American Express Reviews in Toronto, ON Area

Pros

The company culture is one of openness and opportunity. The management supports employees to not only succeed at American Express but also at life. The culture also supports a very good work life balance. Everyone has moved away from Lotus Notes!

Cons

The company is very large which creates a lot of layers for changes to be made. In the IT department it is sometimes hard to move projects along.

Advice to Senior Management

The openness of all management and willingness to take time and listen to employees is what makes the management so good. Continue to focus on the people at American Express because they are what make the difference.

Pros

Blue Box Values are real, not a wall decoration.

Cons

Work-life balance is not easy to achieve.

Pros

The hierarchy is virtually nonexistent - you can reach out to anyone of any level in any department. it makes it an amazing company to work for if you're ambitious.

Cons

The bureaucracy that comes with such a large company can sometimes be a pain to deal with. The pay is not exceptional.

Advice to Senior Management

Not much in terms of feedback or advice - my time at AMEX was fantastic and definitely enjoyable. Keep doing a great job!

Pros

Decent premises. Lots of opportunities to work on different projects. Lots of work on the horizon. Little to no overtime. Online dictionary of corporate acronyms (helpful even if it is incomplete and there are far too many acronyms). Working from home is possible.

Cons

Chaos as a way of life: the most disorganized IT shop I've ever seen. No centralized knowledge base. No idea where to find knowledgeable people: new staff are left to learn by osmosis. While there is a methodology, it is not well-used or supported and there is zero governance behind it. Multiple projects working on the same application at the same time - projects keep tripping over each other. Up to 6 hours a day on conference calls with international groups ranging from UK to Australia to India to Arizona: forces mutli-tasking and fosters an inability to concentrate on task at hand. Shop is 70-80% contractors who have no interest in anything except their own projects. Many applications use outdated or obsolete tools / software. You must find funding for everything you do: even a request to upload some data may result in a demand for funding the task before responsible area will even consider it. No knowledge sharing between projects. Short project durations means high pressure to complete in unrealistic time frames. Project phases often overlap until it's hard to tell exactly what phase a project is in.

Advice to Senior Management

Re-design the project funding model, to allow groups with shop-wide focus to operate in consulting / advisory roles. Assemble a team of knowledgeable people to develop and implement a true process-based methodology and ensure that there is governance with some teeth in place. Upgrade to current software levels and tools. Institute cross-project reviews to ensure that changes made in one project have no impact on others. Recognize that adopting a large-shop mentality will have some costs but lead to cost savings in the long run.

Pros

When I first interviewed and was offered my job at American Express Technologies in their Markham, ON., Canada office, I was very excited. American Express has a stellar reputation as being one of the best places to work -- they recently won yet another award as one of the Best Places to Work in the world.

The company has been around for over 150 years, and is recognized everywhere. It isn't like working for some small, medium or large company no one has ever heard of -- everyone knows who and what American Express is.

And that's the best part of working here, you feel a sense of pride and prestige in working for one of the largest and most elite credit card companies in the world.

The company itself takes great care to protect it's brand, and maintains a highly visible pro-customer profile to maintain that prestigious image. The company will go out of its way to make things right with a customer or a merchant (a company which accepts the American Express Card) no matter what it takes.

The company also does have a sense of fun at times, creating social events among employees and contractors to embody the company's brand pride into its workforce. There are the usual seasonal parties, and various sporting and cultural associations to be a part of. There is a cafateria on-site, as well as a small gym, so if you forget your lunch, you can buy a decent meal, and then work it off by pumping some weights or running on the treadmill.

Management is pretty hands-off, you are left to your own devices to do what you were hired to do.

Cons

If you are looking for a company where your manager stands behind you, listens to your concerns, and works with you to resolve them -- don't go to American Express.

American Express' corporate culture is very individualistic. If you need to rely on someone else to get your work done, good luck. That's just the way it works here. Everyone works in isolation from one another, which leads to another problem -- informational drain.

When I first started at American Express, someone who had been with the organization for over 15 years told me that most things aren't written down, they are stored on individual hard drives, or more likely in the heads of the few that work with that information daily.

Information sharing doesn't exist. That's partly because of the idividualistic corporate culture, and partly because people fear that if they give out their knowledge, they risk losing their projects, or possibly their jobs.

Turn-over is a constant, there are always people coming and going, probably because the pay is below market values, and also driven by the individualistic work environment.

Also, as with many large global corporations, the company is farming out much of its work to third-party contractors. Of the over 300 people in my department, only about 25 are full-time employees, the rest are contractors, mostly from Asia or India.

American Express isn't the company it once was -- it may go back to its glory days one day -- but in the interim, it has a long way to go.

Advice to Senior Management

Team build -- create an environment where people feel they belong, where directors and their managers LISTEN and POSSITIVELY work with their direct-reports, rather than hold their hands in the air and claim "not my problem, I don't care."

Dispell the fear and the angst of working together -- lead by example -- show employees and contractors the value of working TOGETHER as a TEAM instead of fighting each other as individuals. Encourage and mentor VPs, directors and managers that take a pro-active approach to teamwork, and discourage/discipline VPs, directors and managers that don't.

Create policies and working environments where people feel compelled to share information and resources to end the knowledge drain.

Pros

- if you want a good (but not great) brand for your resume, Amex is relevant to you
- entry-level employees are young, bright, generally lots of fun

Cons

- the Brand Managers (who are responsible for specific products and who manage the ABMs) are generally unremarkable
- difficult to really distinguish yourself as ABMs are given limited autonomy/opportunity
- execution rather than strategy focused role

Advice to Senior Management

- hire MBAs into ABM spots and then promote from the ABM core (the MBAs who go directly to the Brand Manager roles are generally pretty poor managers)

Pros

Strong global brand and opportunities to move to different internationl locations if you are inclined to do so. Good work life balance and stable work for a few years with a brand that looks great on the resume

Cons

Large cumbersome matrix structure. Extermely slow and frustrating decision making process but leadership seems to be content with things as they are. If this continues, they do risk been overtaken by the competion which is already making inroads into the 'upper' end of the credit card business. Compensation not on par with the industry or fairly based on performance - though it is said to be.

Advice to Senior Management

While they have a formal performance management process in place, it does not take into account growth for individual employees and how to expose employees cross functionally between different groups. Most groups also tend to work in 'silos' and middle management leaders do not see the benefit of cross-training, different viewpoints and transferable experience employees have gained in different roles, but rather look for the exact functional experience. This fosters a very closed and conservative mindset both within and between different parts of the company.

Pros

Multinational company, offering opportunities for international relocations

Cons

Salaries are usually lowered than competition

Advice to Senior Management

Company needs to improve its time to market to be able to compete more effectively in the marketplace

Pros

Can't beat the brand name. There is something special about having this on the resume.

Cons

As many of the posters indicated here - the compensation at American Express is below industry averages. In addition, the healthcare / dental benefits do not compare to other Canadian companies. A portion of my paycheck goes toward my healthcare benefits [mandatory] and I can't even opt out of participation and the coverage isn't even that great - a lot of claims are not even covered. The insurance provider that AE has chosen [Great West Life] is a poor choice compared to others in the market.

The location of the headquarters in Canada is in Markham. I don't understand how a Fortune 100 company that is a major Financial Institution do not have its head office in the downtown core [other than for cost reasons].

Advice to Senior Management

Re-aligning the compensation to stay competitive with the industry.

Pros

This is a financially stable company in today's times. Leadership at the very highest levels is proactive and have a vision. Close knit groups really support each other. The rank and staff in the company really work hard and would do well with timely recognition. Some of the leadership development programs have a lot of worth as compared to some other competitive companies. The subsidized cafeteria is well received by the general population. American Express does very well to identify risks and try to mitigate them. This has held the company in good stead during the economic ups and downs.

Cons

Although the management believes in talent retention; not every one gets promoted from within. Sometimes it is important as to how much successfully you network with your leaders. Some people 'get away with murder' while some others have to work hard to get appropriate recognition. Although the channels of communication are being used adequately, there is a scope for improvement on the timeliness of this communication. In some of the departments, staff has become complacent due to their tenure whereas some new hires are really not qualified to work in a company of this size. Attitude is the key for success.

Advice to Senior Management

Walk the talk, please.