Bank of America

A great first step and a career notch on your CV. You won't be changing the world here, or even remotely close, but it gives you a good sense of confidence and a good sense of workplace practices if you are fresh out of college.

Great work-life balance, though very family-oriented. There is a clear preference in terms of flexibility for people with families, which is a little unfair, but at least it is there. A nice place to retire in. You can get lucky with teams also, as some teams are great and some teams are hell. Expect late nights and weekends now and then due to incredibly inefficient release processes in some cases.

Plenty of encouragement for career advancement, but then when you tick all the boxes, it's not enough. Be prepared to walk if you want to move up. It's a giant corporation and has all the attributes of one, so a little push and pull is needed to get to where you want to be.

Great community spirit. The Bank does a lot for the local community and is really heavily involved with philanthropic efforts. Even if it is just for PR, it does benefit the country.

Hard work and exceptional talent don't really count as much as they should.

Spend time and money rejuvenating old, redundant processes and let developers focus on development, not bureaucracy.

As a company, the bank tries desperately to think and move like a tech company, but ultimately, stiffened regulations and fear of change from senior management bring good development and projects to a halt. Additionally, there are just an awful amount of mediocre developers just doing enough to survive, and this leads to a lot of frustration and costly meetings where good developers are driven to agree to the majority rule.

There's no realization for the power of open-source technology.

Time is seen as the only real measure of experience, not performance.

Respect, endorse, and appropriately compensate the most pragmatic people, or they will leave and give the competition a greater edge.

Stop believing that just because it requires hard work and risk, it is a no-go option. Change is good.