Company: J-P-Morgan
Date: 2008-11-10
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: current

WaMu - Too little, too late
Pros: WaMu/Chase may be a good place to work in the future.  The Seattle presence is winding down and largely being relocated to Columbus, Ohio and Iselin, NJ.  That is too bad since Seattle is a much nicer place to live and work.  There are a lot of bright people in both companies and there is a chance for both companies to address some of their weaknesses by pooling the best resources.  It remains to be seen how sharp Chase will actually be about doing that.
Cons: Currently, cuts will drag down opportunities for quite awhile.  Those in Columbus or willing to go there may find some opportunities. WaMu itself got caught up in the excesses of subprime and home equity mortgage originations when everything was booming and decided to expand at exactly the wrong time.  They finally decided to build teams to do the real hard analysis to support these decisions and activities, but it was too little too late.  The WaMu culture was very bureaucratic and very siloed and technology support for business lines was awful.