Pros: I've worked at Optiver a long time. Every year it gets better. * The company is managed on the basis of principles and values, not process or politics. * Those principles and values align very nicely with mine: * Autonomy: there is very little hand-holding and extraordinarily high expectations of individuals in the company. The company rewards those that keep pushing those expectations higher with greater responsibility and authority. * Collaboration: there are a lot of great fights over the right way to approach a given problem. When we're at our best, everyone in the fight has a strong opinion but is also listening to everyone else and continually re-evaluating that opinion as new information, ideas, and opinions are expressed. * Prudence: the company carefully evaluates risk/reward trade-offs both when it comes to trading and technology decisions. The latest fads (cryptocurrency, esoteric programming languages, etc) are carefully evaluated, but reckless pursuit of them is frowned upon. I'll end with a sports analogy. Working at Optiver Chicago is like playing for the Patriots or the San Antonio Spurs. It certainly isn't for everyone. But if you like competing for the championship every year and always pushing yourself to be better, there's no better team to join.

Cons: If the company values do not align with yours, you will find it an increasingly frustrating place to work. Honestly, just read the cons from other posts and you can see how that plays out. If you find the principles above strange, out of fashion, or backwards, you'll agree with other people's cons. If you think those principles are refreshing, you will have a hard time coming up with many cons.

Pros: - Mission: We have a clear directive: Improve the market. I love the focus that mission brings, in combination with its moral undertones. We only pursue strategies which actually add value to the world’s financial markets. And I see this play out every week as well. In meetings, questions like “why should we be paid for this?”, “is this a fair strategy?”, and “is this money we should leave on the table?” are constantly asked. It is so refreshing to work for a trading company which takes its duty to ensure stable, fair, transparent markets seriously. - Teamwork: The camaraderie, sense of togetherness, and practical outworking of the company structure are incredible. Within our office in Chicago, it feels like everyone is part of a tight-knit team that works together as true partners, with no second-class citizens. Between offices, there is a wonderful sense of friendly competition (every office wants the best results) balanced by the knowledge that we all share in each other’s success, which motivates everyone to constantly share technology, strategies, and learnings. - Humility: Why are the most successful people at Optiver successful? Speaking for IT, the key is humility: being self-critical, proactively looking for critiques and advice to help yourself improve, and looking for your own faults before others. Our most senior people are the first ones to take the blame for something going wrong and push those around them to help learn from those mistakes and grow. - Intelligence: You can’t be a great company in this industry without incredibly smart people. And in addition to being some of the most humble, hardworking people I know, my colleagues are also incredibly smart. If we were ever to decide “let’s cut the person with the lowest IQ,” I’d need to start looking for a job… Thankfully, I know we’ll never do that. :)

Cons: Professionalism Training: Because most new hires are fresh out of school, there is a need for and lack of training in “professionalism.” * How to make a business case. * How to produce meaningful statistics and not gibberish. * How do you create, plan, and run a meeting. * How do you stay organized and not drop the ball? * How should you behave in a meeting? Etc. That many new hires don’t know these things is not a problem. The issue is the lack of internal development and mentoring in these areas. Focus: Optiver has a lot of intelligent people, high-quality traders, and opportunities to grow. But it feels like we’re at a giant buffet where every food option looks incredible. We’re half-way through the line, and we have a full plate and a choice: do we grab a second plate and keep moving or step back and re-evaluate what is best for our long-term health and short-term digestion? It often feels like we go for the second plate when we should ask: is that chocolate pie really going to be that good? We’ve tried it three times before and never been satisfied. Why do we think it will be good this time?

Pros: The environment is friendly, and the people working there are great, both professionally and personally. The company realized it has a lot of technical debt and is investing heavily in reducing it. It's trying to become a world-class software development firm.

Cons: For most of the lifetime of the company, getting things done in a hacky way has been acceptable. This shows in the state of the codebase, which could be less than pleasant to work with.