Pros: Everyone is nice, everyone is smart, [and has an] entrepreneurial attitude.

Cons: Lots of engineers, even senior ones, lack outside experience. It's hard to get anything done outside of established boundaries. Lots of inertia around existing tech and a lack of outside perspective makes it hard to point out problems or suggest solutions outside of expectations.

Pros: Free breakfast and lunch, awesome barista. Great office building located in the heart of the Sydney financial district. Penty of nice perks, e.g. gym membership, company trip, social events. Profit sharing can mean overall remuneration can be high (although unpredictable) if you're a senior. Work-life balance is decent. 9/10 hour days are the norm.

Cons: The company has changed over the last 12 months. Lots of amazing talent (both technical and leadership) has left over the last two-thirds of 2017. Slow to pick up modern development practices and technologies. Below market rate base salary ('compensated' by a discretionary profit sharing scheme that can be taken away at any time). Upper management is opaque, and decision-making by middle management often appears to be motivated by what's best for their careers rather than what's best for the company or their team. The level of ego among many of the technical specialists can be extreme at times. They're the best of the best, and they're not humble about it. Personal performance appraisal is directly linked to compensation. Which sounds great in theory, but the performance appraisal process is opaque. It appears to be heavily based on how much your direct manager is willing to 'champion' your cause when individuals are ranked among all teams.

Pros: Very good expertise in options market making and position taking. They always have more ideas to make money than they have dev resources to throw at them. As a good developer with a little bit of understanding of the business side, there are heaps of opportunities to do well.

Cons: The company has gotten very big in recent years and has been losing its initial start-up feel. The performance evaluation for developers often tends to prioritize shorter-term deliveries. Big projects that span multiple review cycles and take a while to show their value tend to get underrewarded. This creates the wrong incentives among developers.