Citadel Investment Reviews

Former Employee – worked at Citadel Investment full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – The company offers a great salary, benefits and perks. You do get to learn a lot within your domain.

Cons – If you are good at what you do, they are reluctant to let you move to another group. People on the business side get to move around. On the tech side, you only get to move around if your group is being disbanded or re-organized. Hours can be long and you are always tied to your blackberry.

Advice to Senior Management – Allow more mobility for the technology side.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Citadel Investment full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Get to work with very knowledgeable people and cutting edge technology. Excellent salary and benefits including medical coverage, free lunch, transit subsidy and gym.

Cons – Not your 40 hour a week job so if time away from the office is important, this place isn't for you. Hard place to work at times and everyone is replaceable.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Citadel Investment as an intern for less than a year

Pros – Being industry leaders, can get to meet and work with leaders in the industry. One of the best
compensation you can get. Free food and lot of other benefits. Studio housing for interns and first 2 months of full timers

Cons – Very secretive. Difficult to learn about the business model and other aspects of business easily. Chicago is a good place but there can be more people who can prefer New York.

Advice to Senior Management – Nothing serious. Should find a way to retain people.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at Citadel Investment full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – great benefits, elegant office, plenty of training, very smart people

Cons – office politics, Ken treats people like financial investments

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Citadel Investment full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – If you got skills and put an effort to get things accomplished, you get paid well.
Smart people, aggressive culture. People are very responsive (just becase people is commodity at citadel and get fired easily if don't perform) and usually things gets done rather quickly with minimal bureaucracy.
Great benefits, free food.

Cons – There is zero mobility within, if you want to acquire new skills or move within departments, or move closer to business..it is virtually impossible. The place is well oiled money making machine. Each person is expected to do its small part of an assebmly line.
Management don't like when people ask to do something else even relevant to what their skill set is. Especially, if you do your job very well, they just want you to stay where you. Management will promise you bright future/new opportunities to learn, in order to keep you at your assembly point as long as possible, but these promises never fullfilled.

A lot of politics. Management think they are so smart and experienced, they don't need any ideas from their subordinates/employees and just manage as they think fit with total disregard/ignorance for good ideas coming from employees. That makes a lot of efforts/new things fail, like their securities business or other efforts in fixed income. No respect for people, it is just a replaceable commodity.

This is the worst place out of few hedge funds I worked for, even far worse then SAC Capital. Glad I got out. My advice is you want to grow your career, don't come here. If you don't care about growing anymore and just want to make top money for your skills, this is the place for you.

Advice to Senior Management – Treat people with respect and trust them. Work life will just get easier for you, you get more productive employees and get better results from your people without busting their balls in every meeting.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Citadel Investment full-time for more than a year

Pros – Most people value hard work

Cons – A few people does not value hard work

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at Citadel Investment full-time for more than a year

Pros – Citadel is one of the larger, successful hedgefunds that has grown into other businesses. There are many highly talented, experienced professionals. Pay packages are highly competitive.

Cons – lack of longer term vision with Investment Bank formation. hired experienced, talented,, highly paid people to run the business then kept all of the decision making power within the top 3 of the company.

Advice to Senior Management – The Investment Bank build out attempt to become the "next Goldman" should have first focused on competing with the non bulge bracket firms. Building an Investement Bank, despite the talent that is available, is not a 2 year process. It requires MANY years to become a competitive, reputable, highly profitable business. Unlike buying a distressed portfolio of assets which Citadel has a proven track record of doing, an Investment Bank is a long term investment and not a trade. There is too much power within the top 3.

Former Employee – worked at Citadel Investment

Pros – Well-educated, talented colleagues. Mind-expanding discussions, meetings and forums. Good benefits (health, dental, retirement).

Cons – Cut-throat internal competition for advancement. Long work hours. Middle management is typically soft on skills.

Advice to Senior Management – Promote from within rather than continually hiring externally.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Citadel Investment

Pros – Excellent learning experience. Very flat management structure. It's very easy to have high-exposure on projects even as a very junior employee.

Cons – There's a very steep learning curve. You have to be a very independent worker to succeed. Managers and business structures change very regularly.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Citadel Investment

Pros – Highly successful and driven workforce. Outstanding teams and collaboration within businesses. Employees trly do gt the opportunity to work at the cutting edge of finance.

Cons – Work life balance not important to the firm but everyone does have a full slate of holidays. Moving between businesses is relatively difficult

Advice to Senior Management – Improve cross business communication and knowledge sharing

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend