Pros

It is a very solid bank, but it does not pay to work there if you are near the bottom of the totem pole. The compensation is fairly good for opening up accounts but mid-level management is incompetent. Benefits are fairly good and they have a pension plan if you work there for over 3 years.

Cons

They treat all of their employees, at least in our district, poorly. They have no clue what is going on in their bank branches and could care less about employees and customers. They push employees to force customers into products which are not beneficial to them in order to increase numbers. If you are in a saturated market or a slow branch, good luck. Customers are sick of going into branches and being harassed.

Advice to Senior Management

Please get a clue as to what customers want. JD Power & Associates gave Chase a low rating for customer service and the bank responded by forcing products onto customers. Get managers who have a clue and care about customers, not year over year growth in over-saturated markets where all customers want is a "community" bank not a retail power looking to nickel and dime them.

Pros

Chase has made many improvements since converting from Washington Mutual including benefits, work life balance, fairness in hiring, promoting, etc.

Cons

Chase is a really large bank and has the same issues WaMu had in communicating with employees. It's frustrating to hear about company changes in the news instead of through management channels.

Advice to Senior Management

Consider growth an opportunity to get employee communication right.

Pros

Excellent opportunity for growth if you outperform your peers

Cons

Management is too negative. You will rarely find a manager that builds confidence in their direct reports, they spend too much time tearing down the under-performing employees as opposed to helping them.

Advice to Senior Management

Don't spend time at pb clinics with employees that already know what they need to do, work with them in the branches as opposed to wasting time role playing. Real life experience is much more relevant than made up situations where the world seems perfect in a role play.

Pros

Some autonomy, able to succeed without rigorous adherence to the playbook. Great benefits, stock plan, flexible work schedule. Hierarchal structure beneficial to corporate culture.

Cons

managers always focused on widgets like checking accounts and heloc's. Not too interested in relationship building or laying groundwork to be successful down the road. Short-sighted at best,. Too many conference calls and layers of management.

Advice to Senior Management

less conference calls and please stop the emphasis on generating new checking acct's. Let me generate new sales through relationship buliding and consultative selling.

Pros

The corporate atmosphere is not overwhelming as it is in most other companies. JPMorgan employees get their work done, but not in an uptight, stereotypical corporate manner.

Cons

The pay, when working on the Chase side, it not good. You get paid the same about a mid-sized company would get paid.

Advice to Senior Management

Management needs to stop being uptight and politically correct about things. For example, it is not proper, in JPMorgan, for a higher up manager to dine with a analyst. The higher up manager must eat with people in his own level of management.

Pros

large company, financially secure - there are lots of good people to work with, and many are very competent. lots of east coast jobs.

Cons

not enough communications between departments leads to a lot of churn. different groups have different processes that can lead to decisions that affect other teams without warning.

Advice to Senior Management

in general, I am pleased with the way senior management has handled the company during the financial crisis - keep doing what you are doing.

Pros

The only good reason to work in the job that I had was that I got to work 4 10 hour days.

Cons

The working environment was really bad. My co-workers treated each other like dirt and me also. No one would help me and everyone who had any experience would only give out information that they thought would not threaten their position. In 30 years of work, I have never worked in a worse environment.

Advice to Senior Management

Leadership, what leadership. All the managers did was come in early before the main boss and leave late after the boss left. All day long they were either in meetings or talking just to be heard. No trainging or career coaching. Everyone was on their own and just took care of themselves.

Pros

training, communication from manager, flexible schedule, helpful if you happen to get a good manager who is fair and supportive

Cons

inconsistencies between business unit practices, senior management priorities not aligned with goals, hr seems weak and information on company policies difficult to get

Advice to Senior Management

listen to employees more, make sure senior leaders support projects related to company goals and not their hidden agendas, communication on company events/issues is generally pretty good

Pros

They used to have tuition reimbursement program when I worked there. I heard they're cutting back on that.

Cons

As with any large corporation, feeling of disconect with top management. (lots of layers of supervisors)

Advice to Senior Management

Make the corporate structure flatter

Pros

The intellectual capital in the investment space is extremely impressive. Excellent benefits. Broad investment platform.

Cons

Operational and logistical infrastructue is terribly antiquated. Poor communication across the firm. Heavy doses of micromanagement by middle and local management. Constantly changing the rules around compensation. Management intimidation. Enormous pressure to "hit the numbers" with little effort to truly determine the issues and reconcile them. All of the above prohibits delivering to the client the promises JPMorgan makes.

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to your customers. Listen to your employess.