Pros: Very smart people and supportive teams.

Cons: Really long work hours. Too many restrictions about investment opportunities.

Pros: Get to solve interesting problems, given the right team.

Cons: Work late hours, not-so-great salary.

Pros: Top of the ladder for investment banks, bragging rights amongst other friends on the street (though you quickly feel identified as a tool when around normal people). Good job security and compensation for those that have been there a while and have broken through the steep learning curve and unique operating practices.

Cons: Long hours; you can work less and make more elsewhere. Survives mostly on reputation, which doesn't really apply to tech roles. Development role involved mostly 1st line business support on an archaic, proprietary, poorly designed system (stressful). Poor dissemination of tech knowledge/documentation past your initial initiation training. Slang/SecDB is indeed an interesting platform with great ideas, but the tools and UIs are ancient and make those used to more modern development environments wince. Lateral experienced hires take a significant hit as the tech knowledge you can carry in is minimized. Technology is led mostly out of the Quant area, not IT, leading to poor quality, complicated code.