Company: J-P-Morgan
Date: 2012-04-29
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: former

Decent paycheck.  Soul-sucking experience with little gained.
Pros: Pay was adequate, schedule flexibility/time off good.  Management really did not seem to care, so it was easy to come and go as one pleased.  This had the advantage of making it easy to leave early for something and stay extra the next day.  Obvious disadvantage is that some people worked roughly 2 hours a day.  This was a disadvantage to me because when fellow employees underperformed management would just reallocate their work load.
Cons: Incompetent management.  Infinite red tape - corporate bureaucracy at its most insane.  The HR department insulated horrible coworkers from getting fired/transferred/demoted/etc.  Intra-office politics controlled promotions (and therefore raises) as opposed to work ethic, fresh ideas, and motivation.  If any thing, these latter categories were frowned upon because in order to implement good ideas then things would change.  If things changed, then the day-to-day become more efficient and transparent.  If that happens, then the management has to ask others to change what they do.  People from generation X and up hate to change stuff.  They get angry.  Even if it is something like "rather than printing everything out, save it as a pdf on the network drive."  They foam at the mouth and yell at you.  It was insane.  I attribute all of this to the corporate culture there.  I've worked at other places where everyone expects changes to happen and everyone welcomes greater efficiency and transparency and motivation.  The culture there was like a 1960s, protestant, stubborn, selfish, I'm-just-doing-what-I'm-told, deference to protocol/policy, bureaucratic, litigious, and terrible.  Furthermore, from a practical stand point, there weren't enough rest rooms.  It was god awful.  I don't believe that the company doesn't care about its employees.  I just think that the concept of *considering* your employees has never crossed their mind.  They employ you, give you a cubicle, your manager gives you work to do, and that's it.  So, they don't purposely do this... but it is b/c that company is exactly the mega-corporate giant you see in movies like hudsucker proxy or something.  Unreal.