Morgan Stanley Reviews

Pros

Well known name; perception in the marketplace as a "best of breed" company

Cons

- Everyone there has good experiences with co-workers, but poor experiences with management. They do not treat their people as their #1 asset.

- Technology leadership and approach at firm level has changed every year in last 6-7 years. Each time a new tech head joins, they change the organization - whether it's functionally organised or aligned to each business. Some of these leaders are more of operational people versus technology people. Some are put in charge with no CIO experience. Technology is very fragmented currently between infrastructure and each division having its own approach to development. The firm has handfuls of systems and platforms built separately or bought from separate vendors all doing the same thing.

- Learning leadership has changed each year as well. Some of these folks had no or little Organizational Development or learning backgrounds. Others were very experienced. These rapid changes in top leadership has not allowed for any leader to execute on long-term learning strategies. Each division does its own thing. With each new leader there is a change to the performance measurement methodology so there is no consistency year-over-year. Firm needs to move from manditory compliance-only training to on-demand, networked ways of expertise sharing - leveraging the latest toools in e-learning and web 2.0 for collaboration, innovation and cross-selling.

Advice to Senior Management

- Unify technology under single leadership (infrastructure and application development)

- Provide consistent technology senior leadership who's focus is to ensure assets (people, technology, tools and platforms) are shared across the firm

- Provide consistent learning leadership to move towards a 21st century learning approach, supporting expertise sharing and web 2.0 collaboration platforms, and provide some consistency year-over-year in performance measurement methods for employees.

- Don't allow Managers to stay in same role 10, 15, 20 years. Some upward or lateral rotation should be manditory for their growth and for fostering new ideas to come into departments.

Pros

Strong reputation, culture is not as cut throat as other banks

Cons

Company is trying too hard to save money. Bonuses are at the low end of the industry and firm keeps taking away necessary data programs to save money

Pros

abundance of resources, such as data and IT support

Cons

politics can get sometimes complicated

Advice to Senior Management

simplify the command structure

Pros

Since all groups across the firm are different, I'll stick to personal experience. IT infrastructure is one of the best among several financial companies I had a chance working with. Middle management is flexible and encourages innovations and new ideas. Professional training courses available and staff encouraged to regularly enroll. 4 weeks vacation and work/life balance are good benefits hardly matched outside of financial sector.

Cons

Again, personal experience only, do not extrapolate. No promotions or salary raises in years. Bonus has been cut lately due to overall economy situation. Problems to solve are not challenging enough which is quite boring. As usual within financial sector there are many limitations to personal 401K fund allocations. Overall job at financial institution is not sexy enough in comparison with hot startups.

Advice to Senior Management

Hire the best professionals, pay well, give them interesting problems to solve. Money making may look a bit boring, yet there are lots of interesting analytical problems and ideas floating around to reinvent Wall St.

Pros

There is a lot of support available
The people are very friendly and honest
You get a lot of exposure really quickly

Cons

There is still a high amount of pressure because it is an investment bank.

Pros

good pay, good learning and growth opportunities for an intern. convoluted management and leadership, but overall a good place to work and start as an intern

Cons

poor communication, rough hours, unreasonable expectations for a college kid interning. rude employees, talked down to, treated like a child, sent to get coffee

Advice to Senior Management

try to create a more formalized summer intern program, with better organization and structure so people like myself will want to come back

Pros

Great, great leadership. There is recognition of talent and promotion within. Nice culture, nice co-workers.

Cons

There has been a tremendous amount of turnover. I am in a completely different job than the one I applied for. Not happy about that.

Advice to Senior Management

Stay the course and IM will be a power house.

Pros

Global firm with instant brand recognition
Historically excellent training program
Good benefits including 401(k) and pension
Decent support for marketing efforts

Cons

Almost too-big firm adapts slowly
More of an imitator than innovator
A two-class environment with struggling rookies and highly-comped veterans
High attrition rate among new FAs

Advice to Senior Management

Spending millions on sketchy corporate investments while driving down FA comp does not engender good morale or advisor loyalty.

Pros

Great intellectual capital, well run, excellent technology, name looks great on resume.

Cons

Compensation not driven by performance. Allure of financial services industry is gone.

Advice to Senior Management

Pay for performance.

Pros

easy work, tuition reimbursement for grad school is decent good.

Cons

Pay is atrocious and the annual raises are a joke. You will be doing the same exact thing everyday and you will only be doing it 3 to 4 hours each day (which is a pro or con depending on what kind of person you are). Some people do work overtime (depending on your job) buy they only get paid half time for each hour over 40, not time and a half. Once you are in the operations department like I was it is very hard to get out. Another review said it best "If you have absolutely no ambition whatsoever and just want to coast through life then this is the place for you" A lot of your satisfaction will depend on which boss you have and my boss sucked. I got a new job and they are now paying me almost 40 percent more than what I was making at Morgan. I would have had to been at MS for at least 6 or 7 years to make that much. Work is extremely boring and repetitive. I don't know why a college degree is a prerequisite for these stupid operations jobs.

Advice to Senior Management

I heard someone say that management knows how bad the jobs are and they fully expect most people to leave after 2 or 3 years. Increase salaries and have more room for advancement and this will not happen... But if the plan is to have people just leave after a couple years then you are doing a great job.