Company: J-P-Morgan
Date: 2017-11-13
Overall rating: 2/5
Employment status: former
Experience level: Junior

Frustrating for self-motivated devs, but easy-ride if you wish to coast
Pros: - Big company/finance sector perks

- Mostly good, friendly, genuine people

- Great campus and facilities

- Easy to transfer internally
Cons: - Heavy bureaucracy and politics to wade through

- Lots of annual review/bonus driven people. Therefore lots of one-upmanship and power grabs

- Easy to get trampled on if you don't have a backbone. 

- Mostly in-house software and processes, with non-transferrable skills to learn

- Very short-term focused delivery. Tech debt is accumulated very quickly in order to appease higher ups and annual reviews

- Technical stacks and projects are very set in their ways, but with enough immature tech thrown in the mix to become a nightmare

- Lack of T-shaped devs, very much I-shaped (poor broad technical knowledge, good in narrower areas)

- Poor Agile/Scrum implementation. Severe lack of POs/BAs. Often used as an excuse rather than a planning tool ("Remember, we're agile")

- Pressure to be in the office more than core hours, even if nothing more to be done