Barclays reviews

4.0

78% would recommend to a friend

(22,190 total reviews)
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C.S. Venkatakrishnan

85% approve of CEO

71% positive business outlook

Barclays has an employee rating of 4.0 out of 5 stars, based on 22,190 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Barclays employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Financial Services industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

22K reviews
3.0
Jul 11, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Competence and professionalism are the hallmark of BGI's staff. Most businesses claim to hire "only the best" people, but BGI actually has been since way before the Googles of the world made it such a selling point. That means at BGI you'll mostly work among "best in class" professionals across all business or tech groups and will benefit from the associations. You'll have incredible tools from the cutting (but not bleeding) edge of technology and business, plus have the funding to sustain them. Your group will learn or create the absolute best approaches to your daily obstacles and apply your solutions without the immature drama that prevents so many other businesses from a similar excellence.

Cons

Although you'll be working among an unbelievable array of talented, well-balanced, fun people, you will not really have much life outside work. You'll easily work 50 hours a week (even if not in the office) and rarely get a lunch longer than 20 minutes. When you get to the point of absolutely having to take a vacation, there aren't enough people in your team to take up the load, so you'll get so punished with catching up on your return that it wipes out the benefits of vacation. Last, other than your initial-hire salary (which will be just slightly above market) after all this work, annual raises and bonuses will not accurately reflect your incredibly hard work, the total lack of work-life balance and the literally billions in profits a mere 3,500+ people help generate.

3.0
Jun 11, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The great and talented people. The collegial atmosphere. Great location for a head office. Good levels of communication from Blake Grossman. The new head office building itself.

Cons

The current BGI is one where virtually all roles, outside of sales, have been broken down into extremely narrowly defined categories of tasks. This is very different from the much smaller firm of only 10 years ago, however, this serves the firm's purpose of maintaining a low cost structure while maximizing the degree of specialization of most people on staff. Some might say that they are exploiting a production line approach with specialists responsible for adding a trade list here, calling a broker there, generating a client report, etc to create their final product. Although this is one way to achieve spectacular returns to scale, it leaves many of the rank and file in a situation where their skills are really only valuable to BGI and where one's career can stagnate after a few years on the job. As a result, if you look around the organization, you will find many very talented people who aren't really being fully utilized to their maximum potential. At the end of the day, it is more about individual preference - I know many people that remain there that absolutely love BGI and I agree with them on many points. However, I know just as many that have self selected out and are glad that they are no longer there. If someone were looking for a reasonably secure, reasonably well paying job, BGI would be an excellent firm to work for. On the other hand, if one were looking for a place where you would have the opportunity for an interesting career progression, have a broad experience and develop your investment management and business skills, I would recommend looking elsewhere.

2.0
Jun 10, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Can’t think of 1. Not even 1.

Cons

Pay is the lowest compared to similar company with the same role. Upper management speaks to staff with a patronizing tone; cutting them off, and talking down to them. At times it felt like they purposefully were attempting to find things wrong instead of working together as a team to meet objectives. Understaffed. Fully expected to do the work of a team of 6 despite being a team of 2 for example.

Viewing 250 - 252 of 22,190 Reviews

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