Interactive Brokers Reviews

Former Employee – worked at Interactive Brokers full-time

Pros – salary is very good
free lunch
nice people around
after 2 years, work is easy and not log working hours

Cons – No career growth at al. new comers are given minimal information to barely finish projects with a lot of struggle, You can learn more about the business/technology from outside than from your group members.
You will be pigeonholed to to the same thing for ever
Communication is awkward and frustrating
Management is so obsessed with cost cutting, there is not enough head count, so evey one is drowned in maintainance work.
Eastern European employee get better treatment than others

Advice to Senior Management – speechless

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – been working at Interactive Brokers

Pros – Very little red tape
Lean department means lots of interesting work
Chance to bring many projects to completion

Cons – Too little time off
Unbalanced salaries

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Interactive Brokers

Pros – They pay for your lunch
Fully stocked pantry
I heard they finally upgraded the accounting systems.
The "party favors" at the annual meting/holiday party
The Chicago people seemed nice
The money flowed like water (at least it did in 1999-2000)

Cons – No life work balance
Asinine procedures
TP has to have his hands in every aspect of the business but cannot be bothered if you need his signature or approval for anything
Office bullying is rampant at all levels

Advice to Senior Management – There are more activist investors out there that know what kind of outfit you run and avoid IB like the plague beacuse of it.
Actually, keep doing what youre doing. Ive made a s---load shorting IB since you went publc.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Interactive Brokers

Pros – relaxed atmosphere, helpful coworkers and good benefits. the staff is placed in an effective way, so everyone has to work hard

Cons – not sure about the location, the wait between interviews are so long. the initial test took about an hour to complete.

Advice to Senior Management – hire people with better education background; make sure the interview process is more structured. otherwise, like the interview style and the general manner.

Former Employee – worked at Interactive Brokers

Pros – - Opportunity to trade in foreign financial market and learn about the market practically.
- Opportunity to learn technical analysis by applying it in real situation.
- Management gave ample opportunity to prepare for real trading by trading simulation

Cons – - Only two person in the firm have real trading experience.
- Do not have a knowledgeable and experienced supervisor for new traders.
- Failed to give a proper guideline to the new trader for example: what is expected to them after the end of a day or month.

Advice to Senior Management – - Should appoint a supervisor who have real trading experience.
- Should have more trading style in the firm to accommodate different people with different qualification. For example: A person who have proper training and motivation to trade by proper analysis should have the independence to trade coming out of the limitation of "day trading style"

Current Employee – been working at Interactive Brokers

Pros – Standard working hours, decent compensation

Cons – Everything else, no job growth, highly coercive work environment. Zero transparency, no formal performance review process, managers are the sole decision makers. IB does not believe in motivating its employees to grow and take on much bigger roles.

Advice to Senior Management – Look outside, change the organization culture.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Interactive Brokers

Pros – Great salary and benefits recession proof .

Cons – No social life and team culture.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Interactive Brokers

Pros – financially hedged against market turbulence because the nature of market making and brokerage business.
Almost no politics. Everyone works hard. Manager is fair and straight in compensation.

Cons – Innovations from ground level employees are not encouraged. The only people that are eligible to do "thinking" are the few biggest shots at top management level.
No communications, no incentive for cooperations. Lots of redundant and subpar work.
Fetish with cost reduction and execution efficiency: penny-wise and dollar-foolish.
Zero attention to employee's career development. No job title, no visibility in the profession circle. They want you to forever work there, which means slow death if the word 'ambition' still sounds good to you.

Advice to Senior Management – Take a breath, put away petty meaningless product 'features', do some visionary thinking. Otherwise IB will be forever stuck with a 'low-cost' brainless muscle executor image. Well, not really 'forever', because labors in US is still lofty and competitors from around globe will catch up, just look at what happened to Timberhill's steady decline.

Current Employee – been working at Interactive Brokers

Pros – Decent salary is how we get people in the door. Based on performance (and we are pretty fair about this), you can get a decent bonus. There are absolutely no meetings to attend, not any -- ever. So if you like to sit at your desk and just work (i.e., no politics) then that is a plus.

1. The hours are fine -- approximately 9am to 6pm.

2. They allow you $12 per day to order lunch on seamless web.com.

2. The work is fairly interesting IF you get assigned an interesting project.

3. They give you annual "cost of living" increases of 4% per year.
THIS IS WHY I AM STILL HERE AFTER 8 YEARS, FYI. It adds up -- quickly!

Cons – Benefits, culture, and career. Trust me, you do NOT want to work at this place unless you are 21 and have no life. I got in early, and I'm almost done, but in clear conscience I must tell it like it is.

1. You are expected to be at your desk the entire time, even for lunch. You will be reprimanded if you are away from your desk for too long.

2. You do NOT socialize with your coworkers. Management walks by several times per day and WILL notice this and comment about getting back to work. It has gotten better in the 8 years that I have been here but this is not a place to go to make friends or to have any type of workplace camaraderie.

3. The benefits are horribly, horribly abysmally bad. You'd better not have any type of protracted injuries, for example, because if you need short-term disability (I did once) it provides a MAX of $500 per week for 26 WEEKS (since when is 26 weeks short-term?!!!). A normal policy would provide FULL salary for 6 weeks followed by HALF salary for a much longer term.

4. The benefits also suck for vacation -- you get 2 weeks (10 days) per year. You have to work there for 5 years (!!!) to get another 2 days (!!!). This is a sweat-shop, boys, plain and simple.

5. You will not be exposed to any of the inner-workings of the firm for many, many years. This is prudent on our part, but it also means that YOU WILL NOT LEARN ANYTHING about the brokerage or trading business that you couldn't get by working for 1 year at another firm. You are here to code, plain and simple.

Guys -- I got in early and got stock options and I'm almost done with my career. I have had highs and lows with this firm. But I look at some of the new people coming in now, and it's just pathetic that they don't know how much better it can be at other places. I have golden handcuffs -- they do not.

Look elsewhere and you'll thank me that you did.

Advice to Senior Management – None -- this is a money-making machine and they squeeze everything they can out of labor. It's paid me well and continues to do so.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Interactive Brokers

Pros – Learn to code ( it is a programing sweat shop) and
Learn basics of finance and trading
Get your foot in the door

Cons – poor compensation
no freedom to be creative
Very autocratic
the place has a management crisis
and a really secretive culture where they dont permit interactions

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend