Pros: Lots of freedom and autonomy

Cons: High expectations and occasionally pressure.

Pros: There are some really nice and smart people. Work can be interesting. Having a barista on-site is quite nice.

Cons: Shame those nice people are not in a position to make change. Optiver used to be a nice place to work. Then management and HR decided that people could be more productive if they were told that everything they do can be better or done faster. A toxic culture of blame. People become withdrawn due to the excessive load and expectations. Some teams are worse than others. If someone decides a person should go, they will be bullied out of the company using a performance improvement program. If you are going through hiring, make sure to ask for a proper base salary, since your bonus depends on your rating, and that is at the mercy of management.

Pros: Optiver operates as one of the best in a fast-paced sector. This means there is an increasing need for agile working, rapid deployments, and feedback loops. Simultaneously, great attention is paid to control and security concerning the trading operation and production environment. It is a constant challenge to balance these two. Since the entire IT management changed two years ago, a tremendous upheaval has occurred, leading to work in smaller teams with developers, engineers, and traders instead of separate departments. This creates an interesting and challenging dynamic. Many bright minds work here, and you are constantly learning. New challenges and opportunities to excel are constantly coming your way. In the end, the bottom line is what counts: either we made money or we didn't.

Cons: There is enormous pressure to continuously reduce the 'time to market' for new features, systems, and configurations. This can sometimes lead to the need to take shortcuts that haven't been thoroughly considered. This can create a significant amount of technical debt and unplanned work.