Pros
The name. I thought it would be a great company to have on my resume. Work environment. This was my first job out of college and it was really nice to see the young work environment. Most of the employees are fresh out of college, which makes it a lot less intimidating. Beautiful new office. The office is very nice and is right on the inner harbor. Every person basically has a view.
Cons
Where to begin... Well I will start off by saying that the work is extremely dull. The work basically requires the intellectual capacity of a high school student. Once you learn your group's systems that's it, you become a drone. I was fortunate enough to work in one of the very few groups that gets to speak to clients, but based on the other groups my fellow analysts were in, there was little to no client interaction. One of the biggest cons about working here is the salary. First year analysts get a starting salary of 40k, which is unbelievably below the average salary for the financial services industry. There is no bonus and from what I was told the salary bumps upon promotion are negligible (ie. Analyst I to Analyst II, etc.) The training class that all analysts have to go through was yet another disappointment. It was basically an intro to finance class that lasted a couple weeks (topics such as: what is a stock, what is a bond). I guess I was expecting a more in depth class on financial markets rather than Finance 101. Lastly, this is an operations role. Most people I worked with said they had dreams of working in the front office one day and they took this job as a starting point to move up the ladder. This is a pipe dream. During my exit interview, the HR associate told me that they rarely if ever promote someone to the front office from the back office (which is what the Baltimore office is). Front office recruiting is very structured and 99.9% of front office analysts are recruited out of college. I think Morgan Stanley kind of misleads a lot of people into thinking that if you are successful in the back office then you can vertically move to the front office. I never saw any proof of this happening and it was further solidified by the HR associate who performed my exit interview. All in all the biggest disappointment with Morgan Stanley in Baltimore was the little incentive to work hard. If you were an Analyst I you had to be in that role for exactly 1 year, no matter how hard you worked or how much extra responsibility you took on. There are no bonuses for Analysts so most work the bare minimum (rightfully so).
