Company: J-P-Morgan
Date: 2017-05-08
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: current
Experience level: Senior

Loss of Salary to due to "Harmonization"
Pros: The majority of its job functions are not terribly difficult or stressful which is the only thing that makes the pay somewhat fair and tolerable.
Cons: At some point after numerous mergers and buy outs with other companies such as WaMu for example, employees have had inconsistent titles and salaries. A case in point, I worked for WaMu as a "Workflow" (Supervisor in training) for a number of years and went through the questionable buy out by Chase. Chase basically retained the majority of WaMu's employees and threw them into rolls that were "Company Essential" such as default related and some were placed into rolls that could be considered space fillers. With years of hard work and dedication promotions are typically granted to a select few who have proven themselves. I and many others were legitimately promoted and given a somewhat fair salary which included a small yet appreciated [Annual] bonus for all of our long hours of hard work. As time went on, this must have overwhelmed the system and flooded it with a hodgepodge of inconsistent salaries and made up titles/positions. A process was devised to "level the playing field" called "Harmonization". This stripped away many of our earned and well deserved titles and "Job Levels" which reduced us to hourly employees and bonus ineligible. Since then, annual pay increases have been reduced to little or nothing even though you have met or almost exceeded the expectations of management. This also included the loss of annual bonus payouts. Granted this was not true across the board. Default departments and revenue generating divisions seemed to have had grossly high sums of money at there disposal to compliment their employees with [Monthly] bonus payouts which at times exceeded their monthly salaries based on their performance. Over time the performance standard became conveniently unattainable so that bonuses were no longer paid out in such high volumes and up to now, not at all in most cases. Chase has become larger than life and extremely profitable. The often times forgotten “cogs and sprockets” that make up this vast banking machine called JPMorgan Chase & Co. are now left to fight for promotional positions that are slim to none and most often only available to the favorites of management by not alluding to the postion with everyone. At this point if “Natural Attrition” fails and if you were to look at everything going on with mortgage delinquencies slowly diminishing, smarter less risky loans being issued to customers and investments being geared towards the higher income and successful clients versus the struggling middle class work horses of America, Chase would have no choice but to lay off overstaffed departments or areas no longer deemed relevant such as Fulfillment. Oh wait….. That did happen!!! In conclusion Chase is no different from any of the other “Big” banks out there and even though Chase is a decent place to work it is and always has been geared towards making profits which in turn pleases its shareholder base. Chase places its shareholders first and bases its decisions on what best suites their needs not the needs of its employees, those putting in all the time for peanuts like Barnum and Baileys circus elephants. And we all know what happened to them.