Callous, unprofessional and unqualified leadership team
Pros
Opportunity to learn about high frequency trading industry, leading-edge HFT tech stack, comfortable office with full service coffee bar, kitchen, frequent catered meals.
Cons
Chaotic, unstable organization with very high levels of turnover, frequent layoffs and insensitive hiring/firing practices (even history of rescinding offers days before a new hire start date). Bonuses on low side compared to peers. Limited upside career growth potential. Myopic, clubby leadership team that doesn’t invest in developing its people, preferring to favor a handful of insiders who were amongst the firm’s original hires when it was a start-up. Many of these people are unqualified to be in the leadership roles they occupy (CTO and CEO). As noted in pros, Akuna’s tech stack is modern and leading-edge as you would expect at a tech-centric HFT firm. However, the 100’s of repos and revolving door of engineers has produced a bewilderingly complex and fragile platform with a heavy technical debt load. Lots of support hours required to fix code other people wrote who are long gone. Not fun! Hiring strategy is centered on recruiting large number of smart interns and graduates from top schools, most of whom need sponsorship, work them hard, pay them modestly and then repeat when most of those people leave to make more money elsewhere in 1-3 years. Beware of joining as an experienced hire / senior engineer / engineering manager! You will be disappointed, and likely looking for a new job in a year or two, perhaps involuntarily.