AQR Capital Management reviews

The lies start from day 1: job descriptions and work are sold as interesting and engaging but the truth is that every (front office) job function is effectively operations: researchers check reports, tech keeps the lights on and "portfolio managers" manage trade execution. Many reviews on this site have been added by current employees who were asked to write raving reviews of the firm. Evidence of this is clear in the clusters of good and bad reviews sorted by time. Being an "academic" environment, AQR is devoid of any and all forms of feedback, especially upwards feedback. Employees were unable to provide upwards feedback until this year in which the upwards feedback was two 1-5 selections and a brief comment section; that's a full 18 years of no upwards feedback. This is very much like being a research assistant in which your professor is always correct and you should listen to them no matter what. One result of this is that a large portion of your teammates and an even larger portion of people who have been with the firm longer than 2 years are sycophants. It's impossible to get anything done. If you're trying to implement some new ideas or technology, you'll be heavily hamstrung by the Windows first environment and the incredibly poor in-house tooling. Organizational changes are similarly impossible due to the highly political environment. AQR has somehow managed to introduce large company politics into a relatively smaller firm.

Upper management is oblivious to the goings on in the company. One managing director routinely berated his employees, refused to listen to others during meetings, and discriminated against women. He was still in the office until recently when the government stepped in and AQR was forced to put him on leave due to his activities at a previous job.