Open-aired H.M.S. Vanguard ship theme has degraded into a stuffy Russian Submarine.
Pros
FYI: The CEO is now William McNabb, not Brennan as this site still says. Upper management is seriously concerned about the shareholder in general and will do nearly anything to serve them while keeping well within the bounds of high ethical conduct that is expected from those with fiduciary duties. Training is prized and supported from the top to the bottom as well as with their budget through "Vanguard University" located on their Intranet site as well as physically on their main campus. The caliber of people working at Vanguard (referred to as "crew") is surprisingly high and refreshing. Competitively, the company is on top of its game in terms of service, value, & low cost. Don't be surprised if Vanguard is the new #1 financial company as the markets continue to exhibit 'normal instability'. Generally, there are many opportunities to move laterally in the company. Historically, Vanguard has offered relatively good job security. In 2001, when the markets went south, they didn't have massive layoffs, but first got rid of all contractors before starting to get rid of crew through attrition and harder performance evaluations using a competitive, "graded-on-the-curve" year-end evaluation stem. The same applies today.
Cons
It's a very different company from the one that Jack Bogle started many years ago. The posts talking about poor middle management are, for the most part true, yet there are a few good managers. Your experience working at Vanguard depends a lot on which manager you work for. There are both good and bad. Try to get the inside scoop on any manager from a current or former employee before signing up for any position. In the past, Vanguard has been accused of getting rid of older, higher-paid employees while hiring younger employees whom they can pay cheaper while sticking them on their newer "partnership tables" that don't give new employees the quicker and more lucrative "partnership payout" in June that more senior employees have enjoyed in the past. While capping the Partnership bonus at 33% for most crew, upper management, in an act of quiet hypocrisy, has enjoyed no cap on their payout. In 2009, the company made changes to their compensation plan, drastically cutting the "partnership payout" while increasing all employees' base salary by 25% of their last partnership payout. While this temporarily gives employees a pay increase during 2009, it clearly puts more control of the compensation and bonus pay back into the hands of upper management. Most crew will take home much less money in 2010 due to this change. Even with more “bonus money” available, management is now not as obligated to pay bonus to anyone, as it is now more an individual and private affair, which takes away any transparency at the lowest crew levels, thus only a manager would know if anyone in a group gets paid a bonus. Big brother is alive and well at Vanguard. Because of government regulation and the prevalence of possible data/ID theft, Vanguard has gone overboard with its electronic eavesdropping on its employees and tracks everything an employee does on any computer using various tracking software and tools (like Digital Guardian by Verdasys). The message here is, "you may work here, but we don't trust you." Have no expectation of privacy; especially at Vanguard as their Information Security department tracks everything you do like bloodthirsty piranhas. They will at-least alert your manager of any activity they deem incongruent to the policy and have commonly just notified HR without any manager’s knowledge prior to your termination within the hour. In their IT department, because of the security access setup, projects and system maintenance usually always rely on requests to groups with more security to get things done, thus adding cost and slowing down project work, and/or maintenance work while increasing project turn-around times. The dress code is stuck in the 1970s complete with white shirts, ties, and full suits in most business areas with only “business casual” dress allowed on Fridays; although the dress code is usually relaxed during the summer months and casual dress is still used as an award for certain groups or individuals in lieu of goods or money. As mentioned in another post, Vanguard seems to constantly be reinventing the improvement process using different buzz words and programs, but their six-sigma based VUE (Vanguard Unmatchable Excellence) program is likely to stay, driving their need to rely heavily on electronic work request queues. This gives management more control over employee workloads while feeding stats for VUE. The overall theme is CONTROL. Vanguard management (and the company) is very control-oriented. Sadly, the culture depicting a wonderful open-aired HMS Vanguard boat continues to morph into a stuffy Communist nuclear submarine!
