Pros
- People are really nice and supportive. Opposite of a toxic culture
- Great cross-team mobility, not much in the way of siloing
- Quality engineering talent - your co-workers are very competent and you'll learn from that!
- In my experience management is happy to expand your responsibilities if you ask
- Hours not terrible - like 45-55 depending on team (some outliers are 60+ but that's rare)
- The business itself is very stable and prints cash even in economic downturns (in fact it does better haha, kind of sad ig)
Kontras
- Lot of legacy code in some teams, and the associated need to convince a "council of elders" to make big changes
- Can get pigeonholed into working on highly specialized stuff if not careful (ex: do 4 years working on trading GUI using old java swing patterns)
- Excruciating lack of documentation sometimes
- The comp is of course great relative to most jobs, but some other firms like Cit will pay much higher
- If hired as a new grad (esp a trader) - beware there have been large cuts of those classes in the past