Morgan Stanley Reviews in New York City, NY Area

Pros

Full transparency in all matter concerning you or your career. Good rewards for good work. Ample opportunity to grow.

Cons

Leadership has been changing a lot lately, so its kind of scary and full of unknown.

Advice to Senior Management

Be more detailed to every level about the reason for change in senior management.

Pros

MS is one of The best place to build your career in fiance industy. MS has a great training program.

Cons

You need to work hard everyday and somtimes workloads will get you. The culture of firm is very conservative.

Pros

Great training, great group of people to work with, very smart individuals that push you everyday.
perfect place to start your career.

Cons

not open to you expressing interest in other groups. Not too open with junior recommendations. Open door policy not like other firms

Pros

A lot of people working in the company are very hard working, care about what they do and company.

Cons

There is a lot of uncertainty about long term prospects of investment banking and it affects employees. Compensation starts trending below industry average. Some good people, with very valuable experience, left the firm in the last few years.

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

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

brand name (though fallen off), premier work / deals, global reach

Cons

very political, especially in investment banking. backstabbing and no work/life balance. you have to fit a certain look / mold

Advice to Senior Management

not a big risk taking firm and greater personal accountability. Not the most forward thinking firm, as always lagging behind rivals.

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

Great salary, worthwhile job, and competitive circumstance

Cons

Hard Working, not enough rest time

Advice to Senior Management

Team Work

Pros

Fast pace environment, smart people

Cons

Long hours, industry is slow at the moment

Advice to Senior Management

Good management, people are promoted because they're good at what they do.