New York Life Employee Reviews about "work life balance"
61% would recommend to a friend
(275 total reviews)
Craig DeSanto
82% approve of CEO
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Top Review Highlights by Sentiment
Excerpts from user reviews, not authored by Glassdoor
- "Great work/life balance (though the tighter restrictions and rules around Work at Home has gotten ridiculous)" (in 154 reviews)
- "Commission only and a lack of true clarity of compensation or contract maintenance by recruiters more often than not to meet their quotas." (in 264 reviews)
- "The reason someone makes a good manager at NYL is because they know how to sell people." (in 84 reviews)
- "Even more of a deathknell, upper management is slowly outsourcing every department." (in 29 reviews)
Ratings by Demographics
This rating reflects the overall rating of New York Life and is not affected by filters.
Found 275 of over 5K reviews
Updated Nov 30, 2023
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Reviews about "work life balance"
Return to all Reviews- 2.0Dec 22, 2014Anonymous EmployeeCurrent EmployeeNew York, NY
Pros
Good work life balance and you don't feel overworked or super stressed.
Cons
Pay is well below market average. Lots of nepotism and favoritism. Chances for growth is hindered by poor middle management. Executive management favors years of service over talent and ability.
2 - 3.0May 6, 2014Anonymous EmployeeCurrent Employee
Pros
work life balance good and is perfect
Cons
pay is low and will remain low
1 - 4.0Jan 31, 2023Senior Project ManagerCurrent Employee, more than 5 yearsNew York, NY
Pros
Opportunities to take on new challenges (e.g. moving to Agile from Waterfall based projects) Internal Mobility is good if you're interested Good work/life balance at the company
Cons
Promotions to senior positions seem to be shrouded in secrecy to some extent
1 - 4.0Mar 24, 2023Senior AssociateCurrent Employee
Pros
Company is very stable and work life balance is good
Cons
Salary is less than what I could be making but the cost would be less time with family
- 4.0Aug 15, 2015Underwriting AssistantFormer Employee, more than 10 yearsDel Valle, TX
Pros
Growth and opportunity Competitive pay
Cons
The family work and life balance is not easily obtained
- 2.0Dec 2, 2014Anonymous EmployeeCurrent Employee, more than 10 years
Pros
OK, this really depends on where you work and what you do. Agents will have an entirely different, and better, experience than employees. Pros... most of the pros are gone. I've been with the company for nearly 14 years and in that time they've gutted most of the benefits, pension, health insurance, and stability. If I had to pick a pro... If you're an agent and sell well -- or if you're from a legacy family that sold well -- you're a god at NYL. We do get seven half-day Fridays in the summer, but when you're working 60+ hours a week and pressured not to take them, it's just not the benefit it used to be. I would say my pay is good, but I don't live in NYC so I can't say how they pay compared to other NYC companies. Decent bonus every year.
Cons
OK, Cons. When I started here in 2000 this was the best company I'd ever worked for. Today, not so much. We've been in the middle of layoffs for the past three years and they're telling us they're laying off more than ever before starting Jan, 2015 through about 2018-2020 as they revamp their technology department. Boy, does it need revamping, but six to eight years of working under the threat of layoffs takes its toll. Pension was cut two years ago. Health insurance was cut last year. Work-at-home was in wide use but then taken away from most who were not VPs -- and even many lower level VPs lost it. I kind of agreed with this, but I saw managers abuse this more than employees. What was a standard 37.5 hour work week (7.5 hours a day) is now more like a 60 hour work work since about 2009 and it looks like they plan to continue to demand such hours for a long time. This company used to have a good life/work balance mindset but that changed along with the changing of the CEO. This likely depends on the department you're in and the job you do. We finally moved from Windows XP to Windows 7 THIS YEAR. That tells you how little NYL valued staying up with technology. As someone else mentioned, we still develop using VB6 (Visual Basic 6) and use other versions of software we were using when I came on board about 14 years ago. Raises tend to be 1-2%, but NYL has been that way since I started. Ill conceived multi-million dollar projects are started and scrapped after a couple of years because of poor planning and execution. Sometimes more than once for the same goal. It's a good thing we have several billions of dollars to burn. Management likes to tell us that we have the power of 'distributed leadership' and that we should speak up, but NYL has never had that culture and no matter how often they say it, it doesn't make it true. Things change very slowly here (and I've worked for other companies this size) and the speech rarely reflects reality.
8 - 1.0Aug 17, 2014Web DeveloperCurrent Employee, more than 3 yearsTampa, FL
Pros
Not too many anymore. Ok work life balance but you may get called when you are off for really lame reasons.
Cons
Some coworkers are the chosen few and can do what ever they want. Lots of people getting thrown under the bus on a daily basis. The chosen few are picked on the good old boy network and when they can't deliver they throw everyone else under the bus. Management is to inept to even notice what is going on. The technology is total garbage. Avoid if you want to stay marketable.
9 - 5.0Sep 10, 2019Actuarial InternCurrent Employee
Pros
Great Company with the strong exam support and learning environment; Work life balance guaranteed;
Cons
Not innovative enough and some floors need renovations
- 2.0Oct 16, 2016Anonymous EmployeeCurrent Employee
Pros
I have been working for NYL over 15 years.
Cons
Health Insurance getting more expensive each year and yearly increases and bonus decreases. Hard to keep up with the cost of living with children on a one salary household. Promotions to Management positions are always to the same people which seem to be always men. In my current Business Unit of 60 people there are 8 Directors, 7 men and only 1 woman. This has not been so transparent until a new Managing Director took over when NYL forced retirement on the old Managing Director who was fair to all staff under her management. Moved location to an urban location which has very limited mass transit options. Average commute for most employees went from 15 - 30 minutes to 1 hour or more. Work Life balance was a focus and accepted at one time but under new Managing Director you feel it hurts your chance for promotion.
5
New York Life Response8yThank you for taking the time to share your feedback. We would like to get more information about your comments. If you are willing to provide more details, please contact us via our anonymous Ethics Hotline at (888) 331-0619 or https://secure.ethicspoint.com/domain/media/en/gui/23192/index.html.
- 3.0Feb 25, 2023CVPCurrent Employee, more than 10 yearsNew York, NY
Pros
-Stability (you're not constantly looking over your shoulder for a layoff in a down year) -Bonuses are relatively steady even if salary is lower compared to financial service industry -Ability to move around and do different things if you play your cards right -Culture that promotes and provides many opportunities for employee engagement if that's something you want -Great work/life balance (though the tighter restrictions and rules around Work at Home has gotten ridiculous)
Cons
-Last few years has been non stop organizational changes, especially under the direction of the new CEO -Office politics is brutal (Game of Thrones at its finest).. the constant maneuvering and figuring out who to align with is exhausting for anyone who wants to get anywhere -Internal mobility is only as good as who you know and how much they like you -Complete lack of diversity in leadership (adding a white woman to your leadership is not diverse and the Executive Management has become even LESS diverse over the past few years) -Takes too long to get anything done due to the politics of CYA, bottlenecks in making any decisions (it's difficult to feel any sense of accomplishment wasting months on a project that goes nowhere) -Human Resources at this Company is a joke. Run by people who are not HR experts, have driven away anyone who actually has REAL HR experience and brushes everything under the rug to present a clean image to the CEO. The rules around who can work from home or not has become ridiculously inconsistent in an environment where they are supposedly promoting more flexibility
7New York Life Response9moFirst, thanks for sharing your feedback. As you say, New York Life has been recognized as a leader in diversity for our longstanding commitment to an inclusive work environment, progressive workplace practices, and achievements in attracting and developing a dynamic and accomplished workforce from a variety of backgrounds and experiences. We're proud of these awards but we're always looking at ways we can continue to improve: our Office of Diversity and Inclusion continually strengthens our practices and works closely with our seven Employee Resource Groups to develop robust programming. Our benefits are competitive, including a defined benefit pension plan, 401(k) plan, and subsidized health insurance. If you would like to discuss your concerns, we encourage you to contact our anonymous Ethics Hotline via (888) 331-0619 or https://secure.ethicspoint.com/domain/media/en/gui/23192/index.html.
