Pros
BENEFITS, benefits, benefits. If you are a middle-aged person looking for overall great benefits this is the place for you. -20 days off (to start) and then you gain a day every 3 years until you are eventually capped at 35 days or so. You have the option to buy a week of PTO as well. So your first year you could have 25 days off, which is unheard of. -Work/Life Balance. You only work 37.5 hours/week with no weekend work. You can leave work without stress or having to worry about staying until 11pm to finish a project. -14% 401(k) match with 6 year vesting schedule. If you are willing to stick around for 6 years that's an excellent deal.
Cons
-The actual job. If you get placed into RIG or "Retail" you are nothing more than someone to answer the phone. Your day become monotonous doing the same thing over and over and over every day. You log in at 8 am crush 10-25 phone calls a day and log out at 4pm. You have to listen to clients moan and groan about how someone in some other department told them completely wrong information and now they are down your throat to fix it. -Determining promotions. Purely based off of how well you interview. You can be the best in the department at the day to day functions of the role, but if you don't interview well, you aren't going to get a promotion. I have seen first hand guys who kill it at their job and are more than capable of moving to a higher position, not get the job. You HAVEEEE to network (which happens anywhere), but you have to start 6 months in advance to get a leg up. -Recognition. Most companies hand out bonuses to their top performers (even if its a small 2k-5k...it's still extra cash). Vanguard recently restructured pay grades and eliminated bonuses for many roles, making up the excuse that it will now be easier to get a promotion which it's not (see above). Instead, they handed out FLAGS! Yellow flags to be hung on your cube that shows the department "you are a hero to our clients...". THIS COMPANY IS SO CHEAP IT HURTS. Lets do some quick math for recognition...Let's say 10 people get recognized a quarter for excellent work and they receive 250 bucks. That's $2,500 a quarter or $10,000 a year in "recognition money". On a 3.2 TRILLION (with a T) that isn't even a drop in the bucket. But nope. Here's a Flag. -Culture. Vanguard is the big softie on the football field. Clearly the largest, strongest kid by far but instead of working hard and showing off its talent (to the employees) it goes into the game and gets pushed around by smaller less talented kids. Vanguard tries to foster "The best place to work" but has come up short on so many occasions. There is a reason why so many employees have left over the last 2 years and why no one is posting for roles internally. In Charlotte, TIAA is a Vacuum of Vanguard workers, literally taking 10's of employees every week. People know that they are going to have to work a little bit harder, but they are going to be compensated MUCH more.