Strong franchise, but parts of CCO operate with poor managerial discipline and politics disguised as leadership
Pros
Barclays has many smart, capable, and committed people. I worked with excellent stakeholders across the business, including senior leaders who were thoughtful, commercially minded, and genuinely collaborative. The firm offers meaningful exposure to complex businesses, strong learning opportunities, and the chance to build real subject-matter depth. In the right team, it can be a very rewarding place to work.
Cons
My experience within CCO was very different from the strengths of the broader franchise. In that part of the organization, leadership quality felt highly uneven, and in my case, managerial judgment seemed driven more by personal preference, control, and politics than by objective performance. There was a clear disconnect between how my work was viewed by business stakeholders and how it was later assessed by management. Strong stakeholder support, partnership with senior business leaders, and years of substantive delivery did not translate into a fair or transparent evaluation process. Feedback was often either vague, retroactive, or framed around style and visibility preferences rather than actual outcomes. A particularly frustrating dynamic was the tendency for managers to avoid engaging in decisions or forums where input was needed, only to revisit and criticize those same decisions after the fact. That creates an environment where accountability flows downward, but support and clarity do not. The culture in parts of CCO can also feel overly focused on hierarchy, control, and optics rather than practical leadership, trust, and mature management. In my experience, this creates confusion, discourages independent thinking, and makes it difficult for high-performing people to understand what is truly valued.
