Goldman Sachs

Smart people around. Good perks. Well regarded.

Constant and high workload.

Most tech is old and boring.

Most projects are meaningless, just done for the sake of meeting regulations with quality not being important. See recent fines they received because of this.

The 360 review is a joke, an opportunity to backstab colleagues anonymously and get their bonus.

Lots of old-timers, people who joined the company from university and stayed with the company ever since (10-20 years). They have domain knowledge but dated tech knowledge. It's quite difficult to get promoted over them, since they have connections.

Can't invest money yourself in the stock market without manager approval. Even then, it only allows you to buy certain whitelisted funds.

Forces you to sell your individual stocks when you join, which caused me to miss earnings since I had to sell my Tesla stocks.

You can't do anything without their approval: public talks, blogs, writing an app or website, side businesses, or tutoring. All needs to be approved by the company.

Modest to no pay raises in years, with different excuses.

Brought in an external MD with a bad attitude and aggressive behavior. They are rarely available, don't reply to messages, and are technically inept, though branded as an expert in the field. Many people left or moved teams. There is no way to give feedback.

Average salaries, despite what you're made to believe.

Poor working tools: virtual Windows boxes, remote desktop, and flaky Xming into Linux from Windows OS.

Barebone servers with command-line access in production for most teams. Poor and dated internal tools: Conductor, SecDB, Pure, etc.

Gitlab deployment does not cope with the load; jobs fail and take forever.

SVN is widely used.

Few teams use cloud technologies.

No laptop, no budget for training, WFH chairs, or equipment.

Business looks down on tech; tech people are second-class citizens.

Every opportunity is used to lower costs: open offices in Birmingham, Stockholm for Europe, other small cities in the US, and moving work to India.

Who cares? Despite 4 weeks' notice, I had no exit interview, so they don't care.