Pros

Certain benefits surpass the market.

Cons

The world's biggest start-up has entered the market. Be prepared to work 50 - 70 hours/week with very little reward or acknowledgment. The environment and culture are solemn and depressing as the company continually carries out ninja-style rounds of layoffs (often weekly). Appreciation is not a word that the company appears to have adopted in its vocabulary, except of course if one is at the management level.

Advice to Senior Management

Listen to the minions.

Pros

Fincially stable, good pay somewhat family friendly but they make it hard to take a vacation

Cons

Horrible politics where egos rule over performance
No clear direction from Upper management but they don't care. Workers are disposable widgets who they use as they please Many VP's are there because of politics not ability and they protect their territory like junkyard dogs

Advice to Senior Management

Tell the board to change the management The place lacks a human approach For such a successful company there is a lot of turnover and dissatisfaction A bad place to work overall

Pros

The benefits, pay and friendly people. Pre-IPO, it was a fantastic place to work.

Cons

The post IPO management team has removed every bit of Visa's culture that was good and made it worth coming to work every day. They are phasing out the veterans who built the brand over the years for younger MBA's who will work 80 hours a week and be on call 24/7. If you want to have a conversation with manager to share an idea, be prepared to put a deck together. Visa only knows how to communicate through powerpoint slides. Also, be prepared to spend 50% of your job working on forecast reporting and fighting over who owns the P&L.

Advice to Senior Management

Return to being a more employee focused organization. Strive to be a top 50 best places to work company and you might retain some of the talent you currently have when the economy turns.

Pros

Able to maintain a good work/life balance here. Good benefits.

Cons

Good performance does not translate into job security. Lack of direction/vision from senior management.

Advice to Senior Management

Need to have a better vision for the future of the company. Communication to staff needs to be more open.

Pros

Talented people, very capable and hardworking

Cons

Politics, cronyism, and a sense of hopelessness among emps....looks like everyone is waiting for the severance package...! and they dont care anymore.

Advice to Senior Management

Get to the front line, there are 100s of committed employees who are proud of the company, they helped Visa to become one of the largest IPO....Let them know how important and valuable they are.

Pros

Pay and benefits are above average. Majority of workforce are competent individuals who are friendly.

Cons

IPO resulted in a Visa USA management coup where majority of senior/tenured Visa International staff were terminated. Performance reviews are vague, subjective and meaningless, HR is clueless and provide no support to workforce. Politics and bureaucracy is rampant and out of control (nurmerous signatures required for capital purchases(13), product approval (25)). I am afraid to raise issues to HR for fear of retribution. Executives spout the company line of cutting costs but this is only applies to the worker bee. Typical corporate greed: No pay raises for employees in 2008, CEO lives at 4 Seasons San Francisco and reaped $1.7 million bonus and has 2 private/leased corporate jets ($50 mil), exec management offsite meeting in Pebble Beach (thousands per exec). Hundreds of millions spent on ad campaigns with no empirical data to support expense but great for execs at NFL events and Olympics. Current mission to force out/lay off more seasoned employees who are close to retirement (severence packages are generous, though). Benefits continue to be cut while executives are rolling in dough (from generous stock options awarded to themselves).

Advice to Senior Management

Better communications, be more visable and sensitive to staff needs. When employees are sacrificing, lead by example and do not take bonus/perks. HR should exist to help employees not defend management. Enact strict open door policy with no retribution. Hold senior management accountable for failures (via demotions or termination). Institutionalized "fire fighting" management system needs to eliminated. Cost cutting is stifling innovation and growth while marketing is spending millions on sponsorships and ad campaigns with no data to support benefit.

Pros

Visa is a solid and respected company. Most of the employees seem to be satisfied with doing their daily job, getting a regular and reasonable paycheck and good benefits. There is a great employees cafeteria. The company is generous to employees and is usually flexible to accommodate their needs.

Cons

In the finance and accounting area, there is very little that changes and innovation is not encouraged. The organization is highly bureaucratic and there seems to be little incentive to improve anything.

Advice to Senior Management

If you want your processes to improve, you need to evaluate whether your managers have the capability to understand the issues, and the motivation to initiate helpful changes.

Pros

Good benefits. Employees do support each other.

Cons

Very poor management. Managers do not care about their employees. No career development. Lots of people leave because of confusing directions. Too much focus on cost cutting. CEO gets millions of dollars while most employees are not getting a pay raise.

Advice to Senior Management

Be realistic and do something to retain talents.

Pros

Benefits are really good. Visa still has a pension program which is good. The company is doing well. There are a lot of good people at Visa.

Cons

Poor management. Unfortunately, after going public Visa has changed tremendously, it used to have a family atmosphere/culture now it is completely corrosive.

Advice to Senior Management

Instead of cutting costs being the number one priority, Visa should try to take more of the market share by innovating new products.

Pros

World class products and services and it's great to be associated with the brand. Co-workers are friendly and it's a collaborative atmosphere.

Cons

Senior management talks about work-life balance but do not acknowledge workloads and regular very long hours and are very reluctant to increase staffing to keep expenses low. Hard work is not generally acknowledged or rewarded. There is a lot of politics and infighting among senior management.

Advice to Senior Management

Work harder to acknowledge and reward the contributions of employees. Staff up appropriately as current workloads are not sustainable and people will leave.