Not the best and not the worst place to work in. - L4 Software Engineer Flow Traders Employee Review

3.0
Feb 11, 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Included breakfast/launches. Sometimes smart people. Compensation is somewhat bigger that on the average market.

Cons

I do not know where even to start. Let's see. - Lying management. After the 2023 H1 result, which was the worst for the whole company in 20 years of history, the top management held a meeting the next day in which they explained that we performed pretty badly because of low volatility and small volumes on the markets and no one would be fired. So this is a market issue, not an employee issue. After that meeting, some of the people on the contract were not prolonged, and instead of firing people and compensating them, they assigned to them a Performance Improvement Plan (PiP), which is the way how you can dismiss people on the permanent contract. I was surprised that some of the people had one; never expect that they will be treated like that, they performed well 'cause I worked with them in one team, so I think there was a command from upper management to find "scapegoats". Mostly it was everyone except "beloved" traders, 'cause you know traders are the profit and as an engineer you are the expense and can be easily replaced, especially for the new CEO with previous experiences as CFO, he looks at the company/people as the table in Excel and when we talk, he usually speaks about other positive stuff (hold the hand together and that kind of sh*t), but at the end of the day, cut the costs, salary ones. I do understand the issue that the company has, but I think you should speak truthfully and not say one thing and do another. And after two months Flow veteran Folker who worked with company for somewat 15 years, "decided" to leave the company. When peoiple leave they write the letter by themself usually. But instead of Folker our new CEO have wrote the email and said that Folkerd decided to leave the company and he emphasized that it is not becuse of the copmany strategy. Which is total bullsh*t. So that is the part about lying. - You should have legal insurance! Otherwise, it will be challenging for you. I have been with Flow for 5.5 years. And I know people who left and Flow Traders, Flow always tries to enforce a non-compete on you, even if you are going to, for example, ABN Amro, which is not the competitor, and people without lawyers can't properly object to the company. - Although the company says it is held to the people, I do not know an example when someone who wants to leave has been kept in the company. The company talks about loyalty and that it has an impact on the bonus, but it is a total lie. Your compensation depends on your relations with the management (TL and middle management) and not on the loyalty. - Compensation. Hmm, the basic salary is somewhat bigger than on the market in general, but the total compensation (salary + bonus) is less than our competitors have. The competitors have the same or slightly less salary, but when it comes to the bonus, they have like 2x-3x of the base salary in Flow you will get a bonus like 15-60% of your base salary. I do know colleagues that with the company for several years and although they have a big impact and great contributions, they are getting less than new hires. To level up, you need to do a lot of USELESS inner courses, a person from the street does not have this problem and gets a bigger paycheck from the start and bigger bonus because he is more "senior" than the old employee. I do not say that the new hires are bad people or perform badly, I just saying that the company treats people unfairly on the compensation. And 2023 year bonus was pretty good for me I did not expect that in circumstances when we perform that badly. I thought finally we as engineers become treated more fairly in comparison with traders, but after a couple of drinks in the bar, I talked to people who had PiP and you know what? they did not receive any bonus. So one employee gets 0, because they performed "badly" and the other has some pretty good bonus for the bad year.

Explore other reviews about Flow Traders

1.0
Jan 29, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Very small company with flat hierarchy so you can do your own projects

Cons

Very non-systematic trading shop; most traders have little quantitative experience out of fast mental math, so it always underperforms competitors leading to extremely low salaries resulting in only poor quality traders and people stuck on visas reaching seniority

2
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