American Express reviews

In this particular group, teamwork and work ethic at the manager level is fantastic (manager at American Express is entry level with a post graduate degree). I've met some incredibly intelligent, hard working, and positive people who are managers. However, move up one level to the Director leadership and quality of integrity deteriorates. Go up another level to VP and integrity seems to be the exception rather than the norm. Senior leaders have zero people management skills - despite the fact that most managers are working 80 hours/week, the Directors and VPs constantly berate the team for not working hard enough (while they leave at 5PM on the dot). Additionally, we spend the majority of our time fixing system and data issues which have existed for years (and is not actually part of our jobs) - meaning the people that are currently VPs are the ones that made the mistakes and are not taking any accountability for it. All they do is blame us, even though we didn't create the problems and we're working twice the amount of hours they are to fix it. I could go on and on but the bottom line is that as the economy improves, the managers doing the work will leave for better opportunities and all you'll have left is a bunch of "leaders" who have no understanding of the day to day activities that allow this company to function. Additionally, a lot of great ideas were brought up at the Senior Management summit a couple weeks ago - in particular Ken Chenault's urge for employees to have a digital mindset; this is the kind of thinking Amex needs to stay ahead. However, nothing is happening regarding this in my group - when I asked my VP why I was told that "it wasn't a priority." How can it not be when the CEO said it was?!