Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan Reviews

Pros

Benefit, Job security, stability, Culture, Compensation

Cons

Career Opportunities Location none none

Pros

One of the best investment teams, worldwide. Great culture overall, however, varies by department.

Cons

Location was terrible, although they are moving downtown.

Advice to Management

Maintain a good balance of hiring both experienced professionals and new graduates. OTPP went too long with hiring lots of new graduates with little experience, and not enough experienced talent who could tackle existing challenges of a growing organization.

Pros

- Cares about employees generally speaking - Fairly good compensation relative to peers

Cons

- Fairly political organization - Change constant, not always for the better seems like sometimes senior management does not have strategy

Pros

People are great, caring, good HR.

Cons

Poor corporate structure means it's very hard to keep top talent.

Pros

Wonderful benefits package and pension. The people are friendly/dedicated, and there are plenty of things to learn from them and knowledge to share. Flexible hours for the most part, opening up to remote working.

Cons

Extremely slow growth and resistance to change. Within the past year almost every manager in a division has been promoted while workers are left in their role. Lots of stress and late nights depending on which team you are on. Junior employees might find it difficult to obtain mentorship and grow their skills. Overall trend seems to be heading towards more transparency, but this company still lags behind others in... the industry.

Advice to Management

Recognize employees that are not at the managerial level. Instead of hosting fancy events explaining how the company is improving, show employees through your actions. There's room for great potential at this company, but lots of work is needed to shift the culture and mindset.

Pros

- very good people. - excellent work life balance - a lot of opportunities to learn new things - DB pension is very attractive - good benefits

Cons

- depending on which team, the impact could be very small - career growth is very slow - a lot of legacy applications to maintain - compensation is equal to or below average (only my personal impression)

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