Optiver

Amazing compensation (perhaps THE best in the country, comparable to USA pay at top-tier firms).

Amazing benefits:

• Restaurant-quality, freshly made food on site
• Barista on site
• Annual company trip

Very smart people.

Bullying from management, and the company does nothing about it despite being aware of the numerous problems. Long hours and demands that things get done very fast (sometimes 12+ hours per day). Messy, undocumented legacy code, and nobody in the organization seems to even know the business requirements it solves, so it's nearly impossible to rewrite. Extremely poor code quality (e.g., things checked into code that should be in the database, or at the very least in a config; more layers of abstraction than needed; not adhering to best practices, etc.). Very poor culture. Colleagues are obsessed with money. Seriously, all they talk about is work and money. Yes, I like money too, but there's more to life than money. You effectively can't trade the stock market with personal funds as long as you're an employee due to huge restrictions they place on you being able to trade with personal funds.

There are some really toxic people at Optiver who absolutely have to go. Management is aware of these problems, yet does nothing. Get rid of these people, even if they make the company a lot of money. They’re creating substantial liabilities to the firm.

Slow down. Get the job done right instead of done fast. It's okay to miss out on a few months of revenue from a new trading strategy in order to get the job done the right way. This will cause less problems down the line and much less risk to the firm. Seriously, the amount of risk due to bad code quality and overworked staff is insane. Fix this.

Fix the performance review process, and thereby make the culture less toxic and compensation more fair. Keeping old tools running is a very complex and tedious, thankless task, yet it isn't valued by management. Only new shiny things are valued by management. When others leverage your work, this isn't valued by management. When you help others do their task, this isn't valued by management. This leads to people not wanting to work with others and not wanting to help others. There were literally colleagues who stole tasks I was working on because the tasks had high visibility. This is extremely toxic.

Fix the compensation structure. Optiver pays out a massive amount in bonus and very little in base pay. The bonus is bigger than the base pay for many people, and it is subject to a performance multiplier. Since the bonus is not pro-rated, it gives people an incentive to quit as soon as it's paid out if they aren't sure if they can stay another year at the firm. There's also a lot of uncertainty into what the bonus might be. If you are so strict on keeping this profit sharing structure to compensation, then consider paying out profit sharing monthly, or at the very least quarterly. At least then it will help with employee's cashflow and keep them informed about how much they're making, rather than having so much guesswork.

Guard your reputation. If more people knew about how toxic this place is, you would struggle to hire even more, despite your amazing pay and benefits. Seriously, fix this place. It has so much potential.