Pros
* Really great people. Smart yet humble. Fun and and easy to be friends with. * Has managed to keep a relatively flat hierarchy-free culture despite some aspects of a traditional management structure beginning to emerge as the firm grows. * Great food in the office. Theres always something worth eating for lunch, or you can just submit a delivery order of the menu isn't hitting the spot for you. And tons of little extras when you need a snack, like the gelato machine or smoothie bar. * Fun things to do in the office. Theres absolutely no pressure to stay late at the office but honestly I often choose to hang out in the office in the evening just because it's fun. Grab a wine-in-a-can, play a board game with some people, try a new arcade game, etc. * The work is actually pretty interesting. I think a lot of media makes Wall Street sound a lot more soulsucking than it is. Or maybe other firms ARE soulsucking, but I find my work here pretty fulfilling. * Productive use of automation. Even as more and more things get automated, there's never a feeling like its being done to replace people. Automating work helps free up our time to spend on value-adding work, problems only humans can solve, and allows us to waste less time on brainless busywork.
Cons
* It feels like some teams have a very different 'culture' than others. That can be fine, but its sad that some people feel discouraged from participating in social/fun stuff because other people on their team don't participate (eg. "oh we aren't traders/devs, we would be out of place") I suppose these 'culture divides' are a side effect of growing larger. I should mention that this problem probably doesn't affect most teams.