Passionate Discourse - Software Engineer Belvedere Trading Employee Review

Belvedere's culture has undergone a subtle change over the years. There is still a lot of drinking and recreation but it is now officially sponsored by the company in a way that makes it feel more sterile. In years past, when going out for drinks after work it felt like I was among friends who happen to work together. But then they formalized things that used to happen organically, like team building events or happy hour with job candidates. They even installed a bar in the office. The result is that now I'm very much aware that I'm out with coworkers, not friends. It's social but still a work event. Better than nothing but it doesn't foster the same kind of bonding. My outlook of the company's future is negative because of the way the tech side is run. The wrong people were put in charge. The CEO has some grave misunderstandings of how the company works at a low level because he doesn't talk to anyone outside of his inner circle. Consequently, all of his decisions clash with the reality of a prop trading firm. The CTO has good intentions but is easily manipulated by others. Below them managers (at all levels) fall into one of three categories: 1. Absentees. People who have already earned enough prestige in the company to be set for life. That's why they can abuse the unlimited time-off policy and get almost no work done. When they do come into the office they have to act like they deserve their position so they order everyone around and criticize their subordinates. It does nothing but illustrate how out of touch they are with the world of software development. 2. Time-wasters. People who have demonstrated just enough competence to be given a wide leash when choosing what they want to work on. They now spend all of their time on pet projects that they think would be fun programming exercises, yet deliver no value to the company. When their project ceases to entertain them they hand it off to another team that doesn't want it because it is at best unproductive, at worst riddled with bugs. 3. Geniuses. People who were skilled software developers so after a couple of years they were promoted into management. They have no management skills. No leadership qualities. They just want to write code. Unfortunately that's not in their job description anymore and you can see the sadness in their eyes. They spend their time struggling to run a team and trying to find ways to touch code without micromanaging. They were offered a job that would be foolish to turn down but that they were not fit for. Ultimately their poor management skills cause a lot of tension and anger within the firm. Then further down Belvedere's hierarchy you have the role of business analyst. I suspect the CEO read in a Forbes magazine that business analysts were the key to increasing profits so he hired about a million of them. Your typical business analyst likely just graduated from college and didn't know what to do, so they searched for “analyst” on LinkedIn and found Belvedere on page 32. They had no previous knowledge that such a job existed. Belvedere set up this role under the assumption that traders and developers speak such different languages that they need an interpreter/babysitter. You would think someone who understands both trading and tech would be the most valuable employee in the company, right? Unfortunately because of the demographic that's recruited the business analysts at Belvdere understand neither. This lack of qualifications turns their role into needless bureaucracy that causes more harm than good. There is an endless churning of analysts as they quit to pursue jobs they're actually interested in. Somewhere mixed into all of this are developers. Developers don't get along with each other at Belvedere largely because of “code police”. On almost every team there's at least one developer who just binge watched House M.D. for the first time and now they think they are justified in being abrasive as long as they are trying to excel at their job. They will leave passive aggressive comments in the code review system and delay projects for what the rest of the software world would consider trivial style choices. The company embraces this in a naive pursuit of perfect code while making all of their developers hate each other. Lastly there are quality analysts. The wildcards united only by their mutual distrust of developers. But interestingly enough, they have the most camaraderie out of any role at Belvedere. They realized early on that any bugs in the software will be blamed on them, so they meticulously document everything they do and follow all recommended procedures just to avoid that blame. The biggest indictment of the tech side however is that 90% of its members don't care about option trading. They don't even understand how Belvedere makes money. That's why the quality of software has been suffering. Most tech employees are hired fresh out of college with no background or interest in finance. This is also why Belvedere spends most of its time refactoring existing software components instead of building new features. You don't need domain knowledge to get rid of technical debt. Any time business logic is changed there is massive overhead in educating everyone involved. So they fool everyone into thinking that getting rid of technical debt is a productive use of time under the guise that the firm is growing and things need to be made more scalable. The catch is that Belvedere doesn't seem to be growing by any relevant metric except the number of office floors they rent. New trading desks are very slow to take off and new employees hired only replace the ones that quit. They really don't need to be concerned with scaling up the software.