Bridgewater Associates Employee Reviews about "work life balance"

Pros

smart co workers ambitious asf

Cons

company doesnt has a good work life balance

Pros

Various pros: Lots of independence, consistent feedback, free lunch/snacks, great brand name recognition for CV, excellent compensation, ridiculously intelligent co-workers, high-pressure situations can be incredibly rewarding if you can tolerate the pain. The bottom line for BW is that the firm encourages far more reflection and introspection than other firms do. If you work there, you will learn a lot about yourself and will undoubtedly get better at whatever you are employed to do.

Cons

Work/life balance can be nonexistent- partially due to the firm's location so far away from NYC and partially due to the demands of the job. The hours are not terrible for most people, but the pace at which you will work during the day will far exceed any other job you will have. Incredibly high turnover (over 50% per 18 months now), which definitely erodes team cohesion and morale. The culture attempts to get rid of office politics, but it ended up creating a tedious bureaucracy that can make it difficult to get things done (though there are several instances of the opposite being true). Although this varies by department, the culture can be highly abusive and there were countless instances of people behaving in ways that would get them admonished or fired at any other firm. The sheer amount of 'culture' work, such as management training, polls and feedback, can be cumbersome and exhausting, particularly if you a ton of work to get through.

Pros

Smart people, good salary, good benefits, perks like lunch, gym and parties Opportunities to move within company can be good. You will find awesome people there. Principles are great in theory and give a good framework of thinking about problems and common management issues. Will push you to be at your best, testing your intellect and mental fortitude. Best opportunities for success and happiness are far away from the departments where the founder is involved

Cons

Parties and 'team bonding' events get excessive- forced bonding with co-workers to 'build community' takes even more time away from family and friends outside of work. Managers are expected to attend and it is viewed negatively if managers do not attend. Poor work life balance Parties get out of hand, and no-one really cares... kind of like 'Mad Men' in how it operates. Men who are complained about are minimally disciplined, if at all, and excuses made for them. Forced bell curve on performance, requires constant culling of employees. Managers know this and need to plan for it, if you aren't in charge of who gets in the bottom 30% you are 75% more likely to be in there. It becomes a chess game of managers keeping their jobs and 'sorting people.' Highly successful people aren't good enough. You are labeled within 3 months of your arrival, and if the picture wasn't pretty to them, by whatever algorithm that they are using this week to assess you, it will never be pretty and you will never come out from under any label you get there... It will be on your 'baseball card' and follow you to any role for the rest of your career there. Reckless assessment and testing practices, using personality and workplace assessments in ways that they were never intended to be interpreted by people with zero training resulting in hiring and firing decisions as well as opinions of people that are unfounded - rampant confirmation bias. Everyone is compared to the founder and his heir apparent, so if your results are different from them, you are in the red and scores are lower. No perceived value in diversity of thinking, approach, etc. Constant failure and revolving door of Senior Executive team and department heads is depressing... If you can't communicate in their language, good luck uttering a full sentence without being interrupted and negative feedback being recorded for you in their assessment system. No effort to understand one another. Most people just trying to survive by attacking rather than being attacked. Principles are great in theory, but can be manipulated to support whatever theory the better debater needs. And, if something happens that requires Ray to do something he doesn't want to, to stay in line with his own principles and values, he'll just write a new one to justify what he does. The worst part is that Management and the company pretend to be different from every other corporate environment and they fool lots of people who end up being blindsided. Real truth is that they are just as political, scheming, back stabbing and pushing of their own agendas as any other financial institution, but they are full of arrogance and hubris that they are somehow better and more elevated than people at those other companies. Its just all the harder to figure out who you can trust there. You are being watched -- 100% of the time--Through your badges, cameras, computer activity, blackberry, more cameras and all formal conversations are audio-taped. You are encouraged to report on other employees, preferably publicly, but anonymously is OK too and they'll give you lots of ways to do that.