M&T Bank reviews

This place is miserable. Engineering skills will not matter one bit. Being political is what matters. During my laughable time here, I was subjected to endless meetings and political theatre, where I had to "be on" every moment. At no point during my tenure here did any engineering accomplishments matter. All that ever mattered was how well I "got along with others" and how much "I made other people like me." The work didn't matter at all. Zero lines of code, a million lines of code, miraculous problem solving, or taking down a whole system down - none of THAT mattered. What did matter? The small talk, the "relationship building," the putting on an act of convincing others you are smart. That is what matters. The moment you make one person dislike you, even on a different team, you are done. Monday-Friday, I was subjected to meetings where everyone danced around vague discussions of nonsense and everyone provoked one another on the stupidest topics possible so they could get a rise from them and fire them because "forced attrition" is a massive part of this company (look it up). This whole "attrition/stacked ranking" thing is from the self-proclaimed uber genius CTO who ripped it off from Capital One in DC. Good luck with that in sad small Buffalo. I'm so angry at myself for believing the tech fraudulent promises here. There are two distinct categories of people here across the board. The ones who have been here less than one year, and those who are lifers. The lifers are everywhere and their only goal is to oust the new people who actually want to do the whole "change" thing. I was here less than a year and in that time, over ten engineers I worked with left because how sorry this place is. I witnessed all the lifer snakes sabotage the ones who "left" (canned). Engineers, do yourself a solid and PASS - you're missing nothing and actually saving yourself unnecessary stress, a pothole in your resume, and attempted indoctrination into a really messed up organization. Discrimination also runs rampant here, especially among minorities and the disabled. One colleague of mine was fired while on medical leave. HR is out to fire you for anything. They want to advertise "1000 engineering jobs" when in actuality it's more like 100 new jobs, 900 endlessly rotating out, and of those 100 that stuck, they played the political game and are doing nothing but furthering the toxic suck. This place is just awful.

Work-life balance sucks. We are in meetings all day every day, we all joke that M&T stands for Meet and Talk. Agile project management hasn't helped that. Managers average 55 - 65 hours per week, and are now being asked to start earlier in the day and work weekend hours to support the People's United acquisition. Frequent performance management and nine box meetings on employee performance at all levels of technology. If you work on a struggling project, work in an operations position, or aren't known by other managers, then you are at risk of job elimination. This has a serious negative impact on culture. Funny thing is that some of our management tells employees they have to relocate, even from other cities, but they won't do it themselves and still work in places where M&T doesn't even have a footprint. All employees are required to relocate to the new Technology Hub, our CIO's pet project. Senior management won't listen to concerns about quality of life, family issues, transportation, and other issues that come up. Team management will defer to senior management, who defer to the Admin VPs, who defer to the GVPs, who defer to the CIO and say 'if they don't like it then they can find another job'. He wants to hire college graduates, but that dream hasn't worked out yet either. The developer tech hub isn't delayed by Covid, it is delayed by reputation and mismanagement. We have lost hundreds of great employees over the past two years. We have eliminated many critical positions, eliminated some of the best leaders, and are now scrambling to get things done. We all need the same resources for multiple projects and when that one person leaves we are dead in the water. The culture is to only report good news on projects so we hide the bodies until it is too late. The only thing we hope for is the project will be reassigned before anyone finds out what the hold-up is. I have seen so many people change over the past few years. They are not happy or excited. We were (quietly) asked to create positive reviews for the company to offset negative ones. I will probably get put in the 8 or 9 box if tie this back to me but I really don't care anymore. I see how much happier my coworkers are in other companies and think that might be the best thing for me and my family. It was so much better a few years ago. I am currently looking for a new job, but am paid well enough that it is tough to find a management job at that level of pay in the Buffalo area. The last one I interviewed for went to a friend of mine at M&T, they had 4 candidates from M&T besides me too. I wish I had someone at M&T to share this with, but my manager doesn't care and either does her manager. They are upwardly focused even though they talk about Servant Leadership and how focused they are on employees. They aren't.