Citadel

Forward-looking, innovative culture. Extremely intelligent colleagues that are highly motivated to succeed and are also pleasant to work with. Interesting and challenging work.

Citadel is a place where you can stand out and rapidly grow your career. It's small enough that interaction with senior management and investment professionals is the norm as a software engineer. Every day, there are opportunities to demonstrate technical prowess and business acumen, and build a reputation among important people in the firm. This inevitably results in bigger projects and more responsibility.

It's also entrepreneurial. Many of the proprietary tools I use on a daily basis came from an engineer that thought, "Wouldn't it be cool/useful if we built [X]?" They built it and sold it to their colleagues and other stakeholders in the firm. Citadel has a strong culture of innovation and corporate entrepreneurship, and little bureaucracy. As an engineer, this is empowering.

Turnover is high, even in the technology organization. Eighty percent of the people that I started with two years ago are no longer with the firm.

Recruiting and hiring managers aren't always on the same page. As a hiring manager, I've had a few instances where a candidate interviewed well, has the right technical and soft skillset to excel in the role, and we were excited to bring them on. Yet, the candidate was denied by recruiting because they did not come from the right school or study the right subject in school. This is frustrating.