HSBC

1. Size - HSBC stands tall as one of the top 10 banks in the world (by total assets), which you could take pride in.

2. Salary - Foreign banks are among the best paymasters across all industries. They usually pay at the higher end compared to most other companies. HSBC is no different.

3. Appraisals - They have excellent pay-outs at the time of appraisals, which are mostly in double digits (>10%).

4. Bonus - Again, foreign banks offer the best pay-outs for performance bonuses. At HTI, this is usually 1 to 2 times the monthly salary and is paid in March each year.

5. Work-life balance - Superb in most cases. Work from Home (WFH) - As every employee is issued a laptop, WFH is a trend here. Taking WFH once or twice a month is absolutely normal.

6. Holidays - One is entitled to 30 days of privileged leaves in a year, in addition to 4 public holidays, totaling 34 leaves. There are also sick leaves, which one can avail up to 10 days a year. No other leave is allotted for festive occasions like Holi, Eid, Diwali, X'mas, etc. However, one is free to take leaves on those occasions from their leave balance. Also, out of the 30 privileged leaves, one must take 10 days (equivalent to 2 weeks) of mandatory vacation in one stretch, which is called core leave at HSBC. One can take the core leave anytime of the year. The best part is that at HSBC, everyone is bound to consume 30 privileged leaves in a year, as there is no mechanism to carry forward remaining leaves to the next financial year. So, one gets to be away from work for a good amount of time, unlike in many other organizations.

1. Lately, promotions have become slow at HTI.

There is no certain timeline for a person to get promoted. One could take 3–5 years (or even more) to get promoted, wherein a lot depends on the manager and the kind of team one is in.

1. As HTI has no external clients and it works only for the HSBC group, there are only a few on-shore opportunities, unlike many IT companies.