MetLife reviews

No creativity, horrible leadership, disjointed teams, very convoluted/antiquated tech. Extremely political. No vision. Wasted resources on unimportant, mindless details. People spend hours in meetings talking about insignificant things. Leadership/executives/CEO are extremely political with no concern for the company or employees. They only really care about their own salary, bonus and titles. They cloak this in pretending to create a "ONE MetLife" but most execs and CEO have staged town hall meetings, no interaction with employees, and no interest in anything but their own egos. However, the people that are now being hired are, for the most part, submissive robots that drink the "MetLife Kool Aid". By the way, upper management prefers this because they have all the control. Whereas the employees they are literally firing in waves in the North East offices, who have tons of valuable industry knowledge and valid opinions on how things are going, are a flight risk to the CEO and his "cabinet" of money hungry minions. I am not one of their robots. I see what is happening and the agendas they have. It may be sustainable for a while for these execs because, let's face it, they're an old insurance company, so they will always have a consistent money flow. But for those of you who want a place who values their people and the products they produce and love a collaborative and innovative environment, DONT WORK AT METLIFE.

Some background: MetLife is building their Technology hub in the RTP area so they are shutting down offices across the US, especially in the NJ and NY areas. Their plan is to hire 1500 people by 2015 to replace the people thet are being let go. They claim that they are building the site in RTP so they can change the culture and have fresh perspective but I really think this was all about saving money. Although the leadership keeps on talking about changing the organization their actions show the opposite. They are doing massive hiring without having a plan in place for knowledge transfer and ownership transfer. Most of the people at MetLife have been there for decades so MetLife is their only career (or their longest career), therefore the only way they know is the Metlife way and they are not about to change anything. In addition, they are not happy to train the people that are taking over their job or transition ownership over to them. So the new people that come on board get no support for coming up to speed, owning work or even trying to improve things. They basically have no say, no authority and no ownership. Even people in leadership positions are being overridden by their management in the other sites. Many people were hired for a certain role and then were given different responsibilities which are way below their skill level. For example, senior project leads are being requested to update spreadsheets. I personally know MANY people in this situation. So not only you are not being challenged, but you are regressing. The moral is VERY low. The attrition rate is high. I know a few people that quit after a couple of months and I know many people who are unhappy and regret joining MetLife. I don’t think I’ve ever worked in a place where there were so many unhappy people. What MetLife don’t realize is that this is not NY or NJ. The RTP area is a small place and it’s only a matter of time until MetLife will get bad reputation. So here is my advice to you, if you are unemployed or really hate your current job then maybe you should consider MetLife. If you are happy or even OK with where you are, stay away from here. My 2 cents – take it or leave it.