Pros: I was affected by the February layoffs as many others were too, so I will neither be shilling or act disgruntled in this review. I honestly didn't have a problem working at GR. Sure, some of the internal processes were slow and there was a lot of red tape at times, but day-to-day it was a friendly and chill place to work. People who were working there (some may still do) liked to complain a lot, but it wasn't really that bad. I was just there to do my 9-5, earn some dosh, and go home. People just need to chill out. Getting made redundant obviously sucks, but I got a pretty sweet payoff and I've already got another job lined up (I actually had three offers within a month all with pretty substantial packages, so I was certainly underpaid but it's whatever). The WFH flexibility could be better, but they did at least let you juggle the days around. "Free" (subsidised up to £15) lunches, and a large selection, via Just Eat was cool. I can't imagine many companies could rival that.

Cons: Change WFH policy to 3 days per week instead of 10 days per month. I understand that the current policy gives an impression of flexibility at face value, but it really falls apart when there are train strikes or other disruptions (which there seem to be a lot of in recent months). That's pretty much it to be honest. I'm sure I'm meant to have a moan about management or something judging by other recent reviews, but I didn't really encounter any direct issues. My line manager and team were cool and I liked the work I was doing.

Pros: - Free food, drinks, etc - A lot of company social events - Generally most people are nice and the quants are really smart - Excellent WLB ( even compared to rest and vest tech places like Salesforce, Adobe, Google etc.) - Hybrid office culture, which isn't typical at most quant funds. This however may change

Cons: - Unless you're a quant the comp doesn't compare to the tier 1 or even some tier 2 funds - IaC implementation is pretty bad, process in deploying applications is also bad but may get better - Lot of internal politics between teams. Don't want to stereotype but I see this more and more as joiners are coming over from big banks and bringing that "banking engineering culture" over - Very 2000's-ish top down engineering culture with enterprise architects calling all the shots for design decisions vs a committee of principal engineers at big tech. - A LOT of middle managers. As other reviews have noted some managers have like 3 direct reports and I have seen some M2 managers who have just one M1 manager who again have like 3-4 direct reports....

Pros: Interesting tech stack, some bright people to work alongside

Cons: The company has laid off 10% of the workforce two years in a row, including some well liked and respected long timers, while cutting most of the morale and events budget, so morale is terrible.