Pros
This company started out as a relatively pleasant call center environment. When I was hired, I was new to the area and simply looking for work. The first few years were as enjoyable as anyone would expect from a call center. The benefits offered were above average at first, and the company provided me with great educational opportunities. I picked up both my MBA and CFP designation while working for the company.
Cons
Over the years, I've read many of the comments here on Glassdoor that referred to Vanguard. As you may notice, the complaints are often well written, lengthy affairs. The positive ones trend towards short and simple. My fellow co-workers would laugh at the ones obviously written by the HR and recruitment staff, but the honest one were the most disturbing about the company. You see, Vanguard is the low cost provider, and this attracts the sort that cannot find more lucrative pay. I realized early on that Vanguard pay was not on par with its competitors. I thought loyalty to the company would eventually pay off, though it never did over the eight years I worked there. The main issue is that the low pay had created a race toward the bottom mentality. Anyone with any aptitude, skill, or promise was blacklisted. Since the ignorant and uneducated had entrenched themselves into positions of power, they fiercely fought against those who would rise to the top elsewhere. The low pay led to low morale, and this company is the epitome of a job, not a career. Most people were simply cogs in the machine, though nepotism could get you far. For several year, I worked under the dimmest witted of managers I have ever experienced in a professional position. The manager was put in the role by a spouse who had a fairly high position in the company. While this can be common, having a manager remain in a position of power when 30,000 trade corrections valued at over $141 million seems a bit much. Most financial companies tend to frown on this sort of irresponsibility, but not Vanguard. Indeed, I had a coworker under the same manager simply walk away from work for over nine months before the above mentioned manager took action. Of course, he made sure to play the game rather than do the work… but this is how you succeed in a company like this. In the end, I grew tired of doing all the work with nothing to show from it. Vanguard was a dead end job filled with dead end people.