Pros: - Very smart, hard working, caring employees - Lots of interesting technology (low latency, big scale or high uptime) - Good technical autonomy (anything is on the table as long as the ROI is right) - Motivated people can move around in the company to stay interested - Decent work life balance (better than most of Wall St, or so I've heard) - Many on-site amenities (big gym with lots of showers, car mechanic pickup) - Great location just outside of Philadelphia (one mile off the beautiful Schuylkill river trail, perfect for bike commuting) - Common sense approach to management (remoting in to stay home with a sick kid can be fine) - Great compensation for the area - Strong rational decision making culture - Very flat structure (not much overhead)

Cons: - Compliance with financial regulations includes monitoring and recording all outside communications. - The firm takes a conservative approach to intellectual property, where all code stays on-site and there are no open source contributions. - Trading hours aren't flexible, as being in the office to support 9:30-4 trading is a priority. - There are some management growing pains as the firm gets bigger. - The structure is very flat, which means there is not much clear advancement.

Pros: Free lunch, young crowd, flat management structure are some of the reasons that make SIG a good company. Depending upon the profitability of the group one is supporting (index desk, electronic options trading) resources are made available as needed to get things done. There are interesting projects to work aplenty in these groups.

Cons: The risk to reward ratio is skewed. The sense is that even if one works on challenging projects at the year end compensation bump/bonus are meager. The location of the company means that salaries are probably decent compared for the region but hardly Wall Street level.

Pros: Nice people to talk to

Cons: There was a lot of ambiguity in decision making.