Couldn’t agree more. Very rotten and backwards.
My time at JPMC was marked by a baffling devotion to inefficiency, the kind you’d expect from a government agency circa 2002, not a Fortune 100 financial powerhouse. One particularly absurd example: recording meetings. You’d think with a multi-billion-dollar tech budget, they’d have figured out how to hit “record” like the rest of the civilized world. But no—at JPMC, we used Zoom for calls, while simultaneously launching Adobe Connect (yes, that Adobe Connect) just to record the screen. It was a Frankenstein’s monster of a process, patched together with duct tape and denial. Zoom for audio, Adobe for visuals, and an entire team groaning in unison every time we had to do it.
To call it inefficient would be generous. It was embarrassing.
Now that I’m at a company that uses Microsoft Teams—a single, unified platform that does what it’s supposed to—everything feels refreshingly sane. Calls, recordings, documentation, all in one place. You know… normal.
JPMC’s insistence on clinging to broken tools like Adobe Connect is either a result of poor decision-making, institutional arrogance, or, more likely, both. For a company that prides itself on innovation and market leadership, its internal operations feel more like a cautionary tale in how not to run a modern workplace.
And don’t get me started on the documentation. Outdated, irrelevant, and often just plain wrong. Trying to find accurate internal resources felt like archeology—digging through layers of obsolete Confluence pages, hoping to strike gold. Spoiler: I never did.
There’s no excuse for a company with JPMC’s resources to operate like this. None. It’s not lean. It’s not “secure.” It’s not smart. It’s just lazy. A culture that tolerates this level of dysfunction shouldn’t be surprised when talent runs for the exits.
They should be ashamed—but based on my experience, shame requires self-awareness.