Optiver

• Good total compensation, especially for new graduates, if you can get a decent performance review.
• Not a lot of meetings.
• Five weeks of vacation, and people do take it.
• Catered food is pretty good.

Almost everyone is either a new grad or someone who has been at the company since graduating. The management thinks they have the greatest software ever, but nobody has the perspective to realize how things could be improved. There's a CTO, but I have absolutely no idea what he does since the company has no over-arching goals or architecture. Each office pretty much does their own thing, and the redundancy is insane to me.

The comp structure (low base pay with a large but discretionary bonus) favors yes-men who go along with the bidding of their managers, no matter how inefficient or poorly considered their ideas are. Optiver does not ask employees to review their manager's performance. Optiver does everything they can to protect the toxic behavior of people who have been there for years.

The default stance of the company is to throw man-hours at a problem before solving it in any way that will make the employee's life better. Research jobs taking too long and constantly failing? No problem, just check the job status at 2 am every night. You want to invest in a more robust system that works without babysitting it? Sounds like you aren't committed.

Although the company officially allowed two days per week working from home, the company and Austin office in particular are very hostile to people who actually use it. You are judged for every second you spend outside of your desk seat. They tell hires that they are results-focused and don't care as long as the work gets done, but this is a lie. Optiver is all about presenteeism.

God forbid if you should ever get seriously ill while working at Optiver. The management routinely assumes the worst of its employees and ridicules people for focusing on their health.

The dev infrastructure is a hot mess that's held together with duct tape, even more so than any startup I've worked at. They constantly reinvent the wheel due to a not-built-here mentality. They have an entire team maintaining research infrastructure, including a custom batch processing system, that is entirely redundant with what's available commercially or through open-source software. It's pretty crazy.

The people who get promoted are generally smart but the least-balanced individuals you'll ever meet. They also tend to be spineless yes-men who have no idea how to lead a team effectively. If the team misses goals, it's never the manager's fault; they always blame the employee who put in 70+ hour weeks trying to work within a system that's geared against them.

The culture is like a frat house, and the managers in particular are completely immature. There is no diversity at all.

• Comp needs to be less subject to the whims of individual managers. It leads to abuse.
• Ask your workers to review their managers and take the feedback seriously. Do it in a way that will prevent retaliation.
• Do these things, and it will be easier to retain experienced talent, which will lead to better software. You can't survive forever by grinding through fresh grads.