D. E. Shaw Reviews in Hyderabad, India Area

Pros

1. Salary
2. Flexible Work Culture

Cons

1. Lot of politics.
2. Assets going down
3. Not lot of technical challenges.
4. Promotions are based on your relationship with management

Pros

Flexibility in work hours
Best Salary in the industry for the location
Good Culture
Excellent Perks
Good Work Environment
Very good ownership given to employees in their work

Cons

Lack of vision - There doesn't seem to be any vision for various locations
Middle Management - It would be good if higher management can layout vision and purpose for various locations and middle management instills it down to the foot workers

Pros

Salary and bonus
If you have an interest in financial world, its good

Cons

No flexibility of work - No work from home.
Politics.
Bureaucracy.
Only MT/SMT do most of the things.
PM(s)/PL(s) only do prioritization - Do not provide a good vision and do not come up with a plan.
They just want you to slog at the last minute to get job done even if its not worth the effort.
Many people do people management and forget that they are in a tech job.
Freedom to work on something else is not there.
MT/SMT are expected to multitask and slog and do the work end-to-end.

Advice to Senior Management

Just doing prioritization does not help - sketch proper plans. Do not beat around the bush. Talk about tech work. Give time for people to develop good applications.Sort out internal politics.Stop treating specific people as god and give respect to everyone overall. Encourage folks for their good work.Giving lot of money alone does not help.

Pros

- interesting people to work with
- good benefits and facilities
- not very stressful; good work-life balance
- competitive pay

Cons

- people in senior management are smart but are not very good leaders. most of them lack people management skills. there are hardly any leaders one can look up to.

- no uniform work environment. Work-life balance, career progression, fairness in compensation and promotions and other important aspects are solely dependant on the manager of your group. senior management is only concerned with output/results. as long as they are achieved, managers can get away with any attitude.

- career path and growth opportunities are rarely defined.

- need some churn in the middle and senior management so as to bring in fresh perspective and diverse skills . most of the existing ones have been with the firm since a long time.

- don't hire overqualified people for mundane jobs. this seems to be done consciously for some unknown reason.

Advice to Senior Management

- listen to the people on the ground
- have a long term vision instead of reacting to current circumstances
- put in place scalable and sustainable processes

Pros

You get to work on some of the best/latest techonlogies
Opportunity to learn in a short time
salary package best among industry

Cons

not much lateral growth
poor middle management
unnecessary stress

Advice to Senior Management

Treat people as people (not like machines)
salary can't be motivator all the time
too much of individual focus is bad as a team

Pros

* Good pay for freshers, not so competitive for PL and beyond
* Flexible working hours
* No dress code
* Good brand on your resume

Cons

* Work not so interesting
* I worked on same dull stuff for years, even though I asked a thousand times to be moved to another project
* Work experience is heavily dependent on your Associate Director. My earlier one was great and I learnt a lot but my present AD is only a task master who wants to lick boots of his bosses
* Very limited learning and professional growth
* Lack of role clarity and discipline
* No processes or guidelines
* Lot of politics, even at PL levels

Advice to Senior Management

* People beyond PLs seem to have bad career. Take care of your people, please
* Provide role clarity, and get those BAs to write some ******* specs
* Very authoritative people in management (there are only a couple of good exceptions)

Pros

good salary compared to industry standards and compared to quality of work
many fringe benefits
lovely parties

Cons

poor quality work, no absorption
If your direct boss is not competent, u are in a problem since he is all that u have
work culture is awful, unhealthy competition

Advice to Senior Management

Remove the deeply entrenched hierarchy

Pros

Higher package compared to other companies
You generally can get the kind of job you like to work
Smart people all around

Cons

Long work hours
Tech team at only one place in India
The management may not respect you as much as in other companies
They are little scroogy except for their package

Advice to Senior Management

Dont be scroogy
Respect staff at all levels
Apart from these you seem to be doing a good job congrats

Pros

Money and good work life balance.

Cons

People are just not talented enough. Hard work instead of talent/ingenuity are the focus. People in India get donkey work that they are supposed to do. Brain exercise is minimal.

Advice to Senior Management

Senior management is pathetic. Most of them are there because they they get paid well and they can't get in any where else. They are by no means leaders; they lack basic communication skills, collaboration skills and the only thing they really look at is whether the person is working hard enough. If that is there every thing else is fine. One can't learn anything in such an environment - around 1 year I spent there only reduced my effectiveness as a professional.