As some of the more recent reviews note, this job definitely seems like more of a live action role-playing game at times, where your job is to appease and entertain an autocratic CEO with a penchant for firing people, as opposed to actually making real breakthroughs. To expound on this, as a researcher, I found that the CEO was afraid of new and bold ideas, and was severely skeptical of applied statistics. I was sold on the idea of joining a data-driven company, and frankly, I was disappointed from day one.
The root of most of its issues is that Tradebot's power structure is entirely autocratic: the CEO is the judge, jury, and executioner. The culture used to encourage innovation, but then the CEO began to micromanage the company, stifling creativity and creating an atmosphere of distrust among and between the teams.
Also, the benefits and compensation are SEVERELY lacking. Your health insurance will cost $300+/month for one person (it's ridiculously more for a family) and won't even be that great, you'll get a measly 3% IRA match, the dental program is a joke, you don't even get any sick days (although this is counterbalanced with a generous 20 vacation days), and most people felt like the bonuses were small in comparison to how much of an emphasis was placed on them at the times of our interviews and recruitment. Further, many at the company work 45-50 hour weeks, not the 40 hours you're told at recruitment. By the time you factor all this in, you're better off working at Cerner or Garmin if you're interested in software, or some other trading firm if you're interested in trading.
Additionally, the work culture embodies the philosophy of high-frequency trading: take what you can get without giving back. Teams compete internally; people are reluctant to help you, because if they spend their time working on projects that don't make them look like an all-star, they won't get as big of a bonus, or worse, they'll get canned for no apparent reason. Even though the pay of a real trading firm isn't at Tradebot, the cutthroat mentality is.
This leads me to my final point: the lack of any real job security. Employment is at will, meaning that the company can fire you and not even have a reason for it. This happens several times a year. They'll bring in a recent college grad, let them work a few months while they give them exclusively positive feedback, and then fire them without warning and without cause. It's not just new people, either. People who have put in years of work will also be fired, even if there's no performance or behavioral issues. If the CEO just wants to change things up, he will. Further, once you're canned, the 2 year non-compete agreement kicks in, meaning you can't work for another HFT firm. This makes Tradebot a terrible place to start a career.
In sum, Tradebot used to be a wonderful place to work, but then it shifted towards an authoritarian power structure, and all innovation and creativity stopped and paranoia and internal competition thrived. Working at Tradebot is a zero-sum game, one which nobody is really winning.