Flagstar Bancorp Reviews in Detroit, MI Area

Pros

ability to move up, do work as a teller and personal banker, provided two weeks of training (though it didn't seem like enough when I actually got to work. Provided a mentor for your first few weeks. (could have been better if the person was much more friendlier and willing to work)

Cons

Much lower pay than my old job as a teller at a bank with 3 times the amont of work, no benefits, no vacation days. Training didn't apply to real situations. Computer system was way back in time. I came from Chase Bank and they were very up on their technology, training, pay, and benefits.

Pros

Willingness to move onto new technologies, REST SOA type approaches.
Independence and autonomy can be nice, so long as you get good work done in the end.

Cons

Management Change-Over a couple of years ago, and being owned by venture capitalist means a sale of the bank to a bigger bank is likely and the inevitable shakeup that will cause has caused a brain drain of experienced knowledgeable employees, this can be viewed as more opportunity for new people joining the organization to fill such openings.

Advice to Senior Management

Try and capitalize on the unique aspects of Flagstar, make sure those unique aspects are not crushed as we try and move into other areas. The concern is we will be just like all other banks, differentiated in the marketplace. Keep up with the superior customer service.

Pros

- Used to have a pretty good management trainee rotation program, but I heard it has since been discountinued.
- Generally friendly people to work with
- There was not a strong expectation to work more than 40 hours in my area

Cons

- The banking industry can be depressing to work in especially when I was there in 2008 and watched an entire department get cut
- Some significant silos were in certain departments (from the top down)
- Pay didn't seem that competitive, although the economy was partially at fault because I worked there 2006-2009 and salaries were frozen

Advice to Senior Management

I was there during the worst crisis in 70 years and unfortunately Flagstar did not get through it well. The capital infusions from both TARP and Matlin Patterson diluted the shares significantly and when I left the company was in shambles. Mark Hammond is a very smart guy and appeared to be a great economist, but he really didn't see this crisis coming.

It appears the current CEO is trying to make things better by diversifying, but I think he is going about it in the wrong way. Just because the CEO has contacts in the Northeast does not make it a good strategy since Flagstar had no existing footprint there. Taking one failed strategy at Soverign and making it a strategy at Flagstar while continuing to bleed cash seems like a very bad short term outcome for all of your shareholders. I wish FBC the best, but I have extreme doubts that any shareholder will get even half of their initial investment (MP included).

One last point to the current CEO, stop blaming "legacy" on everything in your conference calls. You have been there for over 2 years, it is now your responsibility.

Pros

People
Time off
Loyal Employees
Hard working Employees

Cons

Pay
Not promoting people, hard to move to a different department

Advice to Senior Management

Treat employees well and with respect. Management not fair most of the time to employees.

Pros

Co-workers, interesting coding challenges. Flexible work time if required

Cons

Work overload. So many cutbacks and takeaways. Lower management helpless when it come to giving raises.

Pros

Good Compensation
Decent Benefits
Work-Life Balance is good

Cons

Clueless Management
Only people belonging to the 'inner circle' have their ideas heard
distrust between groups is encouraged by management
morale is rock bottom
7.5 hour workday that is boasted by HR is a complete joke to salaried staff
Salaried people have to badge in and out with the hourly people but aren't paid overtime. Instead, it is used as a barometer of who is dedicated and who isn't
Expectation that you are available for monthly builds on weekends but aren't givent any comp time for it

Advice to Senior Management

Consider fry-cook at McDonald's, but you are probably under-qualified
Why do you think that so many people are leaving who are not managers?
Don't expect people to stay around when you tell them that they should be considered 'blessed' for staying at such a 'great company', give out nothing for raises and then expect the rank and file staff to pick up the work of three other people that you laid off due to your incompetence.

Pros

In IT, you can do whatever you wish, as the only standard practice is to make up your own personal standards.

Cons

Regarding IT software development management: none are competent, all are wishy-washy and unwilling to take a stand on anything, especially development standards. None are qualified for the job and would be better off doing another type of work: your best doers are not generally your best managers.

New management is totally ineffective: they added another layer without ousting any of the managers that are holding the company back. This is especially true in IT and loss mitigation.

Advice to Senior Management

How can you continue to ignore the bleeding in loss mit?!?!? Remove the old management, choose an automated method to improve the workflow, and get the work done. If need be, bring in new staff that aren't so locked into the old manual ways of doing things.

I have never seen a takeover involve NO firings of existing management. The new management needs to root out the deadwood and get things headed in a positive direction.

Pros

7.5 hour work days, and finally adpoting buisness casual dress code are about all I can think of.

Cons

After becoming a distressed company and being purchased by Matlin Patterson in 2008 things have really fallen apart. Be warned that this company has slashed the I.T. department quarterly since then. Only with the recent improvement in the job markets has hiring re-started. Most currently employees will admit to looking for new employment elsewhere and their churn rate is on average 1 employee leaving per week.

While Boasting an "Agile" development shop, this is rather new and poorly implemented with more paperwork and requirements than some waterfall approaches. The technology is fragmented across multiple systems, languages and even within languages. A good example would be the use of Struts 2, 3 and Spring or Ant and Maven or Java 1.4-1.6 depending on the day.

If you are in need of a job to feed your family, perhaps consider an offer but don't stop looking. If you think this warning may be outdated as about the newly Morale committee (2010) and what they are doing to improve morale and reduce the number of veteran developers leaving.

Advice to Senior Management

Trim your management down, or find something constructive to do with the mid level managers.

Pros

It would be a job. They pay you every two weeks. You will be one of a few people left.

Cons

Tough work environment. No raises in 3 years. No promotions. More work and less people to do it. Tough place

Advice to Senior Management

Pay and value your employees. Give a group of good employees a raise. Stop staff from leaving and hire a few people.

Pros

Busy all day at work

Cons

Alot of layoffs to qualified staff

Advice to Senior Management

N/A