Barclays reviews

Managers are spending most of their time creating administration overhead, justifying this way their existence. For each task, one has to follow so many rules and procedures, which often contradict each other. Failing to comply any of them, will draw upon you a witch-hunt storm. Frequent uncompensated overtime is implied.

BarCap boasts one of the most sterile and politicized environments you will ever see in the investment banking industry (admittedly this will suit some candidates). Barcap is also a notorious revolving door. This is true to varying extents of the entire IB industry, but Barcap take it to extremes - fixed redundancy cycles run every two years or so (this is unofficial, of course), and if you're made redundant from BarCap make no mistake - it was not redundancy, you were 'not wanted'. The endless redundancy cycle is the company's way of safely removing those that "did not fit in" without fear of litigation. This 'unofficial' policy has led to Barcap having the largest internal HR presence in the London IB industry. Nepotism abounds, and you will find silos of surprisingly incompetent permanent staff that survive solely due to patronage from above. Line manager's are 'encouraged' not to give negative appraisals in these cases; in general the performance management system is based less on merit than on 'who you know'. if you're an efficient and able networker, you may be able to go far. The flip side of this is that you don't want to disagree with anyone - because if you do, you can guarantee you'll be on the next redundancy list. This is not a company for you if you believe in speaking your mind.