Pros
People are very friendly, nerdy in the best possible way! Super welcoming and warm. The higher ups also will talk to entry level talent as if you are on their level, which is not the case at other companies. If you work hard and are ambitious, they will notice and take you under your wing. They give you opportunities to try very complicated things without any relevant experience as long as you have a good rep and raw talent. I started with the MDP program when I decided I to make a career change after 2 years at my old job after college. I am grateful for all that I have learned and to have developed many skills that have built my technical, people and project management, operational, and overall business skills. What I have learned here I can take anywhere and succeed. - great insurance - great 401k benefits - unlimited time off + 6 week sabbatical after working there for 4 years - beautiful office - great tuition reimbursement program - great name to have your resume. Morningstar is extremely respected in the financial industry
Cons
- so many people who are deadweight. If you work hard, people will rely on you and have you do more while others get by with doing the minimum, consistency messing up- FOR YEARS. They never want to fire anyone, even though everyone is aware of how bad certain people are at their jobs. - products are poorly built because we can’t retain our tech talent. I have seen many people leave in the past year and they all complain about not being rewarded for their work or getting passed up for promotions, even though they have been told they are top performers - sink or swim culture. Works for some, not for all. You usually get very little guidance on how to approach a problem or come up with a solution. It’s a good thing because you can show how much you shine, but it’s cruel to expect younger people with little or no experience to perfectly execute something - poor people management. None of the managers are trained to actually manage people. HR just expects them to wing it. - the MDP program lies. I believe they might be transparent now but when I started, they told all of us you were entitled to 3 rotations within 3 years and you could work in marketing, Ops, behavioral Science, research, HR, etc. You find out the day you start that you will in fact be stuck in a queue for 8-9 hours a day, handling horrible advisors who are upset at bugs in our products or who are too stupid to fill out forms correctly and thousand dollar mistakes. The job was originally posted as “product consultant” which translates to “learn how to use this product perfectly, understand our data and methodology, and handle all the s$@&t that comes your way with a smile.” After your first rotation, you don’t even have an assigned rotation like other programs. You basically are just another internal candidate competing with everyone else in the past 4 classes of MDPs.