Pros
-Well respected firm in actuarial industry, good brand name -Smarter colleagues compared to other actuarial firms, good talent pipeline -Global company. Opportunities to pivot towards other business units worldwide relatively easily -Diverse colleagues. Lots of women in upper positions, which is encouraging. Some coworkers are great -Nice open office, good downtown Toronto location, no formal dress code -Fun social events (pre-COVID) -Flexibility to work in offices in different cities worldwide
Cons
-Recent change in compensation structure towards a socialist model which resulted in lower pay, based on global performance rather than individual performance with NO bonus paid during COVID for all staff who worked harder than ever. Low pay for amount of hours worked -HR has way too much power at this firm to the detriment of staff. Lack of transparency in decisions. -Challenging yet thankless workload. Incompetent middle-management. Lots of micro-management on projects. High-pressure from management, yet they are completely removed from the day-to-day work, putting lots of performance pressure on the actual doers. -Very political and conservative environment, between co-workers and between cross-functional teams. -Rewards and promotes a snake-y culture. Lots of toxic and arrogant colleagues in high positions. Lots of gatekeeping -Lack of recognition. Certain teams constantly glorified to the whole company, while other teams are never recognized but are just as important -Lean structure. Moderate turnover, but very slow to hire new people, which causes high workload on current staff -Lots of old-timers set in their ways. Averse to learning new technology. bad laptops. IT infrastructure not great -Difficult to make career progression with very slow promotion (you will do the role you are promoted into for at least 6 months before actually being recognized/compensated for it). Old-school performance model largely based on years of service/waiting for people to turnover