Credit Suisse Reviews in Raleigh-Durham, NC Area

Pros

Exposure to different financial products.
Training are provided for employees to learn financial and other areas.
Majority of the co-workers are nice to work with.
Vacation and days off are generous.
Bonus is ok.

Cons

Very low salary even for senior developers as compared to competitors or market. They will give you either average or below average for what you are worth, which is stupid.

Chances of career advancements are hard to come by. You have to wait 1 to 3 years before you might get promoted even if you do hell of a job.

Recently seeing too much shakeup in the management and structure and people are leaving as they are not getting promoted despite doing great work.

Salary increment are rare and might take 3 years after you join.

Remote teams can be a pain in the rear to work with especially folks in London and Zurich think they are gods and have freaking huge attitude problems. Team in Singapore take things very little and work on their pace and schedule.

Too much administrative stuff like reviews by zillion people for you, twice a year to save your behind and keep your job.

No work life balance, long hours and no structure at all in project and products management.

Credit Suisse departments mostly use band aid solution for their IT products, fix and patch........

IT technologies are decade old as compared to competitors e.g. DB and programming technologies and focus is more on bulky and thick client GUI using C#.

You might be working 3-4 projects or tasks at a time per day.

Advice to Senior Management

Please stop playing around with organization structure, it creates a sense of instability among employees.

Do salary increments for those who deserve.

Provide good work life balance.

Stop hiring like crazy if you get a one good quarter and then firing people like it's slaughter house which recently happened.

Stop using band aid solutions for IT products and please come up with long term IT solution.
Promote deserving people often.

Retire old IT products soon rather than waiting for ever.

Treat people like human beings not disposable objects, they have lives, families too.

Please tell London and Zurich folks all of them to fix their attitude, all of them have attitude problems.

Pros

Global Network
Growth Opportunities
Learning Focus

Credit Suisse is an overal great company to work for as your opportunities are endless.

Cons

Lack of clarity around change initiatives.

Pros

- Good benefits
- Flexibility to work from home when needed
- Internal mobility is encouraged
- Various opportunities to get involved in philanthropic, sports and social activities

Cons

- Promotion process is very opaque. There are no clear rules for what it takes to get promoted, and even when a manager nominates their employee for a promotion, the promotion request may get dropped for unknown reasons.
- Due to the somewhat high turnover rate managers come and go all the time, and often teams are left in a state of instability in between management and organizational changes. A lot of information and knowledge is also lost when people leave, which leads to more frustration.

Advice to Senior Management

Please improve the reward and recognition processes at all levels, and add more space in all regional offices so that new staff can be hired.

Pros

CS had a very nice facility and cutting edge hardware. Before the pay cuts the pay was great! I met some of the best and brightest people while employed at CS. Except for my department, most other groups had mostly positive things to say about their work experience.

Cons

Pay cuts, layoffs, outdated software, very little initial training, and any ability to change. I would say the worst part were the managers and the review process. The grading is based on how you are liked and not the work you actually perform (the word perception was used often). I know that may sound bitter but there were moving benchmarks to be measured against. All employees faced the same issues in both good and bad times. Therefore, it was an unfair situation for employees to be judged differently when they produced the exact same results. Also, the managers did not keep any metric of how the employees were performing on a daily basis throughout the year. For example of the review process and bias: 2 employees both have 10 unresolved problems. Employee A (who started with 100) is told that we are experiencing a high volume of problems so you did your best great job. Employee B (who started with 500) is told you have not resolved these problems therefore you are not within working parameters. This happened the entire time I worked there and the bias of the managers was brought to HR by multiple individuals on my team with little result.

Advice to Senior Management

Start focusing on work performed instead of perception. Never say the term "it is what it is" when speaking with employees.

Pros

Benefits, 401k matching, Profit sharing

Cons

Unprofessional Managers, no advancement, no promotions

Pros

it realy depends on the gorup you work for. Generally they keep you busy.

Cons

depending on your group - it can be a lot of work

Pros

Compensation is comparable or better than other companies
Bonus structure is higher than most companies in the area
Flexibility in working from home when needed

Cons

Setting up the RTP site to save money from the NY site is a good idea, but poorly executed. NY is reluctant to give away any power or is unwilling to collaborate. It is in most cases that it is the NY way or the high way.

Advice to Senior Management

Don't lose all the talent you just hired in RTP due to the reluctance in the NY office to change. Allow change for the better and try to foster more collaboration between the offices.

Pros

Collegial, interesting work, has resources available if you want to use them, nice campus

Cons

No energy in the building whatsoever!! People seem to be going through the motions without much extra effort. Could be there for 15+ years and be in the same position. Uncertainty in future role growth, and lack of clarity from management as to where we stand

Advice to Senior Management

Provide the group with more feedback as to performance and any concerns they may have - if you are not in NY/London then you are left out of the loop.

Pros

- challenging work
- great colleagues
- good benefits
- fun environment with opportunities such as sports and social and to give back/philanthropy
- nice building
- firm came through financial crisis very well
- plenty of training and cross-training opportunities

Cons

- large firm, some processes too cumbersome and beaurocratic
- better working across different departments
- some groups on old technology (but some on very new)

Advice to Senior Management

Keep company stable, reduce risk and well respected
Review processes and improve
Look at expanding work already in progress to work across silos

Pros

Chance to learn some new skills.
The pay was generally competitive.
Most developers very clever.
Probably good job for someone fresh from college, but not seasoned pros.
It wasn't the worst job that I ever had, but close.

Cons

Top heavy management. Too many bosses, not enough consensus.
Low life/work balance. Need to push back just to take lunch or time off.
Too much emphasis on process not enough on producing working system.
Parking a joke. Crowded, had to take shuttle from overflow lot most days.
Very crowded cubes. Everyone shares a cube with low walls with someone else. Can hear everything on floor. Very hard to concentrate on work. Layout is like a giant call center which isn't good for doing any kind of software work.

Advice to Senior Management

One and only one person directs work.
Give your people credit for knowing their job.
Software Developers need quiet and private space to work in.