JPMorgan Chase

Good pay. Great work-life balance. Working 40 hours is an overstatement; it feels more like 20. Coworkers are easy to work with, a mix of young minds and older folks. There are lots of internal resources to educate yourself on different tech stacks, with a good amount of documentation for those who can self-study.

Have to work with outdated tech stacks sometimes.

Inconsistent decisions from management on some projects. Felt like my project was revised multiple times in one year without a clear path to completion.

Sometimes not enough work to go around. J.P. Morgan Chase is adding a lot of staff and overhead IT-wise, but not everyone is skilled or prepped enough to contribute. Teams eventually get bloated and have to split up.

Culture-wise, very banking-oriented, meaning approvals and decisions need to go through a lot of people. Not ideal for more tech-oriented folks who like the freedom to build and break things fast.

Put a freeze on hiring, and learn to work more agilely with smaller teams and less overhead.

Work and progress will be faster this way.