Pros
Reasonable Salary, good pension and standard benefits package Relatively good work/life balance.
Cons
The pace of change is excruciatingly slow. You can't even blame regulations for it, it's simply down to awful documentation, flakey technology, and years of knowledge simply living in contractors heads. Engaging different teams is just horrendous, with more interest in making sure internal timesheets are full for 35 hours a week, rather than actually delivering worth while solutions for the rest of the bank to use. It's not just technology, business processes too refuse to change. There's no appetite to make any changes to streamline processes or change how colleagues work, meaning we spend years implementing clunky solutions that are ineffective and simply replicate the mistakes of the past. There's a massive lack of trust in us employees too. All changes have to go through close to hundreds of different checks, forums, audits, governance gates, change reviews, workshops, even for relatively simple changes. Not to mention the "2 days a week", expecting employees to simply turn up to the office as early as they can in an attempt to get a desk that has functioning equipment, or a seat in an overfilled office. To add to that lack of trust, very few people I have met will make a decision, or take on any amount of responsibility for an issue. It's a very odd attitude to have in a world where mistakes happen, slopey shoulder syndrome all the way down.
