A warning to successful companies - Quantitative Researcher Squarepoint Capital Employee Review

SquarePoint’s problems stem from its incredible success at the beginning - the founders found a niche they were extremely good at and built an empire from it. Unfortunately they all came from the same elite French school and already believed they knew everything before starting - and financial success has further gone to their heads. Upper management is seriously deluded and detached from reality and think they know better than anyone about anything and everything, no matter how little experience they have in the subject. The thing they are worst at is management, the company grew too quickly with no plan and no desire to evolve, and is an unbelievably dysfunctional mess. Its organisation is most alike a feudal society with partners as lords fighting for the attention of their king ( who micromanages absolutely everything ) and everyone else as serfs, with very little respect or money available for them. The best way to get made a partner is to come from the same school as the founders and to be good a solving theoretical problems that have nothing to do with reality. Tech stack is very poor and everything is chronically broken. Most people currently employed are here to cleanup the shortcuts that the early employees took everywhere while they patted themselves on the back for being so clever not doing stuff like everyone else. There’s no consideration given to employee happiness or comfort, down to the antiquated monitors that are mandated by the king, and probably cost the company millions in productivity yearly due to how horrendous they are for coding ( and everyone codes at SquarePoint ). Most people are paid far below their market value, especially if they are not a quant trader, in which case god help you trying to convince anyone you’re actually useful for something. The company pitches investing in the master fund as an alternative to being paid fairly, unfortunately it only becomes worthwhile if you are able stay at the company at least three years without losing your mind and spend nothing so that you can invest all your money in the same place that you’re already heavily exposed to. The mood in the offices is somber as the majority of employees have become disillusioned with the total inability of the management to listen and improve, and motivation has fallen off a cliff after this year’s pay round. It’s abundantly clear to many in the lower ranks that several divisions of the company are slow motion car crashes but management are showing no signs of questioning themselves.