American Express

Work-life balance and benefits are on par with the banking/financial industry, but salaries are hit or miss. If you sell yourself short coming into the company, it's going to be difficult to obtain industry norms.

They've gone from a relatively cautious, adverse organization to pretending like they're some bleeding-edge Silicon Valley powerhouse. Some fresh-out-of-college "consultant" recommendations are rewriting the core authorization platform (currently written in Assembly language) in Go, and leadership is taking it under serious consideration. LOL!!! Really?

Again, they're trying to be something they're not, and that spells disaster for the "workers" that have to "tow the line" to meet unrealistic demands while dealing with constant reorgs and cost-cutting initiatives. It used to be that Lead Programmer Analysts should be SMEs and team leaders that didn't code much at all. Now, even the VPs are expected to be able to write code and pass coding exams if applying from outside of the company, and that is just a tad ridiculous.

One thing holds true: AMEX is a GREAT place to work.....IF you end up in the right group.