Pros
Overall, I enjoyed most of my time at Travelers. I think Travelers has solid work life balance & they have a lot of great people working here. They have a lot of legacy tech and usually lag by a few years before adopting new technologies. Each line of business and manager makes a big difference in quality of work life. Some managers I had were great, they genuinely cared about me as a person and wanted me to succeed. Other managers I had seemed to focus more on business, less on the personal side of development which resulted in more stressful working conditions. Work Life Balance - Work life balance here is solid. Most areas respect your time off and don't expect you to work overtime to get the job done. After all, it's an insurance company. Training - The training within the company differs depending on the line of business you fall into. Some lines of business have great training and pair programming objectives. Others expect you to figure it out on your own, even though they assure you that they will provide time and resources for training. The toughest part of Travelers is learning the myriad of internal processes they’ve created. There are many hoops to jump through when attempting to deliver a technology solution here. Pay and Benefits - The benefits are sub-par from what I've witnessed from competing companies. Pay is also lower than competitors. 401k match is dollar for dollar up to 5% which is a plus. Travelers has done extremely well over the last two years, but despite doing so well, bonuses were minimal and raises were below inflation. There's no incentive to outperform here. You'll potentially see an extra .5% salary increase if you do. Promotions – Travelers, across the board for lines of businesses, tends to be very stingy for promoting engineers. They ALWAYS hire externally for managerial positions. I've witnessed maybe 2 or 3 people being promoted to a managerial position from the SE job family. Most managers you’ll encounter haven’t written much code, if any, in their life. Culture - The culture is good - for the most part. The people at Travelers are great. That's what's kept me around for so long. With that being said, the culture can get very, very annoying at times. Travelers is left leaning politically. You are expected to attend meetings related to whatever left topic they have on the plate for that quarter/month/week. To be considered for a managerial promotion, you must participate and be vocal in these initiatives. Return to office – Unless you’re hired fully remote or have a valid HR excuse (very tough to get approved) to stay home, Travelers implemented a mandatory 3-day work week in their offices. When in the office, it’s ¼ full at most. Larger cities where Travelers offices are located have a much higher crime rate vs. two years ago.
Cons
Benefits, salary, return to office, some managers