Visa Inc. reviews

3.8

69% would recommend to a friend

(7,486 total reviews)
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Ryan Mclenerney

67% approve of CEO

69% positive business outlook

Visa Inc. has an employee rating of 3.8 out of 5 stars, based on 7,486 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Visa Inc. employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

7K reviews
2.0
Dec 19, 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Most of the "pros" I can think of are in the past. But Visa may still be an OK company for young male Indians who want to pad their resume. (Indian women are talked over in meetings.)

Cons

The company is generally sliding downhill rapidly. The few innovations come from copying or buying outside. Management, at least in IT, all the way to the IT top, seem to be reading from their Indian-IT school textbooks To sum this up "Look busy and change the plans frequently if rapid results are not forthcoming." Everyone from Director and higher seems to be trying to implement their own plan, I suppose for later resume building. Teamwork is restricted to just a very few teams with decent managers (less than 5% of teams). Management between teams is fully territorial, with people believing that their way is the only way and never cooperating as this would be seen as backing down from their own plans. The morale and culture are the worst I've experienced. Top IT guy seems to believe his job is cheerleading, so there are 4-6 rah-rah meetings every month called "All-Hands". Hardly anyone even goes to these anymore, they have to send email to please sit up in the front for the cameras. These meetings always start 10-20 minutes late. (I mention these details not as the worst of the environment, but just as small examples to show how far the poor culture has seeped.) There are at least 3, and often 10 or more, layers of project planners for each project. Of course, all but two of these (the top layer and the bottom layer) are just playing the telephone game and regurgitating what they heard from below. Often the actual source of the information is not allowed at the meeting that reports it (to protect the middle manager jobs). So almost all meetings end up a waste of time, where people have to "take things offline" to go figure out the actual source and get the information directly. Generally speaking the VP and SVP layers are the worst of the non-value-adding staff. They don't want any decision made by others, so all meetings are hamstrung until the VP or SVP shows up to make a call. These VP's spend their days running from meeting to meeting pointing out the obvious. Since they are heavily overbooked (everyone needs them to move things forward, no delegation) they miss many meetings completely. This is accepted and implicitly excused as "they are so busy". Top execs rely on the annual HR survey for proof of the wonderful job they are doing. Everyone is pressured to complete the survey. Year after year the same areas are identified as poor performing areas -- but the next year and the year after that it is the same. Presentation of the results (at another All-Hands of course) is always marketing speak telling everyone how serious they are about changing these results. Now it appears VIsa is putting pressure on at least a couple VP's to come to Glassdoor and promise better for the future. Deja-vu. At least it appears a couple VP's are reading these comments.

2.0
Apr 17, 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Visa has an incredible business that continues to grow as more people use credit cards and more merchants accept them. As Warren Buffet says a "ham sandwich" can run Visa and we certainly have one in technology

Cons

CTO is arrogant with no understanding of Visa business and has been wasting precious resources on quixotic ideas. There is supposedly has been a project to move transaction processing to open systems from its mainframe base more than 2 years but we are replacing Unix by mainframe in Europe! Visa Developer platform is positioned as his great big vision but he does not realize that Visa has had API's for merchants and FI's forever. He does not understand that REST is just a protocol and FI's do not care about it.

2.0
Nov 17, 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Visa is a very strong brand, and I’m extremely proud to work for the company. There are definitely some strong and extremely capable managers who empower their employees and act in a fair and non-political manner. Some managers offer benefits to their employees, i.e. allowing them to work from home or remotely, and providing mobile phones.

Cons

Issues with Managers: There are managers who engage in horrible behavior, whether it be publically shaming employees, blatant disrespect to direct reports, to the point where it becomes bullying, or overworking employees, and there is no way for employees to seek help. Some managers literally lead by fear, and are rewarded because their direct reports deliver strong work. There is one employee engagement survey done annually, and seldom does anything happen to managers who receive bad ratings. When it comes time for compensation, 360 reviews are not considered, so managers are not incentivized to treat their direct reports like actual people. There are also no people management classes for managers, so those who receive poor ratings on the engagement review don’t have any training or repercussions to their poor performance. Emphasis on Millennials: For a company that preaches an increased interest in recruiting millennials, there is absolutely no surveying or monitoring of millennials who recently joined Visa, with the exception of the New Graduate Development Program. As a new graduate who returned following a fantastic internship experience, I have had absolutely no external support from HR in terms of providing me with a mentor, offering any type of training beyond the normal 3-hour onboarding program, or any type of check-in about the transition from internship to full-time positions. They worked very hard to recruit us to come back full-time, but have made no effort to help facilitate, or even gain insights into, our transition into life at Visa. Many older employees feel as though the company is catering solely to young people, but this is just not the case in my experience. If you care about millennials and attracting young talent, act like it. It’s extremely frustrating to have been recruited so heavily and then ignored upon arrival at the company and in addition, to listen to leadership talk about how Visa is a great place to young people to work and how they want to recruit young talent. Need to Align Company Goals with Practices: Visa claims to be a tech company, and have a “think like a startup” mentality—this is an absolute joke. It’s far too political and corporate to be a tech company, and cares much too little about employees to be a startup. It’s one thing to preach in all hands that you care about employees, but it’s another thing altogether to actually show that you value your employees. There is so much emphasis on the “employer of choice” pillar, but nothing really behind it. Morale on some teams is very, very low, and not only is nothing being done, but nobody seems to really care. Inconsistent Policies: The standards for several policies are wildly inconsistent across and even within functional departments; specifically, work from home (WFH), working remotely, and mobile phones. Within the same function, there will be teams with extremely different WFH/work remote policies, and the same is true for mobile phones. Some managers allow WFH with little to no notice, while some restrict the practice entirely. The BYOD program allows people to use their personal phones for work, but many teams allow employees to use a phone that Visa pays for in order to have constant access to email. There is no standard for any of these policies, and it is entirely up to manager discretion.

Viewing 13 - 15 of 7,486 Reviews

Glassdoor has 8,865 Visa Inc. reviews submitted anonymously by Visa Inc. employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Visa Inc. is right for you.