FINRA Reviews

Cons

Like many companies, we do suffer from the occasional clique or groupthink

Cons

not too much space for promotion

Cons

Budget constraints equals more work than our new staff can handle, so experienced staff are routinely overwhelmed.

Cons

Slow career development, and less innovate projects to work on.

Cons

Very unstructured work as an Examiner. You must know what you are doing from the start and have a lot of common sense otherwise you will have a hard time. Not recommended for those with less than 5 years work experience in the financial services industry.

Cons

Limited career advancement within departments.

Cons

I was afraid of my boss and his threatful actions. I alerted human resource and the personnel that worked directly for him, (they were my superiors also) and was told: "don't feel special".

Cons

The same issues have been raised in numerous engagement surveys with no changes made to address the Staff's concerns. Everyone in the Chicago office is afraid of the director and is afraid to make decisions. Also the Chicago office cares more about quantity than quality, often is taking reassigned work before the beginning of the year.

Cons

Strict deadlines and quotas for matters.

Cons

When the recruiter contacted me, she sent me the job description which said I will spend 70% of my time doing development work and 30% of my time doing testing work. As a matter of fact, I spend 80% of my time creating test data using Excel and 20% of my time figuring out how to work around some internal tools.

Before going to interview, they sent me some information about SDET in Microsoft and let me thought that SDET is a position to write testing framework and that there will be testers to perform testing.

During interview, they asked Java/SQL questions and I thought I probably will write Java/SQL. But in day-to-day work, I don't even get assigned to write SQL because I am a SDET in FINRA AKA Tester. (They don't have Tester in FINRA. SDET IS TESTER) During interview, I asked is there any difference between SDET and Tester; they said SDET will do both development and testing work. In reality, if you are proactive and lucky enough, you will spend 5% of your time to work on testing framework. I am basically a SQL tester in FINRA.

Once I got into the company, I spent a week to work on a 4-year-old / out-dated orientation documents. There was no useful onboard training and on boarding can be really painful for some of the new hires.

It is almost impossible to internally transfer to other groups or roles, though they say you can always switch to another group or roles during interview. That is not the truth. I have already worked as a tester for 3 years and talked with them a couple of times but I don't see any sign that they will convert me to real development role.

They place developers in testing positions and call them SDETs. SDET in FINRA is not real SDET. If you are a developer. DON'T GO TO THEIR SDET POSITION. CAREER DEAD END FOR DEVELOPER.