Pros
American Express is a good place to start your marketing career. The company has a very collaborative culture and encourages innovation. It has a respected service brand built up over many years. Marketing training is very comprehensive. You have access to large marketing budget and many internal and external resources. You have opportunities to work with some of the best marketing agencies in the industry and learn from them. Although credit card business is not a new industry, Amex benefits from its high spending customer base and strong growth in international markets. It is also developing the American Express network, allowing other card issuers (like banks) to issue Amex Cards, much like Visa and MasterCard. There are tremendous opportunities in payment industry, and Amex is well positioned to profit from that.
Kontras
This is a matrix organization, which means you have to spend many hours in meetings coordinating business partners. Sometimes I feel the so-called matrix structure is just an excuse for the lack of a streamlined business process and management structure. If you come up with a great idea, and after all your effort, it starts to deliver results and show great potential, your misfortune begins, because suddenly everyone wants to be part of the success and have a say, and in no time the project is going to be managed by a committee through town hall meetings. You are trained to use the “RASIC” model to navigate this organization, to determine who is Responsible party, who is Approver, who is Supporting partner, who needs to be Informed, and who should be Consulted. If you are responsible for a project, you should have only one Approver, right? No, it never works this way. Think about it - If anyone can disapprove you, he or she automatically becomes an Approver… Depending on which group you work for, your experience at Amex can range from highly satisfied to totally miserable. I personally experienced both. Marketing is the center of universe here. Others are considered staff groups or "utility" groups. If you work in a utility group, you have to bear with some ignorant folks who happen to work in marketing and consider themselves superior to anyone else and know how to do your job better than you... However, you probably can learn more transferable skills in staff groups, if you want to change job in future. If you want to move up the career ladder, you need to move around internally every 1-2 years to get broader exposure. However, some recent policy changes make lateral move much less rewarding – now you have to stay in a position for 18 months, before being eligible for promotion. If you move to another position at the same level, everything resets. You have to stay in that position for another 18 months, before qualifying for a promotion. This takes the incentive out of lateral move. Every manager wants to apply for senior manager position in another group, regardless of whether he/she qualifies for that. I think this is bad policy. Unlike banks, Amex is a mono-line credit card company, which means it lives and dies by credit card business. On one hand, this forces the company to innovate constantly and stay ahead of competition. On the other hand, the narrow scope of business (coupled with a strong brand name) tends to give some Amex employees a distorted perception about its role in consumer's financial life. Coming from a financial services background with exposure to many lines of business, I am often amused by the large ego of Amex's small business card group and how they belittle the consumer card group, and other variations of tempest in a teapot, while in the broader scheme of things, credit card is just a small piece of a consumer or business customer’s financial puzzle. A certain degree of levelheaded-ness is sorely needed for Amex folks to think beyond their sacrosanct 2x3 plastic.