Pros
- FINRA is a mid-sized organization with tons of need for technology innovation. Compared to other behemoths, it is fast paced, and if you are in the right group, you will learn and accomplish a lot. - Overall, the company culture and the middle management layer is OK. I worked in multiple technology teams, and while they had their problems, a toxic work culture wasn't one of them. - FINRA offers fully remote work. Ever since the pandemic began, very few people have ever been in the office. - The technology team has great controls and processes in place. Once you learn how to navigate the system, it is easy, predictable, and mitigates a ton of risks. - Overall, FINRA has top notch talent (although as of late, it is plagued tremendously with high attrition).
Cons
- The pay is barely OK these days. It used to be very competitive 5 years ago, but ever since the pandemic began, tech salaries have exploded and FINRA hasn't kept up. In my particular example, I made a lateral move to another employer in the DMV area and increased my total compensation easily by 40%. - The senior and executive technology leadership leaves much to be desired. A lot of the top notch engineering talent is leaving in droves because of the unbearable politics, constant reorg and pointless infighting among the top ranks. Having said this, unless you are close to that level, it's not going to affect you much. - The biggest and a more fundamental con with FINRA is that for the mandate they are trying to fulfill, they are seriously understaffed. In a way, FINRA sits at the epicenter of the entire US financial markets data and is tasked with protecting the market integrity. However, the manpower required to build and maintain those big data and ML systems is very lacking. Unfortunately, FINRA is a non-profit org and purely operates off of SEC mandates, so unless the SEC and the US Congress expand FINRA's budget, they will not keep up with the changing times. I view their long term outlook as suspect. FINRA was (and probably is) good at big data processing, but it is light years behind in ML, data science and doesn't understand emerging trends in digital currency and Blockchain.