Morningstar reviews

Unfortunately, Morningstar also comes with many cons. Our products are abysmal. Analyst teams across the company refuse to use them even though they are free. Product teams are run by people who know nothing about our clients, their needs, or what it means to work in the financial service industry. We have been riding the coattails of Morningstar's first-mover advantage in fund data for decades, but it won't last forever. After the better part of a decade, our management team finally realized that we couldn't build software ourselves. Numerous senior leaders tried and failed to re-launch our flagship software product with disastrous results. We have now embarked on an M&A buying spree under our visionless CFO, who is laser-focused on the bottom line instead of plotting our future. The unfortunate side-effect is that our relatively small, $1.3 billion in revenue business now straddles almost every imaginable part of the financial service space. Our "lean" (read, cheap) operating mentality means that capital investment is scarce, and a lot of our businesses and products are houses of cards. Lower pay makes up for the relatively strong list of intangible benefits. Every three years or so, management does the usual dog and pony show of paying expensive consultants to pay-benchmark us. They'll explain that soon you'll see your appropriate pay ranges, your managers will be made aware of gaps, and so on. For one - senior managers know if there are gaps, but they don't know how large they are, and second - the budget they receive for pay increases does not scale with the level of underpayment. Morningstar knows it is underpaying you; they won't fix the problem. Again, people who are 2-levels from the CEO do not have those pay ranges, and per HR, "they never will." It's okay to pay at the low end of the range, but it makes for another issue: Morningstar employees tend to be of lower-than-average quality. The good ones churn out for better offers, and those that remain are a mixed bag. Morningstar is a poor place for those who want to join a pool of ambitious people. As mentioned earlier, we are spread too thin across the industry, meaning you will never feel well equipped to do your job. Your tools will be a 3-year-old underpowered laptop and ancient monitors. If you work in research, you will likely be missing key subscriptions to do your job. Suppose you are lucky enough to get them. In that case, it will only be after begging and pleading through multiple levels of the management chain - up to the executive leadership team. Finally, you've found someone who might be able to spend a few thousand dollars. Last but not least, the favored few who flub major products often escape punishment. If you've been with the company long enough, you are nepotistically re-tooled for another chance at incompetence.