Pros
At the XC (branch) level, you can create a team environment that is fun. There is some room to create your own office culture. I was lucky and had a great team (others are not as fortunate) My immediate manager was FANTASTIC. She was incredibly supportive and knew how to be a leader. The CEO is well intentioned and active in the community. Allegedly, he was seen in Winco and pleasantly chatting with other shoppers just as normally he would in the office. You will learn A LOT. There is a surplus of potential growth in your banking knowledge. On a side note, if you do not have any experience in sales, this role will be a wonderful entry point to learn a sales process. There are opportunities to get some additional certifications, and some are even paid for by the company. Banking has some weird niches sometimes that you can fill after you find them Benefits are not great but competitive.
Cons
Pay generally is on the lower side. For the bankers, incentive plan is not really an incentive plan, the commissions used to be ok but after 2024 my commission bonuses per quarter were reduced by 40%. Excluding my immediate manager and the CEO, everyone else in between was dismissive and incredibly condescending towards other employees and other departments. Feedback is met with defensive comments and lack of follow through. If you have an eye for optimizing a process and pass along feedback to leadership, no matter how professional you are and how genius the idea is, don’t expect anything. More than likely, you will be blamed for even bringing it up. Most systems are old, and the company has no plans on updating them or purchasing new ones. This results in a negative experience for their clients which means the customer facing positions get to be yelled at while leadership never pays the consequences for their actions. Corporate is an insider’s club. If you work at the branch, you do not get nearly the plush benefits that are offered to other employees. And if you try to make a lateral move First Tech will find a way to hire from the outside. I knew some people who were able to move up the ladder, but it was very rare. I was offered a job on the corporate side, but I declined it because the “raise” I was offered was insulting and HR was not very flexible in their negotiations. Mistakes are always met with micro-management from that employee’s direct supervisor. If you fail a goal that is set by the company, no matter how arbitrary the goal is, you should face consequences for it. If on the slight chance you exceed expectations, First Tech will remove the instruments in play to support you. And sometimes, believe it or not, leadership will get suspicious of you and even punish you if you exceed your sales goal by a significant amount (this actually happened to me when I reached 168% of my loan sales goal). Overall, there is the feeling that First Tech used to be a good company that provided a good service. Many great leaders and employees have left throughout the years. But starting around late 2022/early 2023ish, this deterioration has accelerated. It seems like everything is going downhill.
