This is strictly a review on the Arizona locations and the client relationship role. I've "heard" that the east coast locations are a little different of a feel when compared to Arizona.
I feel a little bad for posting this because the negative out weighs the positive. I've tried to be fair, I even waited several months after leaving Vanguard to write this review to attempt to remove emotion. But this is my honest experience:
Vanguard has a great product from an investors stand point. It's the lowest cost out there. But low costs internally isn't as good for the employee. As one former coworker put it, "it's like eating at my favorite restaurant, I just wish I never would've stepped foot in the kitchen."
1. Not one person that I knew personally wanted to stay for the long term-this is including people who were "distinguished"-Vanguards best rating in year end performance reviews.
2. Work life balance is a pro but it's also because you need it. Arizona locations are basically large call centers. Over my time they seemed to get more and more understaffed (to keep costs down). You take call after call over and over. It gets old really fast. (I work more in my current job and don't feel as drained when I come home each day). People that were at the company 15 years, waiting to retire would say that it gradually gets worse and worse as they try to continue to lower costs.
4. PTO-you have a decent amount of PTO-that's a pro. During the few years I was there I never got any days within two weeks of Christmas off. November and December are extremely hard to get days off. It carries over into the next year during tax season as well. I struggled actually finding the days off that I wanted to take off.
5. Lack of Transparency-This is probably more a personal con, because I prefer it. But upper management lacks transparency. Example: They did a reorganization and cited that it was to be more consistent globally (which I believe is true). But it caused a good amount of workers in AZ to not get year end bonus's anymore and get less of a bonus during their annual partnership. Most employees knew it was also to drive costs down, but management seems to try and skirt around areas like that often.
6. Employee feedback-they do a "crew views" every year. Employees solicit feedback and do a survey to rate engagement. Scores are broken down to teams and we meet to discuss them. We attempt to come up with plans for the year on how to improve them. While this is great-each year I was there no progress was ever made. We would come up with ideas and try things but it never seemed to make upper management actually address things. While I agree the employee can affect their own engagement, it's partially up to the leaders to drive it as well.
Their is also an pattern of a large group getting hired in a short amount of time. These guys are here a couple of months when they take the survey. They push up this score-which management seems to rely on. On average it goes down significantly during year 2 of employment after they've actually experience the job. These employees leave, new guys come in and it goes up again. Management says look employee engagement has gone up. They've never had a lay off-it's because their employees leave themselves.
7. Technology-we had the oldest Windows operating system until the very last day Microsoft said they were supporting the system. (2 trillion dollar company). Computers froze multiple times a day, had to restart-it would frustrate clients because systems were so slow. We were tracked on client experience via survey scores-but didn't have the tools to actually do our job.
We would actually find glassdoor reviews (always ones that were negative towards Vanguard) and pass them around and say "finally" a true review of our role here.
If you don't know if you want to be in Finance, be patient and keep looking. If you do want to be in Finance I've heard Fidelity and Schwabb are a little more "salesy" but they also have higher average employee reviews. Vanguard has a better product, but internally I have no idea how they compare. Disclaimer: I no longer work in personal finance.
