CME Group Reviews in Chicago, IL Area

Pros

Large and innovative organization with a lot of history.
Offers multi range of diverse products.
Technologically advanced.
Profitable and growing.
Great Leadership.
Excellent Benefits.

Cons

Can be repetitive but overall serves a purpose.
Not able to encounter or collaborate with high level management.
Average salary.

Advice to Senior Management

Work life balance is not met sometimes due to extensive work and Company bonus is not what it was few years ago. Should relax the work from home policy and bonus structure for higher employee morale.

Pros

good benefits and competitive salaries

Cons

lack opportunity for growth, lack of meritocracy

Pros

CME Group compensates its employees well and provides interesting work. at times it is difficult to keep up with all the work but it keeps the job challenging and engaging.

Cons

Management should consider bring more employees due to the number of changes in the industry and the heightened level of scrutiny and competition.

Advice to Senior Management

Management should be sure to properly reward and promote its employees who have taken on significant responsibility and have performed at a high level in the ever changing work environment.

Pros

Well cultured work style. Good top level management and technically strong managers

Cons

As always bureaucracy slows things and restricts company future.

Advice to Senior Management

Ease up the formal regulations and review achievements year over year in terms of contribution to society along with profits.

Pros

Good work life balance, job security

Cons

A lot of politics, red tape, no real opportunities to learn or advance. But this varies from team to team

Advice to Senior Management

Create incentive to innovate

Pros

Easy entry for non-technical associates into technical positions

Cons

Technical experts lack competency relative to other industry

Pros

the company provides a full tuition reimbursement and pays attention to work life balance.

Cons

there is not a rotational program in the company to allow employees to learn different aspect of the business.

Pros

There are some bright people but they are leaving at a fast rate.

Cons

This is the worst place to work for, for a good software developer. All the guys who can't program or can't do anything productive get promoted to Associated Directors. Then the same crappy folks are in charge of reviewing the performance of bright developers who do the real work ! It's like an inverse pyramid, they have got the rotten people on top, on an average there are 2 managers for each dev/qa/analyst person. Lot of red tape, politics goes on than real work, with so many Associate Directors it is normal to expect I presume.
One person takes the status, another person print it in excel and brings it to the meetings, another person reads it in the meetings, another person takes meeting notes and emails it out.
It takes on an average 10 years to build a new system cause of mismanagement and poor or no vision at all, that's why most work is maintenance/support work.

All these factors naturally tend to promote mediocrity.

Advice to Senior Management

Be real leaders and stop being too political and defensive.

Pros

Great Projects, people are really smart, and you get extensive knowledge of the financial industry.

Cons

CME does an awful job of handling their consultants. They treat them very poorly going out the door. I saw two instances where giving CME 2 weeks notice worked against those people. In one instance the consultant gave notice at 9 AM and was kicked out before 10 AM. The second instance a consultant gave notice EOD Monday and was let go EOD Tuesday. More than a few supervisors have less than stellar communication skills (i.e. snarky, rude, snide, condescending commentary is the norm).

Advice to Senior Management

The two weeks notice thing will return to bite you. It may not happen right away, but people will start to take notice and provide no notice if they decide to leave CME.

Pros

Good application of modern technology to achieve business goals and business is willing to adapt to it. We don’t have fight to bring in a new suitable technology.

Cons

Incompetent middle management. As mentioned in another review, lots of funny drama due to petty politics within the middle management (Up to the director level). Upper management should realize not all good technical people can be good managers and ADs. I am really surprise how some arrogant people are at that level.

Advice to Senior Management

Please listen to the feedbacks and take action . It is not worth just collecting it once in every 6 months.