There were a lot of great networking opportunities, and a lot of opportunities to work on great projects.

Management was notoriously retaliatory. For example, I left the program due to not feeling valued, the head of the program hosted a call where her assistant stated, “if you leave the bank after we’ve invested this much money in you, you’ve burnt all your bridges so don’t expect to come back.” We were assigned mentors, who instead of being leaders we could go to for advice, bragged about how much they loved gossip. All program leaders were friends from the “old Wachovia days,” which made the experience very political, and moreover, high school-esque.

Experience at a Big Bank will get your foot in the door at a lot of other companies, even outside of banking. So suffering for one year may be worth it. But Wells Fargo brags that they do not pay competitively (because service is allegedly their differentiator...yet their customer’s pricing is one of the highest...) and their moral values are very low. Never share your opinion and keep your head down. It is cut-throat.