Company: J-P-Morgan
Date: 2011-05-29
Overall rating: 3/5
Employment status: current

Steady ride in the Suburban among Wall Street's sports cars
Pros: JPMC survived the financial crisis as arguably world's top investment bank and all-around financial services company, stronger and more respectable than before - while its stock price barely rippled thru the market turmoils.  This will tell you a lot about the company culture.  The company captains battle the storms, while you only need to focus on rowing the ship and carrying out the orders.  Company policies and culture are well-established, while compensation packages are generous - pension, legal plan, and support for domestic partners.  You work on systems that support millions of trades, billions of capital, and business around the world.  Opportunities for internal openings are many, and each department can work on a different set of architecture and technology.
Cons: Flip side of a Fortune-100 behemoth - things move slowly and it's easy to lose your place in the giant machine.  For the relative job security, you will not see the mind-blowing bonuses at some of the Wall St. rock stars.  You are more likely to be working with mature mainstream technologies rather than the hot up-to-the-minute tech fad - although at a massive scale.  In addition, you are expected to support company deadlines and production issues like a good soldier - weekends or holidays.  Projects are often committed, before the schedule and resources are worked out in reverse.  Then people start scrambling to meet the deadline.

There's quite a bit of politics like in most large organizations.  In addition, you'll often feel like you are in Bangalore or Singapore, with people chatting and even working in Asian languages.