For those who have worked at major financial institutions, which one is the worst and which one is the best in your opinion? This is the first company I’ve worked for and I’m actually thinking of finding work elsewhere. Not because I think it’s a horrible company but because I’ve reach my potential limit here and I feel it’s time to move on.
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BNYM is in most areas, except maybe Digital and few other products, very average – average skilled employees, tons of not competent managers, lots of ego managers with no management skills in NY primarily, but a lot of status quo around and HR is mostly looking to hire outside of company (%compensation) rather than developing its own talent... So Im not surprised you feel as you reached your potential ... Tons of folks left that company because they couldnt develop more and move internally. However, when they were laying off people, they did lay off some great and knowledgeable people –but often in other locations than NY
What’s “better” is entirely dependent on what type of financial services you want to work in. If you like custody banking, then BNY Mellon is likely the best place to be. State Street would also be good but if we pay attention to semantics, you’ll have a slightly harder time winning business from clients in the grand scheme of things. If you like digital custody capabilities, then you might like State Street more since they have a fully functioning digital front to back custody offering, but on the other hand, you’d have the opportunity to help stand that up at BNY since we’re working on it right now.
If you want nothing to do with custody and investment services (almost everyone in finance would want to stay as far away from custody and especially ops as they can), and you want to be an investment banker, then the best financial services company would be dependent upon what sector you wanted to work in. Bulge bracket investment banks will cover all sectors and consistently win business in each, but boutique investment banks would be more positioned to win consistently in one or a few sectors. If you like making investment decisions in private markets with private capital, it’s probably Apollo or KKR. If you like making investment decisions in public markets with private capital, it’s probably an equity research desk at Goldman.
Point is that “financial institutions” is so incredibly broad. Most of the industry would consider what BNY mellon does to be so far from “high finance” that it isn’t considered financial services at all. Even there, if you work in operations at BNY, it would be considered even further removed. BNY specializes in effectively selling operational capability at scale to other financial firms who are closer to the markets who want to outsource their operations group to a service provider. That’s us, we’re the service provider. So we are incredibly far away from what most would consider “finance” and thus it’s very hard to answer your questions without more info on what you do or what you want to do. Im pretty sure you aren’t a banker since we only have a handful of those here in very specific groups, but maybe you want to be? Then you’d need to learn more about the above to know which firm was best for you. Maybe you want to be the best investment operations professional. In that case, I’d probably say you’re at the best place there is for financial operations since we have global scale and so many firms outsource to us. Maybe you want to be a great wealth manager? Then you’d need to decide if you want to work with everyday families, or UHNW individuals. The answer as to what firm is “best” will change with every nuance to your goals.
Perhaps your potential isn't as great as you think it is. You're asking for career advice but give us zero information about your skillset or role at BK. You could be anything from a financial planner, AML/OFAC/KYC analyst, compliance officer, business analyst, angular developer, JAVA developer, mainframe developer, cyber security analyst, windows developer, systems architect, MQ expert, SWIFT messaging expert, data entry clerk, FX manager, document examiner, trade and documentary credit expert, liquidity funding manager, broker dealer clearance specialist, portfolio analyst, custody analyst, lockbox analyst, etc, etc...
They are all different branches of the same awful corrupt industry. It doesn't matter where you go, whether its Wells Fargo, Bank of America, JP Morgan, or Goldman. A big time exec like Charlie goes from BNY Mellon to Wells Fargo, and the next thing you know, folks in leadership positions follow that exec over to the new company, one by one, like little sheep.
I don't think its really possible to say that one financial institution is any better than the other. There is no real accountability in the industry for performance or quality, no matter which financial institution you wind up at.