I’m with Google now for 2 years in Bay Area. Before that I was at Meta for a few years. In last 13 years of my career, I’ve always worked for tech companies. I wasn’t looking for a role. But a recruiter from JP Morgan reached out and I thought I’d at least interview. I’m getting an offer at Executive Director product role in Bay Area (Remote). I don’t have number yet. I’ll have PM team of 3-4 PMs eventually. If I like the numbers, I’m wondering what are the pros and cons of working for the bank in product role. What you suggest to consider as I make a decision?
What will you be doing? If you’re working with strata and building and optimizing electronic trading platforms, you’ll get a ton of respect and bank. Otherwise, you’re an IT guy that gets laughed at, no matter the level. I was at Goldman before meta, and the attitude towards product roles is highly disrespectful at these banks.
Thank you for sharing. I appreciate it. If you work for trading platforms, do you get compensated differently at the same level? How hard it is to switch from other products to trading platforms?
Yeah you’re making way more as someone working directly on the trading algos or the platform that the traders use to monitor the market and execute trades. Not sure how xfers work since I wasn’t in a product / tech role when I was there. Generally, switching is communicated as possible but it takes a lot of effort not as easy as in tech. I made a switch from futures trading to asset management but it took like 5 months. I literally switched right before I got the offer at Meta. Haha if they hadn’t taken as long I probably wouldn’t have been looking outside of the firm. You’ll likely have a REALLY hard time moving from a non-trading product to a trading product. Like you literally might get stuck leading a team building a set of compliance tools, and you’ll be absolutely fucked. Be super clear about what you will be working on and what part of the form it’s connected to.
Worked in JP for product It’s a dead end.
In what ways? Can you share more?
1. Legacy outdated tech 2. Not so great engineering talent to work with 3. Too much bureaucracy If you had started you career there or initial years - can survive for the money. Moving from FAANG - I doubt it
You like wearing a suit?
No one swear suits in technology departments there. What’s your Meta point?
Your supporting team in Bangalore will be wearing one. Enjoy
My wife worked there for few months as a PM in Digital. She hated it, JPMC is a bureaucracy mess. No good talent, pay is crazy low, PMs are glorified project managers there. She lasted 6 months even in tough job market she left for a small tech startup.
Thank you for sharing. I appreciate it. What are the best ways to negotiate pay there? Is it possible to stretch PM executive director pay to $600K as total if you have competing offers? I’d appreciate if you can check with her and let me know. Happy to DM.
600k for product is not gonna happen. Even for engineering it’s too high even for HCOL. Director has 2 levels now. DM me and we can discuss more.
They recently started enforcing EDs to come to office 5 days a week so idk about that remote thing, also you probably won’t like the numbers.
MD*
ED pay here in Product varies. I've seen as low as 215 TC to 500 TC. There are good pockets in which to be a PM where you do actually have opportunities to focus on building and driving the business but as many have said, there is a huge contingent of "product" jobs here that are glorified project management roles, i.e. a ton of status reporting, updates, organizing work prioritized directly by Ops/Front Office instead of having input into prioritization. Like I said, there are much more forward thinking groups in JPMC (it's 250k employees), but the majority of it is unfortunately very project managey and half the budget dedicated towards modernization (migration to microservices, cloud migration, etc.). PM if you want to share specific details on the role you're looking at and I'm happy to help.
I.e. PMs don't product-manage. As simple as that
In many instances at JPMC, correct. Always are areas where they do but it's the exception rather than the rule.
Remote at J.P. Morgan ? Lol just know they are lying . It’s going to be hybrid at best
100% expect min 3 days in office. No one gets remote unless you get an exemption that essentially comes at the Operating Committee level.
I would concur with this, I was hired in December with everyone in my hiring panels, recruiting - knowing that I lived 2-2.5 hours from the office (one way). I was very clear that my best case in office was 1-2 days a week. To say I have felt bait-and-switched would be an understatement. If they had told me the truth I would have taken one of the other two roles I had offers out on.
Currently MD at JPM…. I will tell you to run. High MD TC is still under 400K There is no Remote with JPM. It’s a switch and bait. Don’t forget PAD regulation either. You can’t touch any stock without pre-clearing every time with big brother. I’m looking to jump ship as soon as this market is better.
Good to see MDs recognizing the disaster JPMC is. I have only found 1 MD that is FAANG-caliber. Rest are just mediocre lifers
Out of curiosity were you hired into an MD role or promoted?
OP, almost identical boat as you and running away after 1y. DM me if interested in learning from real experience
What's your level at G? L5 OR L6? Even at ED the numbers will almost certainly be less than L6 and *maybe* on par with L5. I came from JP to G and there's no way in hell I'd go back. Anything you think is bad at G, it's going to be worse at JP.
I’m at L6 at Google at around $395K What’s the highest I can expect at ED at JPM? What did you hate at JPM?
I would be skeptical of a remote role. The only people I knew pre-pandemic that had that were either medical or a couple random cases where they moved for family reasons (1 spouse job, 1 caring for parent), but were long established on their position and got a high level exception. Full remote is just not done. Similarly, RTO is strictly enforced. The kind of things (badge tracking, etc) you see people worrying about on blind or memegen right now at G have been reality at JP since like Sept 2021. Jamie absolutely wants your ass in a seat in the office because he thinks you're just screwing off if you're WFH. As far as work goes, I'm a SWE, was EM there. I worked closely with someone in a similar position, ED with 4-5 reports. He worked a shitload. Then he lost one of his PMs (that covered my team) and had to do that job too. Also, JP doesn't generally have the army of TPMs that you get at G. You'll be lucky to have a "Scrum master" or 2 covering your space, but they are not TPMs. You and your team will be responsible for all the status reports that your management wants. Pay wise, I would have thought $350-400, but I've seen some JP offers here on blind that have surprised me lately. Note that there are no joining grants. You get your base and your bonus. Part of your bonus will be in RSU, but that's not a good thing as it doesn't vest anything for 2 years. If you got 400, it might be something like 200 base, 160 cash bonus, 40 RSU bonus. You'd get those bonuses at end of January each year.