Vanguard reviews

Pay is low. Vanguard claims that its compensation is "competitive" for the industry, however it is using call centers as the "industry" benchmark, which don't pay well at all. As of July 2016, new hires will start at $40,000. Bonus is very low, and is generally less than 10% of salary. Year-end merit increases in pay outpace inflation slightly, but new salary caps prevent you from taking advantage of this for very long. This is a call center. You might think that this is a job whereby you will be offering investment advice or managing client's wealth, but in reality the majority of your day will be spent changing addresses, helping clients log onto their accounts, taking verbal abuse by clients and reading numbers/scripts off of a screen. I have been at Vanguard for 3+ years and been promoted to a trading role, yet I still spend most of my time doing things that a minimum wage contractor could be doing. Growth is slow. Any time you get a position, you have to spend 12-18 months in your role before you are even allowed to post out. When you post to a new position, you will go through 1-7 rounds of interviewers against dozens of other candidates, some of which may be external hires. The only real way to grow into a role that is actually off the phones is to get your MBA, CFA or CFP. I did this and left after I realized that with it, I am worth a lot more with another firm. If/when you do finally reach your time-in-job requirement and post to a new role, it is now only a 7% raise in pay. This means that you could jump 6 levels (unprecedented and would likely take 10-15 years), and your salary would go from $40-50k to a whopping $57-71k. Do not think that you will ever make anywhere near six-figures at Vanguard without spending 20+ years with the firm.

Extremely narrow focus on cutting expenses at all cost. Narrow thinking in that vanguard's way is the only right way or the best way to do things (investment methodology). Outdated technology and is extremely slow to advance