Pros: The environment is smart, fast paced, and high energy.

Cons: There was a sink or swim mentality and not much onboarding.

Pros: Endless perks- free food, auto mechanic, etc. No TPS reports. No one looking over your shoulder telling you how to code - use all the recursion and functional programming you want. No one complains about wearing earphones. Opportunity to rise in pay and prestige without going into management. Pay is way better than other places in the area...

Cons: ...but way worse than other companies in the industry. Company is run by traders, not programmers, which is not optimal for the career of a programmer. Hard to concentrate on coding on the trading floor. No say in what projects your placed on. Different departments vary wildly in culture- your experience may vary.

Pros: There is basically none at the HK and Syd office at this point.

Cons: To start off- the pay was never the core issue but it is worth noting that throwing money at an exodus of people does not fix what is causing the exodus. Engineers who are passionate and treated with basic dignity; not intimidated do not need to be bought. They join and stay because they want to. Initial red flags with this company start with the contract. There are signing bonus clawbacks. There are relocation cost clawbacks. There is an undefined notice period. There is a non-compete of twelve months, unpaid, that has recently been activated on multiple people who escaped to other trading firms. Read that again before you sign anything. Sig treats you are like an asset to be retained, not a person to be respected. The management issues are well documented in other reviews. What I will add is that concerns have been raised formally with HR by multiple people, more than once. They have been noted and set aside each time. Of course it's hrs goal to protect the company not the employees, but protecting the status quo has cost them dearly in talent lately- the best people have all left! Stories travel fast in this industry and the change in this place has not gone unnoticed. Candidates already have an idea what disaster is going on at this place right now and recruiting gets surprised when no one wants to accept the offer or when half the people who joined in one year leave- they are losing more than they are hiring despite the recruiting department growing to twice the size recently. What a waste of money, basic human respect for the employees could have retained most of them. For a firm built on rational decision making, the sunk cost fallacy hits different when you're living it from the inside. People are all leaving right now, don't join this sinking ship especially the HK and Sydney offices!