Company: J-P-Morgan
Date: 2016-08-18
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: former

The worst place I’ve worked,  but I learned a lot and grew a lot
Pros: The pay is decent with bonus and they have one of the best time off policies. 
Additionally, it is a truly global company and if you are in the right position you can get a lot of exposure and experience with global projects, other cultures, and world travel.
Cons: I worked at JPMC for three and a half years and have had some form of professional employment for over 20 years with 11 post-college years. JPMC is the only job I legitimately hated on my first day, my last day, and every day in between. They will grind you down and run you into the ground. 
If you are in technology there is an army of staff whose job it is to stop you from doing your job. I was told after I quit by a former co-worker that the average tenure of a JPMC technology staff member is three years.
Every possible technology function is divided into what they call “separation of duties”. You must have excellent communication skills and the ability to build rapport with people or you will struggle when it’s time to do anything because you legitimately need all of these people to get anything done. 
Everything is a multi-month process. You can’t even get a piece of software installed without going through multiple processes to have it approved for use in the bank, “packaged”, then made available. To get software added to the allowable library you have to have approvals from 11 to 20 different groups of people (sequentially) who are under no time constraint to approve or deny your request. 

Be ready to work on weekends. Releases are only allowed on weekends. You are still required to work your 40+ on both sides of the weekend too. 

You are best served by looking for employment elsewhere. 

If you ignore my warning to find employment elsewhere and decide to work at JPMC make sure you get everything you want on the way in. They don’t give raises (though you can get a nice bonus), you aren’t allowed to transfer internally to a higher grade if you work in technology, and promotions aren’t handled by your management or any one in your chain of management. It’s done by a committee once a year (and only once a year). Your boss has to recommend you, several people you work with must write positive reviews about you, and then to actually make it happen your boss needs to play a political game with the managers who are on the committee.  You also aren’t allowed to be submitted for the promotions until you’ve sat at a certain level for a minimum of three years. It doesn’t matter if you are doing the job of a XYZ. You will do that job at whatever grade you are at.