Charles Schwab Reviews

I have been working at Charles Schwab full-time for more than 8 years

Pros – -Company has a strong moral compass. You can sleep well at night
-Very good relationship with employees. Seldom do you see layoffs, division removals, etc..
-Clients like doing business with the company (for the most part - see below)
-If you are smart and work hard, easy to move up quicker than other companies

Cons – -Technology is very dated. Most employees still run Office 2003 and Windows XP, along with mainframe applications
-Employees tend to be older and have little ambition. This creates a workforce of people who are not good at innovating and are averse to change
-Client-facing technology is also dated, and this makes it hard for clients to do business with Schwab. This also creates many client escalations and stress-points
-Pay and bonuses are lower than other broker/dealers

Advice to Senior Management – Move your stale, non-innovative employees out of the company. Shift away from mainframe and get the company into the 21st century. Stop telling everyone you are a "Challenger Brand" when you hardly ever innovate on anything important. It's annoying and no employees believe in it.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

I worked at Charles Schwab full-time for less than a year

Pros – Flexible work schedule and interesting projects

Cons – Conversion of contract to perm - opted not to take the job as current salary was much lower than contract rate

Advice to Senior Management – none

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

I worked at Charles Schwab as a contractor for more than a year

Pros – Absolute dedication to it's clients
Always ask "is this the right thing to do for our customers" before making business decisions
Very high integrity from top down

Cons – Very slow moving
Beauracratic
Sr. HR leadership is more concerned with their own careers than those of employees.
quiet

Advice to Senior Management – Foster Innovation from the bottom up more

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

I worked at Charles Schwab full-time for more than a year

Pros – Good company, good benefits, good entry level position for someone looking to get in investments or to become a financial advisor.

Cons – Pay is not very good, at least as a registered representative. Some questionable management/supervisor selections.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

I worked at Charles Schwab full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Solid ethics, good work environment. They strive to make you feel like you can contribute. Decent benefits like sabbaticals.

Cons – Average pay for the industry

Advice to Senior Management – Stay focused and pay better!!

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

I have been working at Charles Schwab full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Management was competent and always open to suggestion.

Cons – none that I can think of!

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

I worked at Charles Schwab full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – The manager's are for the most part, great people. Great people. Enjoyed each of the managers that I worked under. Co-workers were good too.

Cons – Before I give this scathing review, please know that i won multiple performance awards at Schwab and was highly regarded by my superiors. That said... Advisor Services is brutal. That place is a revolving door with mass departures after bonus time in mid-March. Anyone who has worked in a professional environment will die from the petty micro management. The directors are clueless. About 8 years ago Schwab was in a tough spot because they were treating clients terribly and it hurt the business. They learned their lesson and stopped treating clients terribly. Now they have a new strategy... treating employees terribly. They have slashed pay and benefits and yet demanded more and more work. This year, healthcare was slashed to being stuck with high deductible plans. United Healthcare who is Schwab's provider in Florida, will even tell you over the phone that they can't believe how badly Schwab employees got screwed by the plan change from 2012 to 2013. This little tidbit should be insightful in helping you determine how much senior management values employees: attrition was so bad over these past 6 months that the middle management had this genius idea of creating a "Hire Ahead Program." They literally hire people in advance in order to prepare for people constantly leaving. When somebody leaves they just throw the next warm body off the "Hire Ahead Team," in the chair. Talk about a morale killer; they are effectively telling you that some guy off the street is just as valuable as your multi-year contributions to Schwab. Management believes you are so disposable that they would rather hire people with no experience in preparation for you to quit under the low pay and outrageous workload. That is how much they value you. Even crazier... If you get "experience" in the department (working more then 1 year is what they would call "experience") then you will get more "special roles" without a dime of extra pay. More work less pay. Hello! Pulling a page straight out of the Communist Manifesto. Lastly, say everyone on your team is responsible for three advisors, you all get paid the same. That is fine. But then let's say John Doe leaves your team and so his three advisors should be given to a new person. But no, John Doe's advisors want you. They want you because they think you are great. Schwab isn't going to tell a billion dollar advisor that they are stuck with the new person so they give you two of the three extra advisors from the person who just quit. You tell your manager, "This is crazy, I need more money." Nope! Now you have more advisors, plus your special roles and you make the same as the guy who takes half the phone calls as you and does half the work you do. Bottom Line... Less pay, falling pay scale, slashing benefits, understaffing, revolving door, so stressful that they would be wise to start mixing Xanax with the water. Stay Away.

Advice to Senior Management – My advice to upper upper management: Fire all of middle management. They are incompetent.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

I have been working at Charles Schwab full-time for less than a year

Pros – Pleasant Atmosphere
Good Coworkers
Acceptable Compensation
Excellent location

Cons – Constant micromanagement
Grind all day to keep your stats up
Inbound calls that never stop

Advice to Senior Management – Don't let being understaffed become the new normal- hire more people or lose the ones you have. Current workload on employees is unsustainable, people have been dropping like flies the last few months to go somewhere better.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

I have been working at Charles Schwab full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – Good work life balance and flexibility. There are a lot of nice, hard working people working as associates, some weaknesses in middle management, and some intelligent hard working people in the more senior roles.

Cons – Salaries are not as competitive as other companies. Hard to move up - tend to get stuck in a position and management doesn't seem to set career goals.

Advice to Senior Management – It is better to have less smart people and pay them more than to just keep hiring mediocre people at mediocre salaries.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

I worked at Charles Schwab full-time for more than a year

Pros – Strong Culture and well meaning employees and operations management

Cons – San Francisco headquarters is out of touch with the real culture in the operations centers in other locations.

Advice to Senior Management – Improve human resources management

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company