Pros
HSBC is a great place to work if you are in a back office in Buffalo. Your life is good, the cost of living is low, and saying you work at HSBC turns heads. Your peers aren't high flyers, the unemployment rate in Western New York is sky high, but hey, you have a secure job...Chances are you are a legacy employee from one of the local regional banks HSBC bought to expand. For everyone else, at least there is name recognition and HSBC's international reach does mean you can offer a suite of products other banks can only dream of offering.
Cons
If you work at HSBC in New York or DC its a pressure cooker. People actually expect things out of a major International Bank, and they are in shock when they hit all the limitations HSBC has in the USA. The systems are archaic, and many of your international customers will come with stories about how wonderful HSBC was in Hong Kong/Saudi Arabia/pick an emerging market HSBC actually cares about. You are bound to disappoint them with HSBC USA. The terrible customer service isn't really the employee's fault. The systems are primitive and middle management seem to think the way to fix it is adding additional layers of primitive manual systems. (I suspect senior management has no idea this is the case) This means doing things takes twice as long as at other banks, so folks are always overworked and pissy. Add to that the lackadaisical attitude and terrible internal customer service and internal support you get from back offices in Buffalo and it makes for very unhappy Branch Personnel. If you are lucky enough NOT to work at a branch, you are still stuck dealing with your clients' shock at how poorly they were treated at the branch. Additionally, the Online Banking is awful as are Credit Cards and Mortgages. Suffice to say I stopped using my HSBC Credit Card soon after arriving at the bank.