JPMorgan Chase

You can coast and do just fine if you're satisfied with the status quo. If you're highly motivated, there's lots of room for growth. Just make sure you find the right team who are aware of your contributions. The pay is ok.

The engineering talent available is not very good. It's difficult to find exceptional engineers who are truly good at what they do and care about their craft. If you're good at what you do, you can easily stand out, though.

The politics, as most others say, is very real. Top-level decisions are often made due to politics instead of maximizing end-user/business value. You can easily get lost in an endless stream of unproductive meetings with no clear objectives.

Be more vigilant in driving business goals as opposed to placating misguided political pressures.

Care deeply about clarifying requirements for your engineers and make at least a little bit of effort before dumping vague, undefined goals on an engineer to implement.

Prioritize your time effectively. Don't let others sap all your time with vague meetings that have no clear objectives. It's a very real thing here. I couldn't even begin to quantify how many employee hours are lost to meetings that could be solved with a simple email or message.