Pros
Specific areas of the bank are treated very well, the others are just treated as an expense. If you are in a true profit center like Wells Fargo Financial Advisors and can produce you will do very well. The benefits were good, but are being chipped away with each passing year. Work/Life balance is good. Extra holidays, especially if you work in an area related to markets, such as a trade desk. Leadership training is good as long as you are put on the fast track. The bank is very good promoting minority advancement and hiring practices. The banks image is intact through the recession. The co-workers are friendly and mostly intelligent. It is a good place to work in some areas to learn a skill set to take to a better company that pays better.
Cons
The main challenge is that Wells Fargo, especially John Stumpf the CEO tries to maintain a community bank image. His mantra really is, "We are a community bank and customers come first." This is not the case in reality. The CEO and executive team gave themselves 20% salary increases on base salaries and millions of dollars in stock options all the while keeping their employees salaries stagnate. If you got 2% this year you were a lucky person. Quarter after quarter of profits, but none of it shared to the core employees only at the top of the pyramid. The top executives fly everywhere in the corporate jets. The bank does not promote from within, but makes you interview for every position and post many phantom positions that are cancelled. This is how they troll for talent instead of actually investing in their employees. The HR and upper management will give you insulting counter offers and are not tuned into the changing market. Management and HR make statements like," We do not want to get in an arms race with other departments for Risk Management talent so everyone needs to keep the salary offers limited". What they do not realize is that they are in an arms race with their competitors and a lot of talent has been leaving in the Risk Management areas because W.F does not pay enough to keep true talent. W.F is an old company. In the last year I have been witness to 5 retirements and the positions are not replaced in those areas. The remaining managers have 25 to 30 years at W.F, previous Norwest and are just biding time for retirement to collect their pensions. The new hires get benefits that are chipped away each year and I would not be surprised if they move all core employees to the Government Insurance Exchanges in the future.