AQR Capital Management reviews

Quality of work done by non-PhDs is terrible. There is no career progress of non-PhDs. If you are young and ambitious, this is not the place for you. Don't believe any word they say in career fairs. AQR's starting package is usually very attractive, but there no significant growth later on. If you are not a PhD you will either end up coding in python, or cleaning up massive amount of bad data.

It is a highly political place which has done very well for the partners, but doesn't offer a lot to the junior employees. The promotion to MD and up is based on who gets along well with the founding partners. AQR favors PhDs over non-PhDs irrespective of the meritocracy and overall contribution. PhDs from Chicago and Harvard runs PhD-mafia with two groups jostling for influence. Some of the recent partner promotion were befuddling. This is probably the only place where someone with a consistent loss making strategies can be made a partner. Anyone who has worked in GSS in last few years knows whom I am referring to -- yes the great Prof from Chicago. Infrastructure is terrible -- partners do not want to spend money on technology -- which is evident in the quality of hires in IT and infrastructure. The place does a great job in hiring smart people, but there is no emphasis on training. The compensation is terrible. It is probably in the lower 20 percentile. Turnover is high among junior employees. As far as I know, AQR has not lost a single partner.