Pros
Honestly, its a great place to start right out of college or if you would like retire but still want to work for benefits. With federal/banking holidays it feels like a government job once you include your regular time off too. They will pay up to 10k a year for master programs but it is not mentioned much. Hours worked are not bad as most employees are out the door at 4:59pm but it all depends what team and staff you get. This is one of the keys as to whether or not you will enjoy your time at the bank.
Cons
Senior Management - Its a hit or miss if they truly know whats going on. Each year, a new focus is pushed and once its about to take root the management team that started it leaves and a new focus is started. Such as the motto "investment company to the world." So when your family asks what investments they offer have fun finding out. Because the company makes so much money with little effort, there are activist investors pushing the company to focus on share buy backs and extreme cost reductions. There is no thought about increasing rates, sales, or establishing more business when you can massage earnings by eliminating staff and taking shares out of the active market. Management/Team - This area will either make or break your time there. For the majority of managers there, this is their only job and they do not have much training on the actual management side. Some will micromanage while others will be non-existent. If you get on a good team they will be flexible with your hours and really help you with a work/life balance while other teams will make you dream of a life outside of work. Once you have been there for a few months be expected to know pretty much everything even though you may have a new person training you. Team members - Some are aloof while others know everything about the bank. Every team has their chosen employees that get whatever they want. Some may be helpful while others may never say a word. promotions - non-existent. you are told that you must know every function to make it to senior while at the same time people are randomly given a promotion to senior for not doing much. do not plan on moving up the ladder as this is laughed at and discouraged. if you move teams they will see you as disloyal and question if you want to be there. most of the management staff could not do the job else where and have no plans to retire. because of this there is a bottle neck starting all the way on the bottom of the chain. raises - you are doing great if you can get something close to 2% but the average is a little over 1% a year. In addition to this, with a low starting salary makes it even more belittling. technology - still maintains original systems and will not consolidate all the programs even though the bank has 5 technology centers. this continues to cause issues with each client and makes daily work difficult. if the money spent on share buy backs was not done and instead spent on technology, the bank could cut staff in half. but with the current technology all teams are over staffed and very few people understand how the systems work with each other. overall - changes have been made based off yearly reviews from the workers and they are positive. the downside is that most employees don't take it serious or don't do them at all. the rate of change makes a government project look fast.