Pros
• This is not an easy job- but if you have the right attitude, understand the expectations, and are willing to put forth the effort to learn / execute, the pros outweigh the cons • Solid Health Insurance • If you show you are competent and interested in doing the work, you will be immediately thrown into the Lions Den on incredibly interesting and niche projects across a variety of groups across the firm(Trading, Credit, Real Estate, Tax, Fin Control, the Bank, etc.) • You get the opportunity to look at a variety of different types of investment strategies, often working directly under the Partners, Portfolio Managers, and CEO. While these projects can be challenging, you are on the front lines seeing initiatives throughout the life cycle, creating reporting tools and analytics used for thought construction, execution, and management of large investment positions and learning about a lot of interesting things. • The firm has a high attention to detail that is instilled into everything, it’s a good problem-solving mindset to develop and helps with time management and understanding process improvements. • ERM has latitude to present process improvements, build analytics / tools on top of the databases, and even work with IT to develop / extend Q’s internal applications. • The firm is serious about training / providing you with resources to make sure you are equipped to handle the demanding responsibilities of the job. There is a structured, internally developed Excel/VBA/SQL training program and helps build capacity to increase productivity. • The culture here is unique. Everyone including most of the chiefs are fairly casual and working on the trade desk is an open/ fun environment. Everyone who works here is sharp, and collegiate, and the open work environment promotes collaboration. Some of the most big-brained, and small-brained discussions you will ever hear will occur at the Q Trade Desk. • During the summers there are half days on Fridays if you’ve been at the firm long enough • Lottery for unique events at Cowboy Stadium, events around DFW, and the occasional VIPs. The events are really awesome if you use this perk. • The lunch allowance perk is pretty good. Not having a “lunch break” is an adjustment, but the selection of restaurants is extensive, and there are holiday luncheons that allow the whole office to get together, every month we have rotating perks of hot chocolate bars / omelet bars / nitro cold brew etc.
Cons
• Other than internal motivation to learn, you are not incentivized to go the extra mile. There is no reward for putting in extra effort or taking on more responsibility. • If you are on a high priority assignment or a special situation arises, the work/life balance can become stressful. There will be times where you’re sacrificing evenings, nights, weekends, holidays to get to the finish line of a project and this can become demanding over time. • CEO has extremely high expectations / demands a high degree of accuracy and detail, but sometimes provides mercurial directives that are often not MECE and lead to excess effort / resources to get him exactly what he wants in the format he wants to see. • Sometimes the chain of command is suboptimal because we are either following a directive from above, performing a perfunctory task because it’s always been done that way and people are hesitant to change the procedure, or PM’s sometimes relay unclear/changing directives that are not communicated clearly to the necessary teams • Can sometimes get Orwellian at times being “on call” at the desk all day without going outside / leaving your pod, the FOB system alerts your supervisor if you’re more than 5 minutes late, etc. • As with any job you will have to do the occasional admin work, printouts, rote tasks/reports that come with any job that are for form vs substance. These should be treated with the same degree of diligence as the more exciting tasks because while they are not exciting they do help build the attention to detail / discipline for other tasks.