Meetings, meetings, meetings - SRE/DevOps Engineer Mastercard Employee Review

1.0
Oct 21, 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

* the office was nice * people tended to be friendly * lots of perks and benefits People were generally friendly. The best thing was the perks. All sorts of things that companies don't tend to give, like travel insurance. They'll pay a decent amount towards tuition fees.

Cons

* so many meetings * tenure based promotions * more meetings * upper management unaware of the rest of the tech industry * most of the systems are bought in software which doesn't work. * did I mention the meetings? In my time at MC I spent more than half of my time in meetings. Mostly they were utterly pointless and most of the people in those meetings didn't need to be there. But it was important to be go meetings for some reason. The systems we used were all based on bought in software that didn't work well and the vendors just ripped off MC by charging for everything. The upshot was that most of the internal systems were awful and there was nothing anyone could do about it. So the work was incredibly frustrating. And the management was worse. I kept hearing upper management saying how MC was a tech company. It really isn't. They just don't know what a proper tech company is like. On top of that they were jumping at every new tech that was coming along. Blockchain! AI! Cloud! Even if it didn't make any sense, just say you're doing it even if you aren't! Something else frustrating was that it was virtually impossible to get anything done. Everything had to go through loads of meetings and you weren't allowed to use software unless it was approved. So getting things done was incredibly difficult. Overall the technologies used were so old and pointless it's like a career dead end. For a lot of people that's fine because to get promoted all you need to do is hang around for a while. This meant a lot of the senior technical people had no idea of anything outside of MC because they'd never worked anywhere else.

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5.0
Jun 23, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

People are highly intelligent and things seem to operate efficiently

Cons

Large ship so changes are hard to make

4.0
May 27, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Mastercard does a great job fostering an inclusive and supportive environment. There are genuinely good people throughout the organization, and leadership often invests in employee engagement through events, recognition, and culture-building initiatives. I enjoyed many of the relationships I built while working there, and there are teams that truly care about collaboration and supporting one another.

Cons

Compensation at the director level did not feel competitive compared to the level of responsibility expected. Career advancement can also be extremely challenging due to how top-heavy the organization is with senior leadership roles. There are a large number of Senior Vice Presidents, sometimes without clear scope or experience aligned to the title, which creates limited room for high-performing employees to grow. At times, it felt like senior leaders were being hired primarily to manage or communicate with other senior leaders, rather than drive meaningful operational impact. In product and go-to-market roles especially, priorities are often heavily driven by funding decisions. It can be frustrating when projects suddenly shift in importance or remain underfunded for long periods of time while awaiting senior leadership review. This sometimes leaves highly talented employees in limbo, unable to move initiatives forward despite strong momentum or market opportunity. The organization can also be very comfortable with the status quo, which creates a slower pace that many employees seem accustomed to. For people who are highly motivated and eager to drive change, it can feel difficult to navigate the number of roadblocks and layers of approval required to move initiatives forward.

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