Know what you're getting into - Senior Applications Developer M&T Bank Employee Review

Middle management often does not seem to care about their employees, instead playing lip service to their teams about improving work in the long term. It's incredibly difficult to advance, the work can feel meaningless, and team level concerns are often not addressed for months at a time if at all. If you speak up about these issues or raise concern with management you will be brushed aside. Many senior level develops are overworked and under compensated to the point that they left the company as a group leaving the remaining developers to pick up the slack without any new experienced developers being hired or the promotion of current employees. Teams were left without leadership and middle management did nothing to adjust expectations or correct the issues. Finally, unless you are a favorite of one of management do not expect to be treated fairly or given the opportunity to move to a new area that you could better perform within. That opportunity will not be given. Especially within the developmental programs at the bank young college graduates are often mislead or outright lied to in order to get them to sign up with penalty of having to paid back signing benefits if they do not stay at least two years. Performance evaluations are also a farce, M&T management often seems to issue performance marks arbitrarily and on many occasions employees with no negative record or concerns having been raised by their own teams will have performance strikes placed against them that ruin any chance of receiving a promotion. It's well known within corporate culture at M&T that the only reasonable way to advance or move is to leave the company and then come back at a later time. Since M&T values the acquisition of new talent so much higher than retention of current employees. If you take a job with M&T make sure you are happy with exactly what you signed up for, not what they promise you as a future state. That will not come to pass.