Discover Financial

• Flexible work from home, handled COVID outstandingly
• Generous PTO
• Great benefits package
• Impressive office campus
• Diverse culture

• ZERO onboarding for new employees

There is no guidance on how to set up payroll, benefits, anything. Nor is there a comprehensive list of all perks. I was handed a laptop and shown to a desk, and had to resort to tribal knowledge from co-workers. When this point was brought up to CIO Amir Arooni during a town hall, his response was "you should ask to be onboarded." No, you should have these things in place for employees who have zero knowledge of your environment or systems. It shouldn't fall on the neophyte to navigate blindly.

• Convoluted work processes

Even simple work takes months. Teams are heavily siloed, and internal efforts are always prioritized over external. Cooperation is not the norm.

• High pressure to deliver constantly

You have to substantiate your worth every single sprint. And given the time it takes to get significant work done, this is stressful. Clear goals and planning from the top do not filter down properly to the people turning the cranks, and often time is wasted on threads that are ultimately abandoned.

Get the high-level picture clear and defined months in advance. This is a giant financial institution; it cannot be run with the agility of a start-up. The company direction should be defined prior to asking the underlying teams to deliver immediately. This is a ship without a competent navigator.

Also, for crying out loud, onboard your new employees properly! How is there no formalized orientation? And physical security doesn't count. New hires should be shown where and how to set up their payroll, where and how to sign up for insurance, etc. You've put all of that on the managers, and they're so swamped that it just falls off.