Company: J-P-Morgan
Date: 2012-05-04
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: current

Well run, great people, miserly pay, squalid working conditions: welcome to the Machine.
Pros: The first reason, naturally, is the name recognition:  the company gets a surprising amount of respect on the outside.  Also, and why this is remains a mystery to me, it manages to hold onto some very competent, smart, no-nonsense people.  It is an efficient, well run, and quite profitable investment bank - yet it completely lacks any kind of flashiness and the freely flowing money that you would normally associate with such a place.  The perks consist of one (1) sagging Flavia coffee machine per about 250 people.  But the vacation time is decent and they are pretty flexible about leaves of absence and working from home, etc.  And there is the job security, of course.
Cons: First off, this company is legendarily cheap.  They pay well below market rates (at least on the tech side).  The bonuses that I've experienced have been a joke - and the hours are brutal.  Though you can slide by without kissing trader's asses to get precious feedback for your reviews, and without working 7 to 9 - as long as you have no desire to ever advance or get any sort of raise.  My only guess as to how they manage to retain such smart and inexplicably devoted, hard-working people, is that they incentivise them non-monetarily by hiring a lot of people who depend on the job for their immigration status.