Company: J-P-Morgan
Date: 2019-07-09
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Junior

Welcome to the machine
Pros: - Great team 

- People are usually nice and helpful

- Good benefits

- Work life balance could be worse

- Central location
Cons: - Huge, it's almost inhuman. Too many people, you don't know who does what

- Bureaucratic

- Death by meetingitis... 

- ... if you're not laid off before. Everyone is afraid for their job. Exciting to know that the stock price is at an all time high right now...

- The technology IS terrible. Too many mergers and acquisitions have turned this thing into some monster, with over 25k different systems. Thankfully, things start to change. However, it will take a while before an acceptable level is reached

- Atrocious open spaces, where you can't focus. Bonus: the "nice" colleagues making their phone calls while walking the alleys and annoying everyone around, in addition to...

- Jackhammer noise in the building for months (+ the colleagues making their phone calls 1m away from you)

- No communication whatsoever between the different pods/teams. Not even hellos/goodbyes. (I've never seen that anywhere else)

- Too political: you need to find sponsors to be promoted, whatever "find sponsors" means

- Your role (Directors vs the rest) often determines how you can talk to others

- Due to the extreme turnover, no surprise that New Joiners have their own status and that the notice period is the shortest on the market (2 months, vs 3 months in 99% of this country's companies)

- Extreme political correctness: politicized mailings every day, intranet posts everywhere. I've even witnessed a top executive promote her cause in one of the company's several (business only) chatrooms