You get certain looks if you try to go home on time, it seems frowned upon to leave while others in your team are still working. I was part of a group once who would stay until 8pm daily on average. Then we would get talks about doing too much OT, followed by a talk the following week on how we can’t leave until everything is completed. New responsibilities were constantly given and the groups kept getting smaller. Sometimes expectations felt highly unreasonable regarding the amount of time to complete tasks.
If you work in operations, there’s very little opportunity to move to another department. They won’t really give you a chance - I’ve seen peers who got their CFA all on their own turned away. If your manager likes you and won’t want to lose you, they have “dibs” on keeping you even if another manager would hire you for a position you are interested in. So basically if you do a great job and your manager likes you, instead of being rewarded you get held back. I was advised by a long time Portfolio Manager that if I wanted to move up I would have to leave the company first because management won’t hire someone whose current manager doesn’t want to lose.
The pay was not great and at year end we all got the same sob story of the company not doing great so bonuses would rarely change much (some years it even decreased) while upper management would go home with a large slice of the cake.
