Pros
They pay very well as a salary instead of a bonus. Their pension contributions are very high, you don't need to contribute yourself. Work life balance can be ok in some teams.
Cons
1) Horrendous incompetence. It is really apparent from the first day. There are an awful lot of people there who make a lot of mistakes or who just can't do their job. It is great that DB want to keep people, but it really is these long-timers that are holding DB back. 2) Many, many people who all think their job is to micromanage you. This is particularly bad in tech. There are VPs who have no idea what a work item is or what it does or what is needed but have spent years in a job where their role was to find someone else to do the work. As a result, these people will grind projects to a halt. 3) With so many VPs in some teams compared to AVPs, there is a problem similar to the NHS "too posh to wash" problem. If there is six VPs and one AVP, none of them will do any work since they don't want to seem downgraded to AVP. it is absolute nonsense. 4) One day you're told to do one thing, the next you are berated for not knowing someone else decided you should be doing something else. Yes, silly culture. 5) Very old and poor quality software in a lot of teams. This is well known, and often a problem with old systems, but at DB it is horrendously bad and a consequence of the incompetence they are also known for. Their systems make no sense, neither does their code. Their low quality VPs that have been there a very long time and have not kept with the latest technology cause this. 6) An astonishing amount of VP level employees. In some teams there will be just one AVP and six or more VPs. Absolute nonsense. A lot of these VPs will have been around for a very long time and not very good at their job. Their knowledge is out of date and they hold newcomers back from introducing new technology or ideas. This is a problem a lot of companies have, but as usual DB simply doesn't respond. 7) There is air of dishonesty in this company which can be seen by the actions of managers and some VPs, and is a reason for the endless negative media reports surrounding them. They do seem to lack integrity and make decisions with complete disregard for the consequences of those affected. This is simply not how companies operate nowadays. Instead mangers should be accountable, decision makers should be accountable - instead their incompetence affects people directly and causes them to lose their job in some cases. This simply shouldn't be tolerated anymore, other companies sorted out problems like this years ago but DB is just not responding.