MDP Program - stay away! - Anonymous employee Morningstar Employee Review

2.0
Oct 4, 2018
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The company culture is great and is easily the best thing about working here. The workforce is incredibly diverse with several employee resource groups (think "clubs") that allow you to get involved both within Morningstar as well as the city of Chicago in general.

Cons

This program only sounds good on paper. The first rotation is spent on the phones answering phone calls from investors who ask questions about how to use Morningstar's research products. According to HR, this is supposed to introduce you to financial concepts and Morningstar's products in general. I suppose it does, but only on a very surface level. 80% of the questions received are dumb ones like "my Morningstar isn't working - how can I fix it?" or "how do I add a chart to this presentation?". After the first month, the job becomes very mundane and literally everyone hates it. The second rotation is not much better. There is such a mad scramble to get off the phones that people settle for second rotation positions that are only marginally better albeit still terrible. Rotating becomes extremely competitive since there is such a bottleneck of people on the phones. The positions that are available aren't desirable positions so many people just end up leaving to company. All in all, this program does not push you. Rarely are roles intellectually stimulating and you end up losing skills that you walked into the company with. I know several people who were Excel whizzes who had experience in VBA and SQL that ended up just forgetting it because you literally never use the first year on the job. It's been said on here as well, but MDPs start out at 50k a year and the semiannual bonus averages at $500 which is laughable compared to other financial firms. Employee benefits are on par with the rest of the industry so there's really nothing special there. In short, the MDP program seems like just a way to underpay smart college grads for 2 years having them do mundane work that someone with a high school education can easily do.

Explore other reviews about Morningstar

5.0
Jul 13, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

good company work life balance

Cons

really no cons for the firm

4.0
Apr 14, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Really kind people work here, for the most part everyone I have worked with is smart and I have learned so much from them. There are great benefits: unlimited PTO, 6 week paid sabbatical is earned after 4 years of employment, 6 month maternity leave. Great location of an office. Great work life balance.

Cons

Not very competitive pay and it is easy to hit a ceiling in your career development. New HR policies are kind of strange, will not promote you unless you make enough money to be promoted which they designed the system to make it so you cannot go up. HR has also laid people off because they make too much money without considering the consequences of removing senior employees with unique/not stored intelligence vital to the company. They also hired a bunch of remote employees, then implemented a 4 day required in office rule no matter if you live states away from an office, which pushed hundreds of people to quit, not receive their bonus, and not require M* to pay them severance. It didn't use to be this way but the last year or so has been strange.

1
See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All