American Express Reviews in New York City, NY Area

Pros

The people are great and are dedicated to the company. Training opportunities and furthering education if you choose to pursue it. Communication from upper management via town halls are frequent. Ability to pursue different industries within the same company.

Cons

HR is catty and clique-ish. Technology and software feels dated and not user friendly. A lot of redundant templates to complete during annual employee assessment process.

Advice to Senior Management

You make your employees complete the employee survey. READ IT, digest it and address the issues that are highlighted. Do away with redundant processes.

Pros

- Good place to start a career
- Looks great on the resume
- Company does generally try to do the right thing

Cons

- No longer the same working environment as 5 years ago
- Limited opportunities for advancement
- Many of the best people are leaving
- HR department constantly stumbles along without realizing damage done
- Imbalance between executive compensation vs. employee base
- Lower base salary when compared to industry and competitors

Advice to Senior Management

- Massive loss of talent at the manager level is due to the lack of opportunities. The overly flat structure causes ambitious, knowledgeable, and talented employees to look elsewhere. The "BlueWork" program is a disaster.

Pros

Work life balance emphasized
Friendly Colleagues
Exposure to Senior Management is incomparable
Great atmosphere
Competitive Salary
Very structured internship program
Interns are treated like gold
Fun events outside of the workplace

Cons

Standing out can be difficult
Job tends to be very similar on a daily basis
Projects for interns should be more challenging
On certain days you can have a significant amount of free time

Advice to Senior Management

AmEx Executives as a whole are really great people, they treat all employees from interns to senior vice presidents equally and that is something that you can't put a price on. While leadership tends to make themselves very available to interns they don't seem to make themselves available to full time employees; so my only suggestion would be to make more of an effort to interact with everyone. In terms of salary; in this industry I believe it could be slightly more competitive.

Pros

American express is a good company for work life balance and advancement in finance. The company also has good facilities for children

Cons

american express as a company is consistent in performance but sometimes lacks the innovation and risk bearing attitude necessary for growth

Advice to Senior Management

management should look at expanding and thinking out of the box, breaking conventional boundaries to maximize growth in a digital environment

Pros

AXP has a lot of smart people, as well a very friendly atmosphere with no sense of competitiveness. Good work / life balance

Cons

AXP has lower compensation than industry standards, as it is often viewed as a great training ground for leaders, thus not needing a necessarily high compensation in return for leadership and industry experience

Advice to Senior Management

As we are moving towards the digital age and all companies are looking to source talent, we are no longer competing with other payments businesses but other digital firms as well, and need to increase compensation to remain competitive with talent.

Pros

- Great work culture, mutual respect
- Relatively higher focus on meritocracy
- Highly respected brand
- Stable and secure presence
- Ability to stay profitable in adverse economies

Cons

- To hierarchical and matrixed (typical corporate environment)
- Indirect feedback style prevalently used, which can sometimes be counter productive
- Decision making takes too long

Advice to Senior Management

Create a leaner organization with clear accountability bestowed upon each person as per his or her level, to achieve more efficiency and effectiveness in business strategy, decision making and operations

Pros

Good Work Life Balance
Great Collaboration Amongst Employees and Leaders
Fairly low pressure with lots of available resources
Good Place to Work if you have two incomes or are a mom with kids

Cons

Low base pay
Awful bonuses compared with the rest of financial services
Highly political environment for promotions
Fairly long processes for decision making

Advice to Senior Management

American Express will continue to lose talented people if they don't offer up more promotional opportunities and better pay in NY.

Pros

Amex has some of the smartest people in the profession. It provides an environment where you will learn and grow everyday.

Cons

Amex is one of the lowest paying financial services companies

Pros

Lots of disparate yet related businesses, willing to make big bets (such as currently on mobile & alternative payments through Enterprise Growth), great communication from senior AXP management, good work/life balance (most of the time).

Cons

Some business units (such as Global Business Travel) are virtually unknown to the core BUs, which makes it harder when trying to move (especially when going for a band-level promotion at the same time). Ratings/bonus/promotion can be very political despite a seemingly level playing field and calibration sessions. However, I've only been in GBT and hear that there are much more opportunities for advancement in other BUs.

Advice to Senior Management

Create true incentives for business units to collaborate because many don't and people are focused on their internal goals. Have a program to assist high-rated B35s in moving across BUs. Expand 9 box ratings to high-performing B35s and encourage them to stay at AXP.

Pros

Work life balance
ability to move around within the company

Cons

Large corporate can be frustrating