Akuna Capital

Many of the developers, engineers, and traders are very talented.

There is an outward appearance of work-life balance and minimal stress, as compared to other firms.

I do not trust the leadership in this firm. There is a constant turnover of talent, a constant drive to recruit junior talent/interns/new grads with minimal or no experience, and no focus on a mentorship model, nor appreciation for what the senior talent brings to the table with their lessons learned, networks to tap into, and knowledge others can learn from.

A January layoff removed people that were attempting to course-correct bad past software decisions, were strong engineers, and provided mentorship. The same folks laid off were then used as scapegoats to the remaining teams as to why performance was not at expectations. Firms lay off people all of the time. This layoff cycle seemed not only cold, but when combined with offers being rescinded, leaving developers without employment sometimes days before their start dates, I question the ethics of the leadership and HR. My faith in the firm’s direction has been completely lost.

Understanding the way layoffs were conducted, I believe HR and senior leadership has little/no understanding nor respect for developers. By looking at previous comments, know that the abundance of comments that talk about the firm being so young and fresh is true, but that comes at a cost. You will not get the opportunity to learn, and you will be thrown into bad architectures to support. Some of the few and more senior folks in leadership positions are the cause of some of the bad architectures and performance unfortunately, but they are well-versed at playing the political game. Teams on average have 3-4 years of experience, inclusive of some of the C-suite in Chicago that have very little experience/no experience outside of the firm.

No advice.

It is pretty clear the firm does not respect its employees, and those left should find opportunities that will advance their careers. These are primarily opportunities where HR does not have such a heavy hand in the work environment, pushing for useless reviews and where recruiting cycles become more important than the work being conducted.

With the revolving door of talent, I do hope leadership learns to treat and respect employees more. The financial world is not very large, and there is a chance those laid off may lose connections to the current leadership as they, one day too, are booted and searching for their next roles.