JPMorgan Chase

I worked in the Seattle remote office and will be comparing it to other companies here, since even non-tech businesses here function as tech companies.

The base + bonus combo is pretty competitive for Seattle.

Work-life balance is pretty good.

It’s in a decent location downtown.

Most coworkers aren’t jerks despite being a huge company; generally a nice workforce.

So many meetings. Why does every meeting need 18 men in a room shouting at each other?

Diversity is good, but remember JPMC is a global company, so there will be culture clash. You know how somebody from Jersey and someone from California will probably have some miscommunication, even though they’re both American? Well, this will be amplified tenfold when you’re at a global company. You will probably have a lot of remote meetings at random times with people across the globe.

Moreover, there doesn’t seem to be a huge push for diversity, and the majority of tech is the same majority you see at tech companies. If you’re American of any race, you’ll probably be in the minority. And remember, non-Americans haven’t confronted issues about race/ethnicity as long as other countries, so prepare to hear some random, tone-deaf remarks from immigrant coworkers (nothing mean per se, just tone-deaf).

The Seattle branch is facing the same issue that most non-Amazon companies face: every employee tends to be ex-Amazon, and thus the new company becomes “little Amazon.” Recruiters love to reach out to Amazonians because they don’t know how the sausage is made, but those who are on the inside know they bring a certain Type-A culture and let themselves be overworked. Moreover, recruiters assume Amazon experience equals AWS experience, but really, the non-Amazonians I’ve worked with had more hands-on AWS knowledge.

It is still a top-down culture, so there will be times when some random higher-up you’ve never met in person and is probably across the globe mandates an initiative with an arbitrary deadline.

Health and dental are overpriced. No benefits like an Orca card yet. Like a month of PTO, depending on level.

Moreover, the dev environment is so locked down due to “security reasons,” which is fair. However, it means you’ll be using dated technology. If JPMC really cared about the development experience, they’d spend some of that $9 billion quarterly profit to hire more security folk to help developers get a modern experience to develop more business value. Instead, you’re between a rock and a hard place: getting arbitrary deadlines with so much red tape and so many meetings. Hard pass, especially in Seattle, where there are so many more fast-paced environments.

I’m all about staying at a company for a couple of years at least, but it was extremely difficult to stay longer than a year at a company with so many meetings, so much red tape, so little development, and so little resume value, especially in Seattle where complacency is a killer. Unless you’re hired for a very specific team and a very specific project that’ll perfectly align with your career goals, I would say don’t bother.

I’ve seen firsthand how hard it is to be an engineering manager here with so many layers of management, so I really have no advice.

I feel like my only advice is either embrace the bureaucracy and just try to give your devs consistent 40-hour weeks, or jump ship ASAP, especially in Seattle.