Bluefin Companies Reviews

extremely toxic working enviroment They dont care 1) employee working efficiency -> took several months to replace a broken computer which would shut down in the middle of the day occasionally, the manager said trading accesses were not ready, computer issue was not a big deal -> even after the hardware was fixed, the remote desktop was frozen for half hour every day, and it took a month to find that the server was occupied by a backup process, so you lost half hour every day 2) trading setup -> was promised trading accesses would be ready immediately on the first day, turned out it took more than half year to get some basic market accesses, it was a complete waste of career time waiting trading nothing, even they knew there was no guaranteed bonus to compensate -> the manager was working on kids education application during working hours, spend hours discussing news/food that are not relevant to trades -> they didnt let you directly communicate with developers, instead you need to tell the manager first, then the manager deliver the request to developers, the tools built were completely useless -> you can try to talk to external party to help speed up the setup, but they would stop you saying it was the manager responsibility, and then continue to talk about irrelevant news for example a singer passed away 3) tiny risk limit, no room for profit to cover even base salary -> this didnt make sense, traders didnt have bonus, the company also lost paying salary, but it was only reasonable until you see what they care -> they promised to raise limit after seeing profits from your strategy, and unexpectedly it was a disappointing 10% increment, the promise was just to keep you running trades and let them learn 4) unreasonable overhead cost -> was told an amount X before I joined, but the amount doubled why they dont care and what they care? 1) your trading idea & secret, you need to explain over and over again, and document your strategy, threatened you with the contract terms to share all secrets, while you have already shared everything, they still thought that there would be a single, secret and simple indicator. 2) after absorbing your strategy, they asked you to run it in a systematic way as they wanted, so it could be automatic, and the P&L started to turn negative, Leaving the company they will ask you sign a separation agreement when you leave, saying it is very common in financial industry, it is actually the same as the terms on your employment contract, with something extra to stop you from sharing your unpleasant employment experience in bluefin to the public. Asking I talked to the recruiter who connected me with Bluefin, he said it was not the managing director problem, it was the partner forcing the managing director to do the above. I dont want to guess, as it could be the managing director lying/breaking promises as always Growth I have heard they promised to hire a junior trader to support a trader with several years exp in Bluefin, and they never delivered the promise for growth. Instead, they turned the trader into a supportive role. That was just to reconcile positions and took away capital running the existing strategy.

Way too many issues. I really think this is a shop to avoid unless you're absolutely desperate. The lax Work Life Balance is the main reason everything is so outdated. This is largely due to laziness and a lack of desire to innovate, there is no desire to be a world class firm. The company is stale and is complacent with technology seemingly built in the early 2000s. Talent follows talent, and this place can't retain talent so it's very hard to recruit and attract new employees to keep up with the industry. Many traders step off the desk to go out to lunch in the middle of the trading session, that's just abnormal in this business. Many employees have a complete lack of urgency and a lack of attention to detail with their work, which is problematic in this industry. Firm has a ton of operational overhead so trading teams have a lot of unnecessary expenses dumped onto their balance sheets. There are a bunch of ethical concerns: 1. They will interview people just to get trade ideas to steal. If you get an interview with bluefin, please keep your trading secrets secret. There's a big chance they aren't serious about hiring you and just want to get free information. 2. They will hire talent to build out trading strategies just to pass it along to existing employees and then reassign newly hired talent to work on something else much less lucrative. They're stealing strategies, but these often don't work because the employees taking over the strategies aren't skilled traders. 3. I've heard they will nickel and dime desk heads with questionable costs, including deducting your interview/recruiting costs from before you joined the firm against your net trading profits. 4. There is a lot of joking about firing employees, this has gone on for years, and shows they don't really care about how their employees or how their employees gave up really good paying jobs to join bluefin. They are happy joking about ruining careers/lives. Quite hilarious, especially coming from partners who own $10m houses/condos in the hamptons/manhattan. 5. Many managers tell employees they don't have to read compliance documents and explicitly tell employees they can just sign it without reading. A really big red flag. Annual compliance review is a joke too lasting a mere 5 minutes. 6. I've seen maintenance individuals hired to make office repairs and then watch a senior person insist on not paying the maintenance person after the work was completed. If they don't want to pay a low skilled guy, imagine how cheap they are come bonus season. 7. If you complain about pay (which you will want to do), they will hire your replacement, make you train them, and then try to fire you. 8. Training for junior talent is extremely poor. There's virtually zero formal training programs, all training is from your desk leads, which can be hit or miss (mostly miss). Junior employees struggle to get jobs elsewhere because they don't develop skills. 9. The senior partners have a slew of childish and petty rivalries with "rival firms". A firm becomes a rival if a Bluefin employee leaves to join their firm. Bluefin's partners actively seek out talent from these rival firms, will give the talent false promises (capital, technology, payout percentages, resources, etc.) to lure them over and then neglect them as a way to somehow get back at the rival firm. 10. Firm has attempted to sue former employees for "violating" non-competes even though Bluefin has neglected to pay employees for sitting out, even though the employment contract explicitly states payment is due to enforce a non-compete. 11. The management had very little care about the law or worker safety during COVID. Very worrisome about your safety and career during that time period. The company is also struggling financially right now and have closed down a bunch of new businesses/offices (London office just closed, crypto business is shut, ETF business which has been neglected for years has finally shut down, etc.). They oddly don't have a lot of risk appetite to try new strategies, so they've been concentrating a larger and larger portion of the firm capital into a high risk strategy that will one day blow-up and be the demise of the firm, which the partners are probably ok with given many of them are half retired. Managers don't know how to trade, yet love to chime their opinions about why you must trade a certain way despite data/evidence showing their ideas will lose money and make the trade unprofitable. The firm is small and therefore doesn't have a lot of capital, so new individuals should be aware that they won't get the capital funding levels needed to scale up their strategies unless they can post very high sharpe ratios, which is difficult with the poor technology/infrastructure. Technology is extremely bad. Trading system is terrible/slow and doesn't connect to all venues/exchanges, and there is a lack of urgency even if this is necessary to expand/scale. The fills monitoring system literally takes 20 minutes to launch. Position System is non-existent outside of excel spreadsheets. Operational work is quite heavy as the firm has not invested in any automation, you will need to manually check the bank statements and reconcile almost daily.