HSBC

Brand Value and Good Learning Resources (although the second point is given by almost all big organizations).

Following are the list of cons, as per my experience, with scenarios for you to decide:

1. Poor Work-Life Balance: I was working as a Software Engineer in a Department of HSBC, wherein they followed mostly traditional waterfall project management models to run projects. These are not efficient compared to other project management techniques like Agile (Scrum, XP) in terms of managing project timelines, scope updates during projects, and mainly over-utilizing resources (team members). Hence, it leads to a poor work-life balance for the team members.

2. Pay Not Up to Expectations: As per my tenure there, hikes are pretty low (around 3-4% pa).

3. Biased Management: I was hired as a graduate, and they hired for two types of profiles (Strikers - 7 LPA and Acers - 16 LPA). The distinction they made was Strikers were meant to give basic support in projects, while Acers were meant to give basic support and play lead roles in projects. But in practice, the type of work Strikers and Acers did was pretty much the same (really no difference in these two profiles apart from pay). Also, in the next appraisal cycle, Acers got a pretty good hike (around 20-30%), while Strikers got a pretty low hike (around 2-3%), creating a further gap in their pays. Hence, the management is biased, and I didn't really understand their basis for this discrimination.

4. Not Much to Learn in a Long-Run Career Perspective: The department where I worked used pretty obsolete technologies like AS/400 and Mainframes, which are still used in many banks due to security and other reasons. But as an individual, you won't get much to learn and grow compared to the fast-growing technologies in the software industry. Also, as per my experience, the bank is not much ready to evolve to better technologies so easily (I don't know why?). But as an individual, you won't evolve here.

5. Bad Work Environment in Terms of People (This is just based on my experience): The team where I worked was not that efficient in having healthy discussions internally or contributing to solve problems (it was mostly copy-pasting others' work). Also, there was too much individualism (depending on one individual) instead of collective collaboration (team owning the task) for any task. There was no cross-collaboration across teams (I don't know, maybe because of too many complicated rules/processes to communicate across teams). Lastly, bad office politics like blaming each other, not having healthy discussions, misuse of power among the hierarchy, and senior management not being helpful to resolve employees' concerns.

Following are my suggestions to management and the company as a whole:

1. Try to follow project management strategies like Agile in most of your projects.

2. Do not make biased decisions while hiring candidates and giving appraisals.

3. Improve your tech stack.

4. Maintain a healthy work environment because mental health is more important than wealth. Train people in soft skills and reduce unnecessary processes.