Countrywide Financial Reviews in Los Angeles, CA Area

Pros

They had clarity regarding key initiatives and were very supportive to insure goals were attained.

Cons

Heavy volumes at times made it difficult to balance work/life.

Advice to Senior Management

Good leadership within divisions and across divisions was very good

Pros

Excellent professional environment, great exposure to industry and technology, endless opportunities to learn and grow. Countrywide has a variety of subsidiaries in the financial industry, mostly mortgage - and promotes employees to move and look for opportunties internally. They have excellent framework to promote new ideas, processes - both in technology and business. In the technology side, mostly home built solutions that are cutting edge and ahead of the industry. A great pool of talents, and outstanding team and professional atmosphere.

Cons

Stability due to economic downturn

Advice to Senior Management

None at this time

Pros

Paid well for those with little education and no other options

Cons

Treated people poorly
Broken systems
Poor reputation

Advice to Senior Management

Turn yourself in to the authorities

Pros

Good pay compared to peers and responsibilities in other mortgage banks. Varied opportunities to try different careers in the organization.

Cons

Basically, a cowboy culture combined with nepotism. Long hours, no work/life balance once you moved pass VP title.

Advice to Senior Management

Review the corporate culture and start living the values it is supposed to represent.

Pros

Large company with many different perspectives and varying degrees of talent and skill to learn from.

Cons

Those in cushy positions are sometimes impossible to deal with.

Advice to Senior Management

Politics is inevitable in any environment. However some of this should be monitored and the skill-experience-compensation relationship should be baselined to make sure those with valuable skills are compensated accordingly.

Pros

If you're smart and willing to seek new challenges/responsibilities, you'll often get them. Networking is key - who you know (and who likes you) matters.

Cons

Long hours, tight deadlines, unrealistic expectations from executive management - all of these things are a factor in the day-to-day environment (not just once in a while.)

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to your in-house experts, especially the ones who don't agree with everything you say. They likely know more than you do and are probably right.

Pros

During the housing boom, Countrywide was one of the fastest growing public companies around. Senior management was probably the most knowledgable about the mortgage industry.

Cons

The different divisions (e.g., mortgage, banking, insurance, etc.) and overhead functions did not work together in the most collaborative and effective way; instead, performance was based on individual achievements. Professionally managed companies make sure that divisions and functions work together, sharing resources and intellectual capital. Countrywide, unfortunately, was not quite there.

Advice to Senior Management

Better risk management and more focus on long-term growth is needed rather than the desire to chase market share.

Pros

CW pays better than its competitors. You can expect to get paid in average about 5,000 more than other companies. Depends on what department you work for, it could be very intense but you get what paid for working hard.

Cons

lack of communication between management and employee. Management like to keep what's going on under the carpet and wont discuss with employee until it's exposed on the news.

Advice to Senior Management

communicate more with employee. create a mentorship for to help employee grow

Pros

Best place to learn mortgage industry; most senior management are real experts and live and die for mortgage operations. multipal level of career ladder to clime which itself serves as incentive for your hard work;

Cons

Top down management style, lower level employees has less say in project choice and even in their internal career path; you have to have your current boss Ok to move around; more often when you inform your manager about your leave, they start to treat you with fair compensation through a counter offer-- too late and waste of resources for both the company and employees.

Advice to Senior Management

Respect subordinate; provide more flexible internal transfer mechanism

Pros

Countrywide paid fairly well compared to other companies in the area and it wasn't a very strict interviewing processes. A lot of the people who work for the company are nice and intelligent.

Cons

They are extremely polictical, bloated bureaucracy; everyone seemed to have the title of VP, even if you were only truly a manager - complete title inflation. Poor equipment. If you are a Contractor (H1B Visa), countrywide (like most companies) is known to string you on about converting you. Very hierarchical company and you will not make more money than your manager, even if he/she has been with the company for 20 years and doesn't have the qualifications to lead you.

Advice to Senior Management

Reduce the title inflation, reduce the layers of management inbetween employees, better equipment!