1) Very old school. The company claims to be searching for new investment strategies but continues to produce the same vanilla results. VERY few new ideas have been produced in the past 10 years. Most funds find themselves chasing the market and implementing outdated strategies. The net income for the company is slowly declining.
2) SLOW - It seems to take forever for anything to get accomplished within this organization. Documents get bounced around departments, then to one advisory committee, then to another committee, then to outside counsel, then to senior management, then up to Prudential Investment Management (PIM), then to a final committee and finally some watered down result is produced. This bureaucracy results in many lost deals and the smothering of any progressive thinking. Additional internal compliance procedures created after the market crash just make it that much worse.
3) Content - 'It worked 15 years ago so it should work now' mentality. Most senior managers still sport the Cosby sweater to give you an idea...
4) Upward movement - Typically takes just shy of 4 years to be promoted to an associate from analyst. Very slow career progression due to no turnover at the top.
5) Compensation - Very weak relative to its peers in institutional real estate. Starting analysts at $60k when they can work in the city for $80k
6) Location - Senior Managers really knew how to tick off its junior employees by moving the office to a farm in the middle of Madison, NJ a solid 45 min to an hour commute from the city and an hour and a half commute by train AND THEN shuttle.
7) Due to points 5 & 6, the talent pool is weak. The trailblazers that built the company are now just sitting atop the heavy fees they retain from the PRISA funds and are more like lame ducks. The company will never be able to bring in and retain young talent due to the lack of compensation, the company's horrible location, and the inability to move up within the company. In order to get promoted you feel like you're waiting for someone to retire.
8) Senior management is out of touch with the younger analysts and associates. The extremely high turnover at the analyst level has resulted in a disconnect between managers and younger staff.
9) Very pretentious crowd - Everyone seems to have 1st world problems. Accounting staff is treated like second class citizens.
10) Very poor performance of international offices and endeavors. Not good at operating abroad at all. This has been a money pit for Prudential.
