American Express

People are great. Depending on your team, there's great work-life balance. Hybrid, virtual, and in-person options are available depending on you.

$15 free lunch, and benefits are amazing.

There's a 5% base bonus at Band 30, a 12% base bonus at Band 35 level, and an even better bonus structure at B40 and higher. Paternity and maternity leave are some of the best.

My team is in all the time zones, made worse with virtual work. We're in PST, MST, CST, EST, BST/GMT, and IST.

Having to work US hours AND make sure I can communicate with IST colleagues means some days I'm working US and India hours, and it's not sustainable. 80% it's great and I've got a decent balance, but 20% of the time it's hell. And once a week is MORE than enough for me to dread work.

Moreover, Amex has had "the best quarter yet" a few quarters in a row. We are told "we're fairly inflation proof", etc. But our budgets keep getting cut. We're down resources and have project deadlines plus last-minute work thrown at us.

Moreover, our project managers who manage project timelines and scrum resources are spread thin, and they've made them unreliable by disassociating them from the tech teams and overloading them. We are not FAANG; we are driven by business, regulatory needs, and money. We are not driven by the engineers driving the work, nor do we have the sheer monitoring and reporting infrastructure these companies have. It was a poor decision, and teams are suffering for it.

Keep in mind the type of company American Express is when looking into implementing industry "best practices".