Royal Bank of Scotland Reviews

Pros

Opportunity to work independently, interesting projects, and generally good co-workers.
Definitely a firm where you have to be on your toes and be able to work with minimum supervision and still deliver results.
Overall I found people to be very competent.

Cons

Industry is hitting a rough patch, changing priorities are difficult to manage, and flexibility is a must.
Shifting priorities can be difficult to manage, company seems ocasionally reactive rather than proactive.

Advice to Senior Management

Overall pretty good.

Pros

You get entry into one of the highest paying industry in IT.
RBS has one of the best employee policies although you may be paid a little less than JP Morgan or Goldman or Morgan Stanley.

Cons

Pay is a little less than its peers.
If you are interested in core technology then probably this is not a place for you man.

Advice to Senior Management

Candidates' choice in terms of what they want to do must be taken care of while recruitment. Putting a trader personality in technology can never help and it goes the other way round as well.

Pros

Lots of freedom at work, good time-off policies, 30 days of paid leave, study assistance, good financial domain exposure.

Cons

Worst managers in a company especially the ones in India. They have pets whom they want to rate more and promote, no fair policies on their part. Strangely, these managers are technically dumb to figure out what's being done so they shouldn't be allowed to rate engineers under them.

Advice to Senior Management

Identify & kick out such managers soon otherwise RBS will end up losing competent people to other competitors. Work from Home should be promoted.

Pros

- Nice facilities
 - Job security
 - More projects are coming from UK
 - Work life balance

Cons

- NO onsite oppurtunities
 - Redtapement, politics are everywhere
 - Get appraisals only if you are in good books of manager
 - Bonus is for managers and sycophants
 - Upper management is unapproachable, not at all concerned about employees
 - Bad pay master (It used to be very good)
 - Frequently changing policies

Advice to Senior Management

- If you believe in 'Make it happen' then try to make that happen
 - Only claiming in mails that RBS is equal oppurtunity employer does not make it equal oppurtunity employer, have to provide equal oppurtunities

Pros

work-life balance and the working enivornment is good

Cons

remuneration package not so attractive

Advice to Senior Management

-

Pros

Usually a good work-life balance
New building
Not a ton of work, nothing seems incredibly rushed
Decent gym on site
22 vacation days at an Analyst level, VPs get 27 days, additional days with tenor (a former Greenwch employee with 10+ years would have 39 days off)....it seems like people are always on vacation

Cons

In Stamford, a major reason people quit is they cant stand the commute
Deferred bonuses
Wide range of personalities...some people act like they're working for Goldman Sachs, others could care less because it's RBS.
Lots of turnover
Very little employee loyality to RBS
Except for the mortgage trading business, everything else is below average.

Advice to Senior Management

Pay more
Move to NYC
Spread out the work. Some groups work a ton, other people only have a consistent workload half the time
Make employees want to stay, there's a ton of turnover

Pros

good contractor rates
accessible locations in NL

Cons

no vision or message communicated to lower levels
infighting among middle management

Advice to Senior Management

Realize that time is money. Keeping entire project teams waiting for decisions cost you money. Pushing all decisions up to be made by senior management creates a bottleneck, reduces chance of project success, and demotivates staff.
Also, making decisions without consulting the people who will do the project is a good way to make the project fail.
Be open to improvement ideas from all layers of the organization, especially the lower ones.

Pros

You are able to talk to anyone, everyone is approachable, even traders.
Very open and friendly environment to work in.

Cons

Some employees take themselves ridiculously seriously.
Some colleagues are lacking in decision making skills and basic understanding of financial products.

Advice to Senior Management

Recruitment of more talented graduates and interns is required to ensure long term stability of the firm.
Further promotion and creative job titles for existing staff may defragment teams.

Pros

I worked there before the crash
this was a time when RBS were admired and i was proud to present my RBS business card. The culture was dynamic and successful, the pay and rewards were above industry norm

Cons

Management were incredibly demanding. I was once told i should be out until midnight every night networking and entertaining clients and potential clients
lack of balance in risk appetite - mid corporate was very tight on risk!

Advice to Senior Management

In terms of the management i worked under - its far too late for advice!
To new management - get the basics right - great customer service and innovative products - that is what the success was originally built upon

Pros

The culture is very good and most of employees are friendly and helpful. The are opportunities of travelling around the wrold.

Cons

The HR has low efficiency. All the processes take so long and sometimes it's annoying. There are not much parking space for employees.

Advice to Senior Management

There is hierarchy, so it's not very flexible to change the policy. New management structure needed to make the group work more effectively.