Moody's Reviews

Pros

The envrironment is respectful and pleasant.

Cons

Relatively low salary; elevators are a pain. Not enough bathrooms.

Advice to Senior Management

No advice

Pros

- Good work like balance
- If you are efficient you can leave at a reasonable time
- Pretty standard hours for a finance firm for Business Analysts (9-5)
- Pay is ok.
- The building is very modern and clean.
- Slow-paced environment (if you like to take it easy because you refuse to be challenged and like to become complacent, which appears to be the case for roughly over half the people here)

Cons

- Meetings, meetings, and more endless meetings.
--- 25% of the effort is PLANNING the work that you will do.
--- 15% of the effort is DOING the actual work.
--- 25% of the effort is CHASING DOWN people to review and finally approve of your work.
--- 10% of the effort is ANSWERING DUMB QUESTIONS for people who originally was supposed to have read your analysis document.
--- 10% of the effort is ARGUING with stakeholders weeks/months later to explain why your work was presented clearly and COUNTERING their accusations of gaps in your work.
--- 15% of the remaining effort is to wrap up your final document and send it off for even further signoff.

- A culture where management takes forever to make effective decisions.
- True superstars should look elsewhere. Your great ideas and strong passion for effecting change will not likely happen at Moody's. You will not be recognized here. You will like it here though if you like to settle down and do good enough of a job and just enough work to not get fired.

Advice to Senior Management

Allow BA's to provide reviews for their stakeholders and managers. Need to instill a culture of responsive feedback with extra discipline on quicker answers and decision making, not take a whole week to get a response from someone or require constant email reminders and messages to effect a response from someone.

Pros

I am surrounded by smart and intelligent people.

Cons

Senior management leadership training is needed to more fully development management skills.

Advice to Senior Management

Embrace the talent, knowledge and experience from all of the new employees hired over the past few years.

Pros

Good work-life balance, friendly environment, smart people

Cons

friendly environment Good work-life balance

Pros

Your experience in highly dependent on the competence of the senior analysts you work with on a daily basis. In general, most analysts are extremely knowledgeable and you can learn a great deal from them.

Cons

Compensation is not inline with the workload expected of Associate Analyst. There is limited opportunity for advancement within the firm because the senior analysts tend to be less active in career movement than other financial firms. Dealing with compliance and regulatory issues are constant hassles.

Pros

Nice work environment.
Work life balance pretty good overall.

Cons

Political
Hard to get things done. Members of some departments don't like to make an effort for other departments when their involvement is required.
Too many meetings.

Advice to Senior Management

Learn to operate more like a smaller company.

Pros

Provides equal opportunity and transparent management to employee relationship.

Cons

Long hours and sometimes stressful

Pros

Good work atmosphere, fun colleagues

Cons

Bad management, unfair/intransparent promotions and hiring

Advice to Senior Management

Pay more attention to people management and less on credit analysis. You're a manager, your job is to manage.

Pros

International presence, access to senior management, access to regulators, international opportunities

Cons

Management is a joke, pay is extremely uncompetitive and cost culture trumps any achievements you may have. I would highly recommend looking elsewhere. Even if you're running laps around people, they'll find a way to give you a lower performance rating than you would otherwise garner to prevent giving larger bonus. Not just my experience, but pretty common across the board, globally. You can exceed expectations any for 5 years and not get promoted, even at junior levels.

Ok for a year or two out of college, or a place to let your career wind down while getting some level of pay, but that's about it.

Advice to Senior Management

Don't know where to start.

Pros

Good colleagues and relatively stable employment

Cons

Management positions filled with people with no management skills
Unfair promotions
Lack of transparency

Advice to Senior Management

Link BES Survey results to managers' appraisals. Have managers' senior managers review performance appraisals (you might learn how poorly they manage their staff). Treat junior staff fairly.