UBS Reviews

UBS used to be a good company to work for, however nowadays the only focus management has is cost cutting, so management spends most of time figuring out a way to reduce costs and the staff worrying about when their jobs will be moved to a low cost location (i.e. India, Poland, Nashville-TN, etc). The current CFO is a job killer who only thinks about UBS's share price, so he and the rest of the Board can cash in their millions. For the past 4+ years the only thing management has focused is cost reduction - benefits are gone, and compensation is now below market, as a result the good people continue resigning in bunches everyday. The moral is so dismal that people really do not care about anything else anymore - they just come in for the pay check until they find another job. A few years ago the Head of HR came up with a non sense employee performance measurement that destroy whatever was left in terms of moral, but he still employed by UBS so you get an idea of how bad management really is. Career growth at UBS is a thing of the past. Management keeps saying that the jobs in the future will be more interesting, however the only thing people will be doing in a few years is managing the mess created by the offshoring people who have no clue what they are doing. In order to remediate such low quality work provided by UBS's offshore "partners", UBS has more people in Operational Risk, Internal Audit and bureaucratic functions, than actually people doing work and really advising the business and dealing with regulatory issues. If you want to deal with bureacratics who do not understand anything, UBS may be the place for you. In addition, a lot of Senior Management has resigned lately, but instead of promoting people who are competent and have been loyal to the firm for years UBS continues to bring people from outside, so when they tell you that there is a career growth opportunity think twice about it. The bottom line is Management does not care about anything other than cost reduction, so if you want to spend most of your time dealing with cost/operational plans, and have stomach to say ok to everything they say that's the perfect place for you.

Compensation/pay is a joke - once they have you, you have to fight for every penny increase and bonus, and constantly have to prove yourself. Despite talking a lot about young talent and innovation, management are extremely sluggish to change and terrible at talent retention. The younger, more talented employees come and go constantly. They encourage a 'challenge' culture, yet I've never experienced anything less than hostility whenever I challenged status quo. A problem I'm sure typical of many big banks/firms: it's tough for women to rise and get the respect that men receive. Again, UBS make a big show of valuing women in the workplace, but I have experienced and witnessed quite the opposite on many occasions. Including several issues that were escalted through HR by colleagues and resulted in disciplinary action. I was at UBS for 5 years, and was still having the same meetings about the same challenges and issues throughout. How does this place function? The peer review system is not only excruciating, but worthless and meaningless. IT systems are archaic, as are processes, again likely due to the lack of youth and capacity for creativity in the firm.