HSBC

The people! It is a very diverse, multicultural, and multinational environment.

You do most of your interaction via video and audio conferences (at least in IT), and you often have no idea which city some of the people on calls are in. It could be India, the US, Switzerland, China – you name it.

You need to grow your network and get your name known for good, positive work. This will help you get good feedback and increase your performance review.

People listen to anyone with good, strong, and sound ideas. Given the size of the organization, not a lot of emphasis is placed on seniority, and you can quite happily engage with people several bands above and below you. Just learn to treat everyone with dignity and respect, be brilliant at what you do, and you can make a name for yourself!

You are not likely to get promoted unless you are very junior. The career bands are very protected, and you have to be exceptional to get moved from GCB 5 to 4, and a god to move from GCB 4 to 3.

Bonuses and pay remuneration have been quite suppressed lately, especially if you are a 40% taxpayer. I had no pay rise for 3 years running with a "strong" rating.

If you are an average employee (70% of the population), you will get a "strong" rating. "Strong" is just average – that's it.

No matter how clever you are or how hard you work, it is very hard to get recognized as "top", unless you are well-connected and spend more time influencing than working. I have found this quite unfair, as the people recognized are generally the loudest rather than the best.

With interest rates already going up a quarter point and set to rise again, the remuneration and bonus situation could change.

The HSBC strategy of maintaining "positive jaws" (revenue must grow faster than costs every year) can sometimes cause people several layers below the CEO to make poor decisions. In any company, the net profit should be allowed to fluctuate naturally due to market conditions.

Rigorous cost cutting comes at the expense of increased risk and reputational impact due to lower quality services.

In IT, the number of downtime events has been steadily increasing due to the lack of knowledge in newer offshore resources, meaning poorer quality work such as testing of changes, etc. More care needs to be taken when exiting staff to ensure that the overall cost to the company does not paradoxically increase due to knowledge drain.

Reputational impact can have a marked effect on profitability, and thus getting rid of key knowledge workers from higher cost locations such as the UK is false economy. The UK has some of the best IT staff in the world.

We have tried hiring top IT staff in many regions, and the UK has been the only location where we have been able to consistently hire and keep the best minds. Other companies are currently benefitting from HSBC's layoffs, taking their wealth of knowledge with them to help others build their competitive advantage.