Morningstar Reviews

Pros

Results-focused
Casual atmosphere
Analysts often willing to help interns
Smart, qualified people (I worked with 6x CFAs)

Cons

Difficult to get into Morningstar Development Program as an intern in 2011
Formal training could be more intensive

Pros

It is a growing company.

Cons

Although they claim to be flexible, the company culture does not really promote it.

Pros

Culture and people are Morningstar's greatest assets. The structure is flat. There are multiple opportunities to socialize and get to know everyone.

Cons

There really is no downside besides compensation. It also lacks a global presence but is working on building an Australia office.

Advice to Senior Management

Great management by CFO and Mansueto. They've truly built this company up from solely mutual funds to a diverse portfolio of products, the most renowned one being equity research.

Pros

Very flexible work environment, including reasonable hours and occasional ability to work from home. Great benefits including 6 week paid sabbatical every four years. Great people, very friendly, open environment. Management open to feedback. Ability to be entrepreneurial and develop your own career path.

Cons

Compensation is low for finance industry and equity research in particular, but this is offset by reasonable hours and other flexibility. Equity research business is young and is still building reputation particularly among institutional audience.

Advice to Senior Management

Foster long-term retention of analysts through competitive compensation and other perks. Reward analysts who stay with the company and continue to perform. Too much turnover is highly disruptive to our growth and establishing our reputation in the business.

Pros

Opportunities to work with different technologies - .NET, Java, Scala, Web Service. Have opportunities to work with web based systems and protocol.

Cons

Mostly data oriented systems. Not much to learn about Business Process or workflow. Database are maintained by DB team, so you are confined to work in Application layer only.

Advice to Senior Management

Make the software systems Service Oriented with latest technologies. Reduce the number of applications to minimize support works, fully automate different systems where still manual works involved. Great Technical Leadership required.

Pros

Good Benefits, 401k, Medical, Vacation are all great.

Cons

Disconnected teams, Disconnected Exec Management, Lack of clear direction. Ran with NO CTO CIO for too long.

Advice to Senior Management

Interact with the employees outside of Chicago

Pros

good work life balance. good benefits

Cons

open seating, it can be very political

Advice to Senior Management

eliminate the open seating. more leadership

Pros

*Benefits are good
*Flexible work hours
*free cokes and coffee in the office
*good location, easy to get to and from.
*Good networking in the industry

Cons

Management in some areas are rude and very condescending. There really is a lack of people skills. As an employee outside of Chicago, there was little to no training, and difficult to get support - pretty much a fend for yourself type of environment. Very cliquish in nature, and lots of politics. Processes required to close sales to be very cumbersome across most SBU's thus obstructive to productivity. All in all, Morningstar makes it harder than necessary to keep morale up and good employees from straying.

Advice to Senior Management

Review some of the attitude and person to person interaction with VP level management - maybe listen in on conference calls or attend meetings. Improve training program and improve communications from product development to the sales team.

Pros

If you want to work in foreign offices, they seem to have open policies for that

Cons

Pay is low and management denies it

Advice to Senior Management

Treat employees with respect(all aspects) if want to retain talents

Pros

- Nice place to work
- Good domain knowledge
- Team outing

Cons

- Less technical exposure
- compensation is not good

Advice to Senior Management

Should work on compensation.