JPMorgan Chase

You can say you work at J.P. Morgan Chase.

Benefits are good.

People are generally good, but sometimes not motivated.

Red tape, bureaucracy, change is slow, slow, slow.

Massive paperwork is required, and 10-15 signatures are needed to get a simple change put into production.

This is extremely stifling for someone who is results-driven, especially having come from a high-caliber shop.

Working off a laptop, as opposed to a workstation, is another horrible experience.

Frequent re-orgs occur.

Management outlines one policy, and several months later, that manager is no longer at JPM.

The typical response to an outage is:

1. Freeze on changes for an arbitrary period of time.
2. Have endless meetings (on a call, almost never in person).
3. Reveal a post-mortem for which the action item is to add another signature to any change.

Stick with guidelines once socialized. Stop relying so much on consultants.