Egotism is the real barrier, not language - Assistant Vice President BNP Paribas Employee Review

1.0
28 Jul 2013
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Health Insurance offers great mail prescription service. You'll need to be on good medication to work here. Flexible spending and 401K are like every other company.

Cons

As far as working in the U.S. office goes, don't expect to advance unless you: have European and/or dual citizenship; excel at ugly politics/bureaucracy; or you're a pro at metaphorically cutting throats. Leadership in the U.S. office is heavily non-American and follows the empirical style of management. It's a very "shut up and smile while you do as I say" operation. Executives are mostly European or French Canadian. Feels like one out of eight employees is a group head of some kind, but it's really not saying much. Self-absorption and connivance are key themes: Lots of condescension; too many hands in the soup with very little group cohesiveness; overflow of throwing people under buses (figuratively) in order to please higher ranks who sit on imaginary thrones and speak in the language of pomp, judgment, and self-entitlement. Parent office is in Paris, and step-parent office is in London... both are very confusing and mind-numbing when involved in discussions and authorization requests (you have to go through both before anything gets close to starting to get done). But oddly enough, neither office is half the migraine as the U.S. office. You'll only know the French global CEO from pictures, video clips, and the words of the select few U.S. senior management allowed to meet him. The North America CEO is a robotic French national with the personality of a dull doorknob who, like any other sociopath, thrives on feeling bigger than everyone and demands sycophant yes- men and women in his circle. Laugh when he laughs, part like the Red Sea and/or bow down when he walks into a room, and tell him how wonderful he is. Work/Life balance is a joke of epic proportion. I'm not saying it's a badge of honor, but you get bad looks when you don't tend to your blackberry before 6am, when you're not in the office before 8am and out after 6:30pm, and especially when you're not available at your manager's every beck and call throughout a 24hr day. Whether you're married or single, make sure to factor out 1-3hr driving/subway commute and 5-7hr sleep for yourself, because you are expected to breathe and live for this company and nothing/no-one else all other times. This company deserves less than zero stars for leadership and staff morale.

Explore other reviews about BNP Paribas

5.0
28 May 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

love working here been here 4 years

Cons

return to office policy is tough

1.0
8 May 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The only good thing about this place were the Nespresso machines.

Cons

I rarely leave reviews, but future job seekers deserve fair warning. From day one, it was clear that micromanagement was a core operating principle here; not a quirk, but a feature. Managers routinely hovered over routine tasks, demanded pointless status updates multiple times a day, constantly changed directives, took credit for my work, and treated experienced professionals like they couldn't be trusted to send an email unsupervised. Any sense of autonomy was purely cosmetic. The culture was equally poisonous. Gossip wasn't background noise; it was practically a department function. Colleagues regularly spoke poorly of one another behind closed doors, cliques formed and hardened fast, and if you weren't part of the right group, you felt it. Unkind doesn't begin to cover it. Basic professionalism and common decency were in short supply. Management set the tone for all of it. Leaders who should have modeled integrity instead participated in the drama, played favorites openly, and addressed conflict with either complete avoidance or outright retaliation. HR was not a resource — it was a shield for bad behavior at the top. I left for my own sanity. The turnover rate here should tell you everything. Life is too short and your career too important to spend either in an environment like this one.

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