Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan Reviews

Pros

A fantastic place to develop your career. Very talented teams to work with. Good benefits, health and dental. Good salary for most positions. Good location near the subway.

Cons

Tough to get changes across. Not very work from home friendly. Big organizational changes. Too many conflicting technologies. Not a lot of lunch options.

Advice to Management

Please cut down the politics on getting changes through!

Pros

1) Pay and salary for younger folks is decent (though not outstanding). 2) There are changes that have been introduced or will soon be introduced to help change and improve culture (dress for your day, remote working, etc.), which is a good sign. 3) The firm will relocate to a downtown location in a couple of years.

Cons

1) For junior investment employees, it takes forever to get more than 3 weeks of vacation, because doing so depends on getting promoted (see #2 on why that's unlikely to happen). 2) Career development and promotion opportunities at the firm are extremely poor, which is likely why more and more junior folks will continue to leave as time goes on. You do NOT get promoted here for being good at your job. Political... ability and Machiavellianism are more important than your investment acumen. 3) Senior investment employees have been around forever and this has led to a lack of any true innovation or educated risk-taking, and the continued implementation of investment approaches that either don't work or don't make sense. 4) The executive team is "all talk", and they fail to acknowledge that politics, bureaucracy, and stale senior talent are making the firm a difficult place to work for younger people. But there is no incentive for them to change things, because these are the very characteristics of the firm that they rely on to maintain their powerful positions.

Advice to Management

Read the Cons listed above and put in place carefully thought out strategies to resolve them. Don't claim that these issues don't exist. Acknowledge their existence and then work tirelessly to resolve them.

Pros

Great team, really nice people, very supportive of family obligation, stability

Cons

Can get comfortable and complacent, not conducive to changes. Difficult to move up, progress through lateral move

Pros

Team culture is strong. Company visions are clear. Recognition is there for effort you put in. Competitive benefits and pay.

Cons

Growth is at a mediocre pace. IT has a negative connotation in the office.

Pros

Great environment, team mentality, and opportunities for growth

Cons

Slower due to the nature of a pension plan,

Pros

I am thinking hard to know what can be pros but can’t think of any.

Cons

Being a young professional you will have experience working with old folks sitting in the company for an average of 15 years. The problem with that is, less dynamic mindset and lack of adaptation. They can’t digest new ideas and are not open to any change that hurts their ego. All they know about is what happens in teachers. Their experience and line of sight is too narrow to get adjusted to. Folks that got into... the firm as interns are now directors so they have no idea how the outside world looks like and how to scale a team. Just because they offer a pension plan folks who cares about retirement more are still there. A group of all these old employees can be political. Being a new hire it kills your motivation when you see they aren’t open to ideas and different work styles to bring improvement rather they would do what they think is right. All decisions are taken behind close doors and the team is never on board. I personally don’t recommend this place for young professionals in the field of IT those who believe it exponential growth and want recognition and reward for their hard work. The success point is close to your retirement age. They are still using windows 7 and outlook 2010. No laptops no clear policy of work from home. Offices are too old and crowded. Its hard to get a place in the washroom on a first visit, gotta do multiple rounds to get your turn. Location wise if you have a car, the parking lot is too expensive to park in. 200 bucks a month almost. Only korean and chinese places to do lunches around area. They have a survey mechanism internally that doesn’t seems to be affective at all.

Advice to Management

Have an open mindset not just talk about it and be open to ideas and appreciate and value those who are willing to bring improvement.

Pros

Strong brand, and well-deserved excellent reputation globally. Great people and new offices in London and Hong Kong that have a lot of potential.

Cons

There are no real cons at OTPP. It is a best in class organization. Good management and operations. They need to continue moving forward with great work on diversity. They do a really good job for pensioners and service to members is always very good and rates as number one compared to their peers in the market.

Advice to Management

Keep up the good work and focus on talent and mobility. Great work on culture and transparency as well as progress on diversity.

Pros

Great company to work for

Cons

No problems here ! ! !