Dimensional Fund Advisors Reviews

I worked at Dimensional Fund Advisors full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – A very good work environment with strong co-workers and very little micro management.
Good compensation structure and liberal PTO/vacation time. Good ethics.

Cons – Company moved it's headquarters from Santa Monica, CA to Austin, TX. If you want a career with Dimensional you need to me positioned in Texas.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

I worked at Dimensional Fund Advisors full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – My department was filled with incredibly bright people who saw purpose in our work. Friendly, professional. Work spaces were top notch.

Cons – As is the case in many organizations, there were some internal politics.

Advice to Senior Management – Be willing to step outside the box and think a bit more creatively.

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

I have been working at Dimensional Fund Advisors full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Great work life balance, great benfits and compensation. The people are nice, friendly and great to work with. Strong academic ties and lots of really bright and highly educated employees.

Cons – None big enough to mention

Advice to Senior Management – Coninue the focus on the growth fo the company while keeping the Entrepreneurial spirit and strong academic ties.

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

I have been working at Dimensional Fund Advisors full-time for more than a year

Pros – Supportive and collaborative environment, treats employees well, great facility to work in, yummy onsite restaurant, great opportunities and access to all levels of management

Cons – None that I have found so far - this has been the fastest any year of working has gone by. I take this as a good sign that I still enjoy coming to work after over a year

Advice to Senior Management – Encourage growth in all strong performers across all departments

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

I have been working at Dimensional Fund Advisors

Pros – academic oriented
do what they believe

Cons – become bigger and moving to Austin

Advice to Senior Management – raise real diversified culture in order to become a true global firm

I worked at Dimensional Fund Advisors

Pros – They are good at what they do, and they practice what they preach.

Cons – The work is boring, and opportunities for advancement are slim.

I worked at Dimensional Fund Advisors

Pros – Great entry level position
Got a good idea for finance as a whole

Cons – Dogmatic about the philosophy (it's not a bad one), but I would hesitate to tell anyone that I explore active investing as well

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

I worked at Dimensional Fund Advisors

Pros – Academic Culture.
Decent Compensation and Benefits
Very nice "green" office.
Organization has a stated goal and operates by it at significant cost (very rare today).

Cons – Dysfunctional senior management.
Complete lack of accountability my senior management.
Staff is routinely "thrown under the bus" for situations and decisions that are completely out of their control.
Politics are a major issue between management & staff, departments and offices. Politics permeates the culture while management is oblivious to its existence.
HR is utterly ineffective in dealing with the organization's issues.
Staff's only course of action is to resign.
Real talent, insight and years of direct experience are not appreciated. It will get your hired but counts for nothing afterwards.
No one is willing to "rock the boat" in order to fix a blatant issue with another senior manager.
It can be a challenge to work with highly educated individuals who know much about a narrow field but behave as though they know all about everything, including how best to do your job. It's common fault among PhD's.

Advice to Senior Management – For senior management, there is a disconnect between the position of responsibility and accountability. How is it that a senior manager can have so many major problems occur over the years that would have been mitigated by effective leadership and never be held accountable while staff routinely takes the fall? There is so much potential that is utterly stifled by inept management.
It's a disservice to everyone. I estimate that for a specific group within the organization, staff operates at between 30% to 60% of potential as a direct result of poor decisions and lack of leadership by the senior manager. It simply does not have to be. The CEO must correct the real issue of inept senior management.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

I worked at Dimensional Fund Advisors

Pros – Great history and story to the company. Smart employees, but bad culture. Great place to learn how to be an indexer. How to process corporate actions. Learn how to elect on proxies!

Cons – A lot of "new" MBA's that say they are all about efficient markets only because if they don't they will probably be fired. Not open to ideas that the investment world is looking at. So it leaves you specialized to the point where nobody else cares how you view the world through a DFA investment microscope. Leaves you with little transferable skills because of the specialized nature of the firm. If you can stay and somehow find a niche then awesome, but like most people who leave you will find yourself exactly where you started with few skills added. In house processes exist and nobody wants to change them because they work. However, current employees don't even know what they really do because they didn't write the poorly constructed code in VB6. It is really a shame to see the new CEO incorporate all these performance reviews and micro-manage departments. I guess he should just eliminate all VPs in general and just micro-manage all departments.

Advice to Senior Management – Concentrate on overall strategy of the firm and direction instead of trying to micro-manage other peoples departments.

I have been working at Dimensional Fund Advisors

Pros – good salary
good people, including mgmt. (but it is their decisions that are very suspect)

Cons – RDs sit in cubes (thanks to CEO)
CEO micro manages
questionable promotions - not even sure how these decisions are made
too much emphasis on outside, external hires (new CEO is the one making this push...)
politics are too much
mgmt. not trustworthy
many different management styles - results in an unfair and unequal assessment standards come year end

Advice to Senior Management – some view this as a sales job while others think they are PhD's and consultants - need to figure out goal of sales group (would hope it is more sales oriented)
RDs should have offices - mgmt needs to realize cubes were a mistake.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend