Pros: Everyone on my team was extremely helpful, and I learned a lot from them. I could tell they genuinely cared about making sure I felt I was learning and not just pretending to look busy. A lot of networking opportunities that they encourage. If you take advantage of the coffee chats, you can learn a lot from some very intelligent engineers. They had a few fun events for interns to bond with each other and took us out for mini-golf for National Intern Day. In general, I think AMEX does really care about interns getting the most out of their experience. Almost all of the other interns also had a good time and felt like they were learning a lot. The work-life balance is pretty healthy, I would say, compared to a lot of other companies. I noticed my teammates taking many days off, and no one was looked down upon for it. They encourage everyone to actually clock out at 5. With a company so large, there is a lot of room for horizontal growth within the tech branch (many teams, many different technologies you could learn).

Cons: HR was pretty messy with onboarding for the months leading up to the internship, only emailing interns about housing options 2 months beforehand. By that point, most of us had to find housing on our own because HR ghosted us for so long and withheld other essential info. We only found out which team we were on about 2 days before the internship. It would have been nice to know a few weeks beforehand so we could get acquainted with the tech stack sooner. We were told to work on a mini-project for the first 2 weeks to get acquainted with the tech stack, only to then be told to work on that same project the rest of the internship. The internship was hybrid, but HR strongly implied that if you don't come in every day, that will put you at a disadvantage when it comes to getting a return offer. There is absolutely no chance at going remote now since the CEO put in a new mandate. While technically AMEX has 3 locations you could potentially work from (Phoenix AZ, NYC, and Sunrise FL), what they don't tell you is that 90% of all tech is in Phoenix. So, relocating to a different location is difficult unless you already live in that city. Depends on the team you're on, but the hierarchy is strong, so moving up is not that easy. The pay is on the lower end of tech, but the benefits are greater than most companies.

Pros: Lots of different teams and cool projects that employees can work on. Supposedly, as a full-time employee, it is very easy to move from position to position to find what you like to work on.

Cons: Contractors, contractors everywhere. Almost everyone on my team of ~12 were contractors brought in from overseas and had been there for less than 6 months, which made it difficult to learn from them because they were still learning themselves. When I showed up on the first day, my team had no idea why I was there, and it took over a week to even get my work machine set up, which was very annoying.

Pros: Work-life balance is great.

Cons: Pay is not as competitive.