Barclays reviews

Compensation is well behind peers, and employees are nicked and dimed wherever possible, for example: The firm defines your “salary” at a figure well below your annual fixed compensation so that the firm can pay your retirement and health benefits off a lower number. The firm is the only bank on the street that doesn’t make annual salary bumps effective January 1st, instead waiting until late March, meaning you lose a meaningful catchup bonus (~5-10k) every year. The firm requires you buy your own laptop and does not reimburse you for very normal expenses like holiday parties, recruiting lunches and dinners. Barclays is also the only firm on the street that fires a meaningful portion of its staff right before bonuses every year, which is really an awful thing. I saw many colleagues, including fathers and mothers, completely shocked and devastated as they were escorted out of the building with half the comp they had been expecting to live on.

I was hired as a developer but I'm doing development work for only about 5% of my time. Rest is all taked up by management and bureaucracy. This feels like a government job. 1 day's work takes 1 month here. I mean 1 month to fix a bad sql query!! There is no knowledge transfer at all, so if you are unfamiliar with their business logic and kind of systems they use then you are left on your own. You have to fight and beg for little information. Secondly there is no clear HR policies and helpline. I'm here for more than 8 months yet to meet any hr personnel (haven't even met my recruiter, only phone), somethings can't be dealt with via a online form. No proper way to submit tax claims or get more information about policies. Everything is slow. They use outdated technologies. But are trying to improve though. There are no onsite opportunities. I wont recommend to anyone who is hungry to work and learn new things. Also their code quality is not up to snuff so wont recommend it to a fresher as they will learn bad practices.