Chicago Trading Company – “Great Place to Work”

Pros

I've been a software engineer for over 10 years in the Chicago area, and I've been at a big 5 consulting firm, and this is now my third prop trading shop. It's the best place I've been so far.

- Great benefits, compensation
- Work with incredibly smart people
- Fully stocked kitchen, free breakfast and lunch(so much so that there is a phenomenon known as the CTC 15)
- Passionate workforce. I can't say enough about this, I have yet to meet anyone at CTC that I thought didn't care and was just going through the motions.
- Wonderful educational opportunities - The in house education department(3 full time people) is great.

Cons

- Promotions across teams can seem unfair. The bar for promotion on team A may seem much higher than the bar for promotion on team B. This has been an issue at every firm I've ever worked at or been a part of, but still, it happens.
- Other than that, my gripes are very persnickety(like why can't we get skim milk in the upstairs fridge?)

Advice to Senior Management

Rethink the quarterly meetings. The buffet is great, but the meeting itself can be a bit disjointed and drag on and on and on.