Optiver reviews

+ people are professional and always driving to be better + level of transparency is great. As a junior trader, you would already have access to all strategies in the firm. All you got to do is ask. + very entrepreneurial. You get what you make of the opportunity. For the most part it is meritocracy, you can become head of trading in 5 years. + good integration across different assets class and product groups. As infrastructure is shared, ideas are thrown around and discussed all day. It keeps the job interesting and mentally challenging. + a good balance between longer term Project work and daily trading. There is freedom After market close to work on any project/startegy that you believe in it.

They really do reward excellence. If you are seen as a top achiever, you will be compensated as such. However, the bar is set extremely high. Prepare to put in effort just to find out you are not meeting standards during your performance review. This will also not be communicated to you until your review so you will feel blindsided. You will be pushed to advocate for yourself in your self-reviews but this will not matter to how you are ultimately graded by management if they’ve already made up their mind about you. That said, the perks are nice and teams generally work well together. They claim a “no hierarchy culture” but this has not been the case in my experience. I find that the goalposts for performance get pushed so you can never satisfy them to get that score you’re aiming for even if you apply all of the feedback you are given.