Pros
- Low hours, oversight. Hi flexibility. - Established product. - Well connected in the hedge fund world. - Good early career growth if self motivated. There is basically no management, so it's possible to operate more like an entrepreneur and deliver value however you see fit. Dealing with the total lack of structure and goals could be maddening, but I actually ended up valuing the independence and open ended responsibility. Management is very slow to fire (too slow), so there's plenty of room to screw around trying things. Can make connections to the tip top of the hedge fund world via the firm's large network, and also learn a lot about investing and finance. The website is generally built with very modern tools (because engineers has so much freedom to screw around with new stuff). If you justify the hell out of it, you actually can get management to buy big ticket items.
Cons
- Obsessive/irrationally cheap management: the smaller the amount of money you want to spend the more likely CEO will say no. - No long term/mid- late stage career growth. - Stagnant business I had to work hard to justify every dollar I ever spent. In some ways it was good for analyzing cost/benefit carefully, but unfortunately culture was penny-wise pound-foolish overall. Little to no perks/hh as CEO doesn't drink and is obsessively cheap. Pay is below market and doesn't grow with you, so people leave. CEO can be shady/untrustworthy which taught me a few lessons about negotiations and trusting no one but myself to lookout for myself. The worst con by far is the CEO is independently wealthy so doesn't drive the business forward like he should. This can be nice because pressure is very low, but in the end it's pretty disillusioning to see a product that actually has a lot of potential stagnate, and to continually see the best employees leave.