Pros
There is of course some advantages. Interesting and challenging tasks to solve in the investment and optimization practices. Working from home is possible. But still in the theory. In practice they will hate it and you will have problems. Interesting training is available, especially in the investment banking field and advanced finance. Work with some well known and smart peer. Stability of the industry is also some kind of advantage, nevertheless, all of the above highly depend on team you are in and the lead.
Cons
Being one of the largest bank in the world they will save money not only on you as a resource but also on software and hardware. It makes it really nasty to come each day to work with fact like this in mind. They trying to be international company etc, however in reality this is not true. To get promoted in this environment - something unbelievable and unachievable. Depends on your boss, you will be even scared with the fact that he can even make an entrapment for you (which probably also happened in the past). The most surprising is some management members with incredibly poor communication skills. You will feel yourself like a slave. The most wandering fact is that you will be hired for one job by one people, but in fact you will be working on something totally different and with totally different (sometimes really stupid) peoples. Wandering is also the HR people - they like working for some another company. Ignorance of you as human is quite common. Performance reviews is some game where you always loose. It is known in advance what evaluation you will have :). The company has very effective mechanism on controlling and not promoting people / giving bonuses. They can fail you on anything and make a reason for not to be promoted or recognized. Very nasty environment to be on. Management will keep saying you lie like we will be the best in entire industry. Annoying is also the fact that there is no such thing as collaboration. It is pity to see some really nice people inside this company. Especially the international members who are getting pissed off usually. If you coming from some tech industry - think three times before joining this company. Better - simply avoid. Specifics of the business makes it tough as it is very regulated business, in addition, stupidity of some people, miss-communication and even elements of racism makes this kind of job worthless, despite the brand (they trying to promote) and advantages. The innovation happens rare due to very huge bureaucratic machine. To utilize something new, you have to wait for almost a year to get it working, still with restrictions. Usually people simply give-up of doing something new. Team spirit - is something unknown in the company. Insulting is the fact they making interview process nice and pretending to be really good by paying good money to recruiters and attracting talent who are "naive" and not aware about inside life and a lot of legal restriction. By the way, interviews are really good - they will assess you from many different angles (probably out-sourced) - use them to get trained :). What these guys are afraid of is LIBOR scandal as they loosing/lost their reputation not only as a bank but also as employer. I would say quite unfair player of the market. This is typical game when legally everything is correct but the people are unhappy.
