Pros
Office location. Competitive core product. Talented staff
Cons
An ever growing rot in the culture, and a poor attitude to people.
The management directive seems to drift from one draconian measure to the next. Seemingly the attitude up top is that the reason the firm is not producing solid growth Q to Q surely can only be down to the staff, who are lazy and undisciplined.
Citing the previous sudden departure from any work place flexibility, back to a strict 5 days regime with no notice is one previous example to cite. The latest being bringing everyone in at 8am, with that being enforced on some but not others. Some line managers appearing to be reduced to curtain twitching maniacs, whilst others attempting to support their team. I dread to think what the next idea may be, perhaps company branded sleeping bags so we can all sleep in the office.
The firm in fact, is lucky to enjoy a talented and hard working staff. They seem to be entirely oblivious to the fact that most competitors offer a more palatable package, as well as comparable or better salaries.
The latest regime appears to have calculated that imitating Morgan Stanley will solve all woes. Or they value people so little, so as to use them as physical pawns in a shameless window dressing exercise, that helps justify their compensation package to the big boss. There is actually talks of registers being taken in the morning, as if we are at nursery. Yet of course, CMC is not an investment bank, does not pay the salaries of an investment bank and nor does it posses the quality or insight.
The end result of all this is quite a depressed, paranoid and sombre workforce at best. With talent and experience slowly ebbing away and not being replaced in kind. We now have regular large intakes of new staff, with little experience and low salaries, most of which do not last long.
There are also a few bad eggs in here, sheer bullies, that are left unchecked. It adds to a feeling of inequality, and oddly it is often the efficient and experienced staff that get the short stick more often than not.