Pros: As a software engineer at JPMorgan Chase, you get rare scale and impact—your services touch millions and must meet stringent reliability, security, and compliance bars, which sharpens engineering discipline. Compensation and benefits are competitive, and the org invests in growth via cohort programs, internal mobility, and plentiful learning resources. The breadth of domains (payments, risk, data platforms, trading, consumer banking) lets you move across teams without leaving the company. You’ll work with robust cloud footprints and enterprise-grade tooling, and collaborate with experienced engineers who know how to ship in regulated environments.

Cons: Pace can feel slower than in startups due to layers of governance, audits, and risk reviews; “good reasons” still feel like bureaucracy when you’re trying to iterate quickly. Legacy systems and mixed tech stacks can add drag, and modernization efforts are multi-year marathons. Tooling and processes may be heavyweight, with ticket queues and change-management overhead that sap momentum. Work-life balance and hybrid flexibility vary widely by manager and line of business, so your experience is highly team-dependent; moving to a better-fit group is often the remedy rather than the rule.

Pros: Great work-life balance.

Cons: The pay is low in industry.

Pros: Flexible work schedule, great people.

Cons: Luck on what team you get put on.