The Vanguard Group Reviews

Pros

Some room for advancement here. If you work hard and you will have opportunities to advance in your career here.

Cons

Has somewhat of a low salary but the benefits are good. The people that work here are great and have made many friendships.

Advice to Senior Management

My only words of advice is that sometimes you some managers don't treat their team members very well. Treat them the way you would want to be treated.

Pros

Vanguard offers good benefits, a nice work environment, and does a pretty good job of promoting diversity in the workplace.

Cons

Very few chances for advancement, uninformed middle-management (team leaders), and advancement usually depends on your friendship with a manager. Vanguard also has a habit of terminating the more tenured employees to prevent the stigma of layoffs during downturns in the market. 'The system used to generate metrics (Horizon) is often run incorrectly and results in negatively skewed productivity percentages. I tried to inform crew relations of one such error, however my words fell upon deaf ears.

Advice to Senior Management

All members of management should be required to learn the workflow for which they have override authority. There should also be an effort made to ensure that numbers are being correctly run in Horizon to prevent errors in productivity. A class or two on microinequities wouldn't hurt either.

Pros

excellent benefits
easy to rotate job positions

Cons

very political atmosphere
too many layers of middle management in IT

Advice to Senior Management

if you want to lead, then stop following the competition and get back to the roots of the company and Bogle's original vision

Pros

Having worked there for a year, I have already advanced into a C level position, waiving time in job, and I know that the advancement opportunities are unlimited.

Cons

The only downside I think would potentially be the pay, but I think that i can progress far enough within the company to have the benefits outweigh the downside.

Advice to Senior Management

I wish that there was an easier way to arrange for carpooling. We have employees all over the city, and have no way to find out who lives where.

Pros

Good work-life balance, interesting projects

Cons

No accountability - a "not my job" attitude makes everything slow and inefficient.

Advice to Senior Management

Let us work from home!!

Pros

Good benefits, great work life balance

Cons

If you haven't advanced a level within 3 - 5 years of your start date, forget it...you're pretty much buried.

Pros

Vanguard is a great place to start a career if you are just out of school. There seems to be ample promotion opportunities for young people. The atmosphere is very regimented and corporate with a lot of rules and regulations and little room for creativity.

Cons

Very corporate and regimented. Little room for creativity or thinking out of the box. Not a place for an older more established employee to move up the ranks.

Advice to Senior Management

Draw out the employees on the floor. They have a lot of good ideas and are so discouraged they are not willing to share.

Pros

Provided large scale company training to set you up for success for your career. Vanguard truly is an ethical company.

Cons

You will not get rich working at Vanguard. Vanguard invests a lot of money in your benefits packages, reimbursements for education and partnership plans but you will not see a generous salary.

Advice to Senior Management

Continue to genuinely care about your employees and Vanguard will continue to be successful. The management group, as a whole, are some of the brightest individuals in the industry.

Pros

Stable employment, good benefits. The place is family friendly. Management is very honest. Good place to invest your money.

Cons

Low pay. If you are an aggressive individual and want to do well, this is not the place for you. They put limitations on individuals. I worked there for more than 15 years and worked very hard for them but was never treated right. You just don't know when they will like you or not like you.

Advice to Senior Management

Learn to reward more educated and skilled employees better. Don't put them in the same category with other unskilled and lower educated employees.

Pros

Great benefits package, and lots of time off if you can afford to travel. Not a bad place to get licensed and leave or work at before retirement. Will get promoted really fast if you fall if you are a great net-worker and fall into one of there ACE programs.

Cons

Management treats you like children. They ask for your opinion and then they do what they want to do. Micromanagement style. Works good for people who drink the "cool-aide". Very top heavy organization who does not know as of this point which direction they want to go for the future. Punish employees who have different opinions about how things should be done but are not agreed upon by management.

Advice to Senior Management

Change the pay structure to retain top talent. Get rid of management who do not provide any benefit to the company.