Experienced hires beware! Okay-ish for out of college
Pros
Great first job out of college. You will gain exposure to institutional clients very early on. If you want a client-facing/sales career, this is a phenomenal place to start and get experience. Not a good place to pivot to finance. There are a lot of older, smart people working here who’ve had successful careers in finance in the city. If you love to travel constantly, this is for you. The snacks are cool I guess, but mostly unhealthy. Easy way to get close to $100k. Big emphasis on philanthropy. Building looks cool.
Cons
If you come here as an experience hire; be prepared for a very jarring experience. Echo-chamber environment full of “yes” men/women. Very strong big brother surveillance culture. Very dystopian and micromanaging office environment. Favoritism is rampant. Have heard several rumors of racism but never saw myself. Firm preaches transparency but after some time you’ll realize this actually means you have zero privacy - keystrokes tracked, chats monitored, “what’d you get done today?” culture. I respect passion for your work, but lots of people here treat their work like life or death. Your performance is based on an abnormal amount of KPIs: >5 for analytics >10 for sales. Sales manager told me personally that he stalks his team’s calendars. Employees regularly mute/cover microphones and cameras during meetings so they could speak freely. Recruiting committee tricks college grads into thinking they’re working a finance job, but this is a glorified customer service role. The terminal’s a very old piece of technology that breaks constantly and it’s your job to fix it and manage the expectations of angry clients. Have witnessed several people hiding tears from client abuse. The internal sales tools are pre-year 2000. Company markets itself as being the forefront of technology but is significantly lagging behind peers. Constantly misleading clients about our “AI” and “GPT” tools. You are instructed to lie to clients about several things like not being able to see usage metrics. Zero commission on sales and you are grossly underpaid for the book of business you’re managing. There are reps who close $100k+ deals and they just get a pat on the back. Peers still st Bloomberg have complained to me that they’re now cold-calling to sell terminals as account managers; that’s an SDR or AE job. Zero transparency on how raises/promotions/bonuses are granted or calculated. I’ve had colleagues with significantly better metrics get <5% raises while I’ve gotten >10% increases. The main reward for hard work is more work. Tons of coasters here collecting a check on the management and individual contributor side.