my days at ANZ....

ANZ was fun, i must admit. I met some really cool people with whom i never realised that an year had gone by. Since i knew the system they were using pretty well, it made life a lot easier. I was given the credit for contributing and my designation reflected that when i quit. Having said all this, i would still suggest ppl to give it a long hard thought before joining ANZ. Reason? well,
1) first is the question of existence. Since its a bank,u dnt get the best of tech work. As far as the business is concerned, its done out of Australia and u dnt get to know much. End result: frustration. If you are looking for a cool life which pays well with an occasional trip abroad, go for ANZ.
2)ANZ's habit of experimenting too much with everything. Yes, they love to change things around, starting from groups to managers to policies. You never really know whos heading which group and which group you gonna belong to the next day. Its called "change" in ANZ.
3) IJP !! Its actually internal job posting which means all jobs are advertised internally and all can apply. Sounds good? ok, here is the downside: lets say you want to move to Database side. In TCS or Infosys, they will send u to some 1-2 month training and get you a project where you can learn on the job. Here its different. There is no separate training centre. An effort may be made to get some external trainer. But heres what takes the cake: officially you are supposed to get in touch with team which is handling dbase and ask them to help u outside office hours !! LOL !! Do u expect that to work? ANZ does. Wanna know more? here goes: in an interview for a job, if an external candidate has also applied which in all probability will happen, ANZ guys will not be given any advanatge!! So if that guy has worked in Dbase as in previous example, you know your chances are next to nil. So how are u supposed to shift to anyplace where the skills are different from what you already know? humm...ANZ doesnt like to answer such questions.
4) HR believes they rock the place as ANZ employees command above avg salaries. Well, that may actually be true. But there are lotsa exceptions to that :). E.g. A fresher is recruited at 4.5 lacs package(yes u got it right,its 4.5 !!). Now lets say a guy with arnd 3 yrs of work-ex is recruited from outside. He would be given a salary of arnd 5 or 5.5 !! LOL!! yah, thats their idea of lateral recruitment. Theory is lateral guy will get promoted soon and will get the package he deserves. Downside is, since he is at the lower side of package at the previous level, he will remain at the lower side of next level also. This may not be always true but its highly possible. Also, they love to change things right in the middle. Let me tell you what happened when i joined ANZ. It so happens that after 6 months of probation when i am eligible for promotion, our esteemed HR dept has made it illegal to promote anyone. Yah !! Coz IJP was getting rolled out. So everyone is supposed to wait and when finally IJP got rolled out, they took their own sweet time in advertising, interviewing and finally selecting. All this nonsense delayed my promotion by six months. Whos responsible ? Well, no one !!
5) Then theres a small matter of changing the definition of TEC. When i joined bonus used to be part of CTC offered. Bonus was offered assuming i will get an avg ranking. And bonus used to be offered twice coz there were two ranking given in an year, one in sep and the other in march.I thought it was fair. In between , in oct,they changed the policy saying ranking will be given once in an year.So in effect, u got ur sep bonus but march bonus wont be given as it will be an annual event now. Sep to Sep would be the ranking and hence the bonus. Cool. But what if i quit in april? Shudnt i get the bonus which was due in march since that was part of the CTC offered to me on the basis of which i joined? Why was the policy changed midway?It shud hv been changed in april so that effect was minimal. Well, in ANZ, u dnt ask all this.

I dnt think i need to mention small problems like if u want to delay your last day in ANZ after having given an earlier date in the resignation by a few days for whatever reason, its not possible !!
Anyway, all said and done, ANZ was probably the best time in my working career of 3.5 years. Ppl were really really cool. We had parties for no reason at all !! You will find some really supportive team mates. After leaving ANZ , i have realised i made some really good frnds there. Thanks ANZ.