Capital Group Reviews in Los Angeles, CA Area

Pros

Overview: Working under the IT Group is different than the investment group. The core investment group in Capital Group responsible for decision making and execution account for less than 15% of the headcount. The rest of the personnel are in the support units - programmers for investment applications, business analysts, tech support personnel (desktop, application, hardware support), not including a large Share Holder Service group responsible for answering mutual fund share holder inquiries (this department was decimated during the massive 2009 laid off).

The investment group is very well compensated and is managed by senior portfolio managers and analysts.

Cons

The technology group and support units are undergoing transformation to make them less integrated with the business group (therefore easier to swap off-shore consultants to back-fill attrition).

The new IT group's management are professional corporate management veterans - excellent in cost cutting and in a way, making roles more cookie cutter and interchangeable. Long time personnel relationships between IT and Business were severed before teams were re-organized and reduced. To see senior management pulling this off was quite a feat. Morale was hit during the reduction and maintained at that level.

The overall changes in recent years made the company much more profitable, but it also made many experienced programmers, business analysts, support personnel, and analysts leave the company. The room for growth under the current structure is limited due to the on-going cost cutting operations, as most openings are due to re-organization changes rather than new roles / positions being created.

Advice to Senior Management

The higher-than-industry-average compensation is a double-edged sword. Many less-than-motivated people stayed to work for the company because of the "golden hand-cuff", and the company cannot hire more people because each associate's expensive compensation package. The company starts to feel like Longshoremen association in disguise.

Pros

- Good benefits especially the MRP, but you have to drink the Capital Kool-Aid for 6 years to become fully vested
- Good reputation in investment management industry, although most outside of industry have never heard of it
- Very smart people in most departments

Cons

- No real "management vision" until it was too late. The departments had complete autonomy and when the money stopped rolling in, then they realized they had big problems.
- Too caught up in the "Capital way" of doing things (i.e., employees working in other sectors can't possibly advance to work in portfolio management, despite their accumen, because that's "not the way we do things anymore."
- Little room for professional growth
- Again, no real leadership. Any "president" or "ceo" is just that in title only. Most things done by a committee of investment professionals with no real management experience.
- Low morale

Advice to Senior Management

Despite all the cons, you manage to stay afloat anyway, but that might not last forever. Value the talent you have, because if not, given PIMCO's ambition and move into equities, talent can easily flow to Orange County and YOU could be CRUSHED!

Pros

Good benefits package of pension and bonuses.

Cons

Work environment is super structured and there is little flexibility or creativity allowed.

Pros

Truly outstanding benefits for their employees

Cons

Very limited amount of information shared with employees of the organization
Very few opportunities to move outside of entry-level position. Too much interest in moving to another department signaled dissatisfaction to management and led to being black-listed

Advice to Senior Management

Be explicitly candid in expectations for entry-level employees

Pros

salary and benefits
high integrity -- clients are always first
quality of co-workers

Cons

Not really a downside -- but investment group is highly compensated and subject to
much more lenient work expectations in many cases
HR department does not support managers and is of poor quality generally. Given no real power with upper management even though the company is a people organization (services).

Advice to Senior Management

Help managers weed out very bad employees.
Take better care of your people. It is more than money and benefits.

Pros

Good Compensation and benefits. Retirement plan.

Cons

No Career Growth and inconsiderate management

Pros

Great people, Great collaboration. If you are self driven this is a great company to work for.

Cons

Short staffed during poor economy.

Advice to Senior Management

Recognize when business areas are under staffed and adjust accordingly.

Pros

Good benefits, respectful environment, technically competent people

Cons

Lack of leadership and direction from senior management

Advice to Senior Management

Provide more direction on where the company is going - don't rely on people to guess.

Pros

The benefits are great. Retirement package is excellent, and is a great place to be if you want to retire there.

Cons

The company does not use associates effectively. I've Associates end up doing work which does not make them learn or grow in their field of expertise.

Advice to Senior Management

Get involved! Stop managing up (to higher level management), and start managing down to the people who need your direction. Spend some time with the people who are actually doing the work, and you will know how to fix what is broken.

Pros

People are generally nice here. You will probably never get yelled at, and people are usually quite accessible, especially if you are junior.

Cons

There's a feeling of political correctness at the company that can occasionally be quite stifling. The Investment Group is also quite different from the rest of the company, and it's clear that priorities remain with the Investment Group. It's also extremely conservative as a company.

Advice to Senior Management

Hire younger people, encourage entrepreneurship.