working in the banking industry

dhay13

i received a call about a job (contract) the other day and was submitted for it by a recruiter. yesterday the recruitr called back and said the bank called them and asked if i was still availabl and if i would be interstd in this other position that just came up. it is a direct hire position.

anyone have any input on working in the security sector in the banking industry? its a fairly large organization in the tri-state area. i have heard that the pay sucks but from what i was told this position pays pretty well (enough that i would be happy for awhile). i have also heard it is a pretty uptight industry to be in? while i take my job seriously, i do like to have fun while at work just to have an enjoyable day. common sense says it all depends on the particular branch and the personalities there but having heard this more than once it makes me wonder about the banking culture in general?

No_Nerd

I have some friends who work in banking out here in Hawaii ( IT SEC and in IT MGT). Uptight.... yes I would agree with this. Long hours and customer service is a big deal. All in all it seems everyone enjoys the work because everything translates well , but maybe the banking culture will take some getting use to.

TheFORCE

It depends on what you mean by "fairly large", is it a credit union, community bank, a regional bank, a national or a multi-national or is it an investment bank?. Banks operate and do business in different sectors, targeting different customers. Most face the same regulations and compliance issues but some are even more looked after because of their exposure, market capital or customer base. There isn't a specific culture that fits all of them. So you need to do further research on where they operate.

As an example, regional banks might have regular hours for their customers and so IT falls within the regular hours window also and maybe they are on call in case of emergencies. Then you have community/national banks where they have branches open sometimes until 9pm and need IT staff or their Helpdesk to be on until 9-10pm and also some senior IT people on call. Investment banking is a totally different animal, you have to be careful with everything you are doing and really cover your basis, you might deal with people that are uptight in this situation because of the money they generate for the bank. I a trader's pc is down or a simple thing like an account lock out not done in a timely manner, that means they losing money for the company so you might start seeing some of that up-tightness there. The money is definitely good and you do learn a lot about the banking industry but again it depends if it is a bank with a small IT department, close proximity departments or if it's a bank with a huge IT presence and then you face the risk of being in a silo and have to start making connections or really show desire to help and improve. In smaller banks this is not an issue as you often will be asked to help with other tasks and wear many hats but in big banks, you do what you were hired to do. One thing to consider from my experience is that once you get in it will be easier to be promoted internally for other positions.

--chris--

My $0.02. I started a new job in a Credit Union about 120 days ago.

We are 13 branches, 1 DC, 1 DR site that we own/operate for other CU's. About 250 users.

As for the culture, that will vary wildly like anywhere else. We wear jeans and logo polo's every day of the week, but teller staff is obviously business formal. I came from a MSP, so when I try to make a list of pros and cons, I come up short on the cons because I can only compare it to where I cam from.

As for compensation, it may just be CU's but the pay/bene's for this work is above average. I got a 31% raise moving here and make above average for the position in my area. A coworker is leaving shortly to work for another CU and the pay/bene's there is even better.

We have quarterly bonus's that are 7-14% of your annual salary depending on CU performance, 100% covered insurance, 11% 401k contribution (no match required), banker hours (9-5) and the only time I have had to work out of that window was once when we discovered the outgoing sysadmin failed to document the root pass for a SAN. I have had two calls after hours (one was still during hours, I just took some comp time and was home before 5 pm).

All of this will vary though depending on the size of the org, management, culture, expectations, etc...I just wanted to through my experience out there to demonstrate its not as bad as your source made it sound everywhere.