JPMorgan Chase

JPMC is a large company and is very well-funded, meaning that mobilizing to another team is relatively easy since there are a lot of development teams and the company is more recession-resistant compared to other companies. As an example of that, during COVID, despite massive layoffs, JPMC still performed well and there were no massive layoffs. Another plus is that you get the opportunity to meet a lot of people and network and socialize.

As a banking and financial firm, first and foremost, they are profit-driven and tend to promote narcissists because they are more interested in results and those who are able to sell themselves the most. It doesn't matter how many years of experience you've had or whether you picked up a lot of leadership tasks; they would use your promotion as a way to squeeze out as much work out of you as possible.

A funny joke that employees also share amongst each other is that JPMC stands for "Just People Meeting Constantly" because people would rather appear busy and schedule meetings over results. They don't mind wasting developer time in meetings while expecting results to happen overnight.

Technology stack is often chosen without much thought into whether it makes sense for the firm. There is also little trust in employees, as they are known to track their employees with their webcams and badge-ins.

Management would rather cut costs than do what's right for their users. Although I'm just a disgruntled employee, they shuffled teams working on a particular project and laid off entire teams with short notice to outsource projects without much thought into how challenging it is to transfer knowledge of the project to offshore teams in India.

They say they invest in people, but most would rather do what's most profitable for themselves. They claimed to help laid-off employees find new work internally with a fancy redeployment program, but did absolutely nothing to refer developers internally. They would also ask laid-off employees to take salary cuts rather than let them mobilize to another team. They would also appeal to your state's unemployment and protest against your claims for unemployment because they don't want to pay it.

Listen to employees when they try to speak up for the product and technologies. When a deadline is unreasonable, listen to employees' reasoning and set reasonable goals and outcomes for the project(s).

Watch employees and understand them. When you are disassociated from what is going on, it's easy to think that the employee who talked the loudest contributed the most and is the most passionate about the project. Rather, it's the ones that are brave and speak up about issues that are honest and are looking out for the project and the firm the most.

Talk to employees and clearly articulate what the vision for project(s) are. Not clearly communicating leads to misunderstandings and can be manipulative. Oftentimes, it felt like information was held back to manipulate employees. Deadlines are arbitrary and often "not negotiable" to get employees to work hard. Promises that there is plenty of work and investment in the current project are lies to keep employees busy and from seeking employment elsewhere until the unavoidable lay-off, leading to resentment.