Company: J-P-Morgan
Date: 2014-04-19
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Junior

Poor Company Culture
Pros: Fast paced environment; always something to be done; looks great on a resume; lots of potential for learning new aspects of the mortgage business; great benefits and perks; lots of potential for lateral moves and promotions; over time availability
Cons: The leadership at the supervisory (and above) is very spotty. In some departments you will have great higher-ups who actively get involved in the individual successes of their teams; while in others you have a culture of stagnation and disinterest in anything other than the bottom line. Having a supervisor who cares very little for your career growth makes it difficult to give all that you can.
Favoritism is also a large problem. I worked in two different departments and I have noticed that both of the supervisors for these departments will play favorites and rain praise and awards down onto the heads of their chosen few, allowing them to get away with many things that would get a lesser person fired or chewed out. This makes securing the team lead position is very problematic, because oftentimes those who are best for the job, but not the favorites, will get pushed to the sidelines during the application and interview process. 
Gossip and general sophomoric behavior runs rampant in throughout the location. It is especially prominent in areas in which there is very little direct supervision (my area). Employees will constantly be standing around and talking about a myriad of topics- many of them have no place in a professional environment, and despite the number of times I have brought it to the attention of management, the problems never get solved, and a band-aid of red tape gets applied for a few months. A prime example of sophomoric behavior is the constant presence of trash (empty drink bottles and candy wrappers) that get left behind by employees too lazy to pick one of the 14 trash bins located within the secure work area. This has prompted many halfhearted bans on food and drink within this area, yet, the problem never seems to get solved for more than a few months at a time.
All of these problems lead to a culture of disinterest in the very policies that attempt to guide the company in the correct direction. A prime and, to me, most telling example of this very disinterest is the recent case of an employee who for two years brought his cellphone into the secure area and took pictures of himself in the bathroom, then posted them to his facebook. We are not allowed to have anything that has a camera or could be used to store private customer information on our person when we enter the work-floor and especially not when we enter the file storage area. This is a security violation of the first order and is generally a fire-able offense simply because that person has now potentially exposed sensitive customer information to the world. The violator of this policy got a slap on the wrist from HR and is still walking around, doing very little work and most likely still taking selfies in the bathrooms.