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Principal Financial Group

Engaged Employer

Lacking technical growth & career advancement opportunities - Senior Software Engineer Principal Financial Group Employee Review

2.0
Apr 28, 2017
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

For Pune location: 1. Good joining compensation 2. Group Insurance policy 3. Free transport (cab) facility 4. Comparatively less work pressure (due to this, most spaces are occupied by married women, mostly mothers - for years) 5. Salary received on last working day of every month.

Cons

For Pune location: 1. the way in which the performance appraisal process is carried out by management (this happens twice a year and is the period when employees are frustrated and pissed off the most) 2. no transparency in promotion policy; Managers and HR are incapable of answering the related questions and always provide fancy sounding answers to fool the employees. 3. unapproachable or non-responding Human Resource (HR) department. 4. Lack of technical knowledge to most of the managers / leaders. If you wish to have manager's guidance in technical areas, then it is myth in Principal Pune. 5. Following the Agile principles for the namesake; actually no department has come out of waterfall mindset yet. Still they boast of Agile world. Clear Over-hyped here. 6. Middle management is not capable of taking cues from top management goals and derive business unit level goals for Pune employees. Here they are completely dependent on US based counterparts. So rest of the App developers / BAs / POs / QAs get dragged behind such copy+pasted strategy. 7. Mid management does paperwork for planning but lacks the drivers for executing the same; also it lacks managers who can lead from front to implement the plans. Due to this most of the plans have never come into existence and remained on power point slides. 8. Only 4 organizational leaves per year in addition to 30 individual leaves. 9. Cafeteria food quality can definitely be improved. 10.Career growth gets stopped after a while. 11.Favoritism is promoted a lot by managers / leaders. 12.Managers/ leaders are not aware of your work so before appraisals they try to get that knowledge from their favored employees (who can easily malign or downgrade your work). 13. Too old technologies to work upon. Other competitors and even the start-ups are providing better technologies. 14. Lack of transparent communication at most of the levels. 15. Not much motivation and time given for practical innovation.

Explore other reviews about Principal Financial Group

5.0
May 28, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Three years in and still LOVE it. Great leadership. Work-like balance. Principal invests in their employees with training and professional development. It's very telling when literally thousands of employees have been there for 20-25-30+ years.

Cons

First time in a large company. Sometimes it is tricky to find the right internal partner to get the answer you need.

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Principal Financial Group Response
2d
We appreciate your feedback! Hearing that you felt supported reinforces what we're proud of—the strong community we've built together.
2.0
Jun 4, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Decent work life balance and benefits. Principal offers a pension which is unheard of in today’s age.

Cons

Pay is below average and Principal does not offer inflation raises. Once you hit the midpoint of your salary, you will get a 0% raise until you’re promoted, which will take multiple years regardless of performance. Performance reviews are vague and often used against employees to avoid promotions. At least in my department, I’ve yet to see any of the remote workers be promoted. This is starting to affect attrition and we’re already starting to see people leaving. It’s well known at this point that the best way to get promoted is to leave Principal and get rehired, which even leadership has stated publicly. This is a huge frustration and blow to morale, as it starts to feel like employees need to compete against their co-workers for raises.

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