also bring in a ton of H1-B contractors to avoid paying equally (though often much more) qualified US citizens for work at any of their US offices. My responsibilities substantively changed monthly, and I witnessed experiences that my boss slated me for, then selected a less capable person to head it, then selected yet another even less qualified person in a lower role, then abandoned the whole idea. It's like this day in and day out--overflowing with good ideas, but so overloaded with work that the goals are constantly shifting with too many urgent initiatives that you'll start one in earnest and within a month you'll have abandoned it in favor of the new shiny object your senior executive has decided is the soup de jour. The background check process is outsourced to a company in India that does not understand US employment, and this resulted in a 2.5 month start delay for me and other extended delays in starts for others I work with. Organizational onboarding is solid; departmental onboarding is non-existent. There's a lot of institutional knowledge trapped in brains of people who get let go via layoff, and so little of it is documented. DTCC constrains department budgets to the organizational equivalent of squeezing blood from turnips, but then will wildly spend on truly frivolous things. ED's and MD's make very poor kneejerk decisions without any overt consideration of any consequence or ramification of those decisions. Turnover is increasing and will soon likely match the pace of layoffs. Harkening back to the layoffs, we 'eliminate roles' only to then repost them a brief time later. We believe in hotel seating, and that's never the right answer. Cliques and favoritism are rampant and there's no attempt to hide it. You will be pigeonholed into your role; come here and unless you are in the right clique you can absolutely forget promotion. It's sad; this place could be absolutely amazing if they had a better leadership group.
