Pros
The Good: Benefits are pretty good. They are about on par with Fidelity, slightly lower. Vanguard recently updated benefits to try to stay competitive with Fidelity by offering $100 (1200 a year, fidelity pays 2 grand) a month to pay back loans and give you 6 weeks of paternal leave fully paid. HR sells you on benefits more than anything else when you go for an interview. You start getting 4% 401k match after 1 yr it's fully vested. That's pretty good, on par with most companies. Vanguard does a pension that is 10% of your base salary which is vested over 5 years, good luck staying for 5 years. Average tenure for entry level employees (over 1400 entry level employees in my department) was about 5 months. Vanguard has a nice cafeteria. Their saving grace above everything is the people. You probably won't find better people anywhere. Health insurance is fantastic. No debate about it. It's cheap out of pocket and Vanguard gives you money toward your deductible so sometimes you may never pay anything out of your pocket other than premiums. 3 weeks paid vacation to start (pretty standard) you can get an additional unpaid week if you'd like which is nice. The facilities are great. The location is pretty good too (specifically referring to PA). Partnership is fun. Partnership cash bonus gets you from being underpaid by about 40% to being underpaid by about 20%.
Cons
The Bad: HR stretches the truth about everything when you go for an interview. Without exception each individual realizes that the job isn't what was promised after a few months of work. They tout 37.5 hr work weeks, but add in a 1 hr unpaid lunch (that's right unpaid, you are hourly until you get to management level, even entry level financial advisers are hourly) and you're at work minimum of 42.5 hrs a week plus you have to be there early to log into your systems before you get paid (which technically is illegal, firms have been sued and lost for not paying hourly employees for logging into work systems), add in another 2.5 hrs a week, then if you get stuck with a client (on average about 10 minutes over per day) you're pushing more than 46 hrs a week and about 6-7 of that is unpaid. Then if OT is offered you can't turn it down because you can't afford rent. I averaged about 50 hrs a week in off season and closer to 60 during tax season which is like 6 months long. Not quite the 37.5 I was promised. The Ugly: The jobs are very mechanical. You are replaceable. You have no say. You will get more and more work on the same payscale as you gain experience. HR doesn't care if you stay. Comp is really bad and doesn't change much from the day you start even if you get a promotion. Promotions are 7% flat non-negotiable (they used to be 10%). End of year raises are about 2.5% if you're a high performer. Salaries for entry level positions are 40k per year without regard to which facility and they've been stagnate for about 3 or 3.5 years now. So if you're in PA good luck paying Philly's average $1500 a a month rent on 40k per year (that's literally more than 1 full paycheck after taxes). Experienced jobs are approx 60-65k (which is higher than your average supervisor or manager that was an internal hire with 10 years Vanguard experience). Management make dumb decisions. The only thing that keeps Vanguard going is how cheap the products are. People love cheap stuff. Clients get poor service all the time because Vanguard's comp scale just breeds mediocrity. They say they are pay for performance, but I only made a few hundred bucks per year more than poor performers and I was always at the top of the curve. At that point why even try? And that's the attitude of employees there. To sum up Vanguard, HR consistently feeds you garbage and tells you it's steak. Some people drink that kool-aid but most don't. Engagement reports have declined significantly for the last two years and management can't figure out why. It's because Vanguard is turning into a lean machine of churning out cheap products at the expense of the employees. No one has a voice except for the incompetent management team that has no idea what's actually happening in the front lines. Wait times for processing are over a month because attrition is so high so management was forced to offer OT bonus incentives to get through the ridiculous back log. Tax season sucks. It's 6 months of non-stop horror and there are tons of vacation blackout times. Don't plan a vacation from December 1st to April 15th because there is a small change you'll get it. You'd think summer time is slow, but everyone uses all their vacation time in the summer because it can't be used any other time so the retail side gets slammed hard. The majority of employees at Vanguard don't like it. I'd think long and hard before accepting anything at Vanguard. Read glassdoor reviews. All of them are correct. Lastly, if anyone comes in from another company directly into your level, they will make about 15 to 20% more than you will. That's unbelievably frustrating. If you work your way up fast, it's even worse.