Goldman Sachs

The benefits package is excellent. You can even get reimbursed for fitness expenses (gym membership, etc.) since they don't have a fitness center on site.

You get to work with some very smart, motivated people. In spite of what I say in the "cons" section, I liked most of the people I worked with.

Everyone works overtime every week. See below for more details.

Goldman Sachs will own you. Whatever Goldman Sachs asks of you, it will never be too much. I find it interesting that no one complained out loud; taking abuse without complaint was part of the culture.

Technologies used are very old. Updating them won't happen anytime soon.

The firm has very little interest in increasing developers' technology/programming skills. You will sometimes feel more like a business analyst than a programmer.

Developers have to spend a ridiculous amount of time in meetings. Most of these you will call into, since most attendees will be in other locations. Much of the time you will have nothing to say and will learn nothing from the meetings.

Email volume is huge. I spent tons of time reading emails (not just automated alerts, etc. but actual emails written by humans).

Most development teams are split geographically, often with some team members in India. Projects are often divided among developers in India and the U.S., and it's easy to imagine how that would be counterproductive. You only get an hour or two of overlap first thing in the morning where you can discuss project issues with India. Sometimes those India team members call you when they arrive in the morning, India time, for updates - this means late at night calls for you.

Everyone is expected to be in the office by 7:00 am or 7:30 at the latest, and those arriving late are sometimes told off.

Just because you arrive at work early every day, don't expect to leave early. Quitting time is 4:30 or 5:00, and that's if you're not working late.

Every project, every email, every issue is SUPER urgent. This means developers are constantly being pressured to get software released, and routinely need to stay late in order to get things done. The quality of the software suffers as a result.

When there is a software release, a developer from each team (whether his team is releasing anything or not) has to stay in the office until the release is done and they can verify their teams' software is working correctly. This can be until after 9:00 pm. And don't think you can come in late that morning; you will probably still be expected to arrive at 7:00 am.

The global nature of the firm makes worldwide meetings a pain for Salt Lake folks. These meetings are sometimes scheduled at 6:00 or 6:30 am, and you will be required to attend.

Evening and weekend work is a regular thing for many teams. If you are asked to work on a holiday, it's likely you won't get a comp day to make up for it.

Frequent after-hours phone calls from Production Control for a variety of reasons (nearly always false alarms) - you get these calls regardless of whether you are actually on call.

Work is not very interesting. The way things work at Goldman, even very small software enhancements can require lots of coordination between many teams, and months' worth of work.

Most teams' software is mainly written in stored procedures, not Java or some other "real" programming language.

What Java code they do have is badly written. I think this is partly because the developers are used to writing stored procedures.

Everyone bows down and worships higher-level management when they come visit. I always found this funny. Once we were asked to clean up our desk areas in anticipation of somebody's visit.

Work environment is really bad. Lots of people crammed into very large rooms.

You can't check your personal email at work. This is due to SEC regulations, I believe, but it's a pain.

There is a lot of big talk about bonuses during the interview process, but for me and others I talked to, we were unimpressed by our bonuses.

Everything requires lots of approvals. Sometimes things get delayed because management didn't bother to approve.

There has been some difficulty retaining people hired locally in Salt Lake City (as opposed to those who have transferred from NYC).

I believe this is mostly due to a lack of work/life balance, which tends to be very important to most Utahns.

The work/life balance isn't likely to improve anytime soon, so Goldman just needs to start hiring people that don't mind the long hours.