Pros

Lots of classes and professional development opportunities, A great company name to have on a resume, lots of room for movement within company

Cons

Extremely competitive, you must have connections to receive an intern position, not the best starting pay as an entry level employee

Advice to Senior Management

The management at State Street is very knowledgeable and approachable. They are very loyal to their company and appreciate what State Street has to offer them.

Pros

On the operations side, they offer a safe (yet low paying) job with the opportunity to move up a few levels before becoming stuck as a mid level manager.

Cons

After a year of real, professional experience, your job becomes expendable and the management knows it. With no real pay raises and a lack of respect, it becomes a depressing place to work at. Don't get fooled by their promotions and promises like I did.

Advice to Senior Management

Try and give the Fund Accountants a quicker path to success. They feel like drones and for the most part, what they are doing isn't gaining them financial experience at all. Give them a reason to stay.

Pros

The benefits package is pretty good, especially the tuition reimbursement program. If you do stick it out for the long-term, there is some but limited opportunities for career growth. Overall, a decent place to get into the financial services field.

Cons

As has been described by many others, low pay and low respect level are the big downsides. You don't do any actual finance or accounting, and the job responsibilities are menial at best. Nobody would enjoy being a fund accountant.

Advice to Senior Management

I understand that fund accountants are easily replaceable and the job they do requires little skill set, so there is no incentive on the part of management to increase salaries and such. I suppose it is doing fine as it is.

Pros

I believe that state street is a very good company to work for. They have Very good benefits, grow opportunity, open minded.

Cons

There are no downsides for working at State Street, most of the employees are happy with what they work for.

Advice to Senior Management

The advice or feed back to the managment at State Street is they are doing a very g ood job and keep it up

Pros

Recent upturn in client focus due to market downturn. Overdue but the opportunity to start focusing on quality rather than 'ticking the boxes' is positive. Watch this space.

Cons

Fragmented departments. Seems a bit like mission impossible at times, unless a solution path to a problem is clearly defined they all seem to disavow all knowledge or ownership.
Over abundance of middle management & VPs -hampering effectiveness.

Advice to Senior Management

Slow down with the outsourcing! The middle management & VPs that are executing it are flying by the seat of their pants & not planning out the details. Keep the focus on the client & what they need, not just the SS bottom line.

Pros

Good salary. Really good benefits (health plan, pension plan) assuming you are FT as opposed to contractual/temp. The managers are generally very competent and friendly.

Cons

The opportunity for advancement is not that great and high turnover. The entry-level people seem to quit after about 1 or 2 years because the 2nd level people never seem to move up (to make room)

Advice to Senior Management

Ask for more feedback from employees.

Pros

Only 1: it's a well-established name in the financial sector, so it can look great on your resume if you know how to play your cards right.

Cons

Managers are extremely weak and lack the experience, skills, and knowledge to manage effectively. Poor company culture, poor morale, and poor work force because all the talented people leave after about 2 years. All the managers and consultants are analyts who stay because they are not good enough to find better jobs.

Advice to Senior Management

This is a lost cause. Corporate in Boston needs to fire the leadership here and all weak analysts and start over.

Pros

It is a good, solid company. State Street promotes numerous flexible work options to most employees. This is very different from other financial services firms.

Cons

Recent lay offs have created too much work for too few employees. Morale is worsening due to promotion and salary freezes.

Advice to Senior Management

I would advise management to quickly lift promotion and salary freezes. Begin rewarding exception performers as opposed to treating all employees equally.

Pros

this review is for SSGA, Canada:

1) nice office but mediocre pay compared to the SSGA staff in boston
2) the employee culture in SSgA canada is decent.

Cons

1) too many VPs within a department. This can cause 'too many cooks spoils the soup' situation. VP is like another word for Managers in SSGA
2) If you are not into analytics or portfolio management in canada, there are very limited growth for SSgA canada as most of the positions are located in boston

Advice to Senior Management

Different groups in the same department whose functions are related but like to play the blaming game, make the employees feel more about the company and then less about the function to eliminate the 'principal-agent' problem.

Pros

It's a job and a paycheck/benefits. You can get attention to detail/multi-tasking/Excel experience. Also it's a strict 9-5 job. I believe you get paid overtime, although it's rarely necessary. The slight downside to this is that most of the time must be there for pricing from 4-5 every day, even Fridays on holiday weekends...

Cons

I understand it must be challenging for such a huge company to organize, but if you are an intelligent/inquisitive person you will find yourself in a mundane role with little opportunity to take on more challenging work. Very rarely will you find someone passionate about the company.

Advice to Senior Management

They need to start at the top, and spread a more open-minded approach to management. They reek of the term "micro-management". The managers who were above my own manager often don't even look the way of any other employees.