Pros
* The people in the team are genuinely talented, enthusiastic, and interested in building good systems. * If you just want to get into quant, this can be a decent opportunity — but join with low expectations and the mindset that you will most likely leave within a year.
Cons
Compensation & Growth * Compensation is extremely poor, almost comparable to a service-based company despite calling themselves an HFT Team. * Employees are continuously given false hopes regarding growth, compensation, bonuses, and recognition. * Appraisals and bonuses are handled unfairly: * If you work on a good project, you are told you “didn’t work hard enough.” * If you are not given a good project, you are told you were “not capable enough.” * Even after delivering results, bonuses are denied using excuses like “the company didn’t make money.” * During appraisal discussions, manager repeatedly highlighted that the Delhi team received “2 bonuses,” but even after combining both bonuses, the overall compensation was still lower than what people in similar positions earned in the Mumbai office. * Manager constantly make low-level comments about employees who left the team for better opportunities, compensation, or career growth. Work Culture & Management * The manager is highly egoistic, self-centered, and obsessed with control. He rarely shares knowledge with team members, even with people directly working under him. * Employees are constantly made to feel like the manager has done them a huge favor by hiring them and that countless people would “die for this opportunity.” He repeatedly compares the setup to a “Ferrari” and claims employees are lucky to even sit in it, while portraying himself as the person who built this so-called “Ferrari-level” trading environment. * “Hard work” according to manager simply means sitting at your desk from 8:30 AM to 6:30 PM regardless of actual productivity or output. * The manager spends more time monitoring CCTV footage than actually leading the team — tracking breaks, arrival times, and even questioning employees for leaving 15–20 minutes early. * There is absolutely no appreciation culture. When something goes wrong, blame is assigned immediately, but when manager makes mistakes, he never acknowledge. * In appraisal meetings, repeatedly questions why team motivation is low while completely ignoring the fact that toxic leadership, micromanagement, lack of appreciation, and poor employee treatment are the primary reasons behind it. * The environment eventually destroys motivation. Talented people slowly stop putting in effort because the culture becomes mentally exhausting. * The manager frequently came across as extremely unhygienic and careless about personal presentation, often appearing as if he had just woken up and come directly to the office. Even basic standards like dressing decently in a professional workplace seemed missing, which left a poor impression on the team. Technical Reality vs Branding * The team markets itself as an HFT team, but there are no genuinely profitable HFT strategies in place. * Traders based out of the Delhi office were frequently mocked unnecessarily for their strategies or losses. Ironically, whenever they made money, the same manager would immediately run to ask what they did — while pretending he already knew the idea beforehand. Leave Policy & Employee Treatment * Even if you request leave a month in advance, you rarely receive a clear answer. You are told “we’ll confirm later,” but nobody follows up until the last moment. * Basic employee concerns, like bike parking issues, remain unresolved for months. * One of the worst things I witnessed was how poorly support staff/helpers were treated. Despite food being ordered from the company account, helpers were made to stand separately while everyone else ate. It reflected an extremely cheap and disrespectful mindset. Office Culture & Perks * Friday food culture is embarrassing. If enough people agree, pizza is ordered mainly because it costs less than ordering individual meals for everyone; otherwise, food is ordered from the cheapest possible place. At one point, 6 vada pavs and 2 sandwiches were ordered for 8 people. * Team outings are equally frustrating. Most employees want to play cricket, but the manager refuses because booking a turf costs money. Everyone is forced to play volleyball instead, and even casual games turn into an ego contest for him. He himself misses half the balls and starts cursing, but the moment someone else misses, he immediately starts lecturing them on how to play. * Manager advertises perks like a stocked pantry and Friday parties, but the pantry usually has nothing except bad-smelling water. * Earlier, the team at least used to get tea from the shop downstairs, but even that was eventually stopped. * Employees were even asked to fill Google Forms for basic items like tissues and ₹1 coffee sachets, with fields such as “Urgency: Low / Medium / Very Urgent,” which honestly felt ridiculous and unnecessarily cheap. * During appraisal meetings, employees were warned that if the team “performed like this,” the perks would be taken away — although nobody really understood what “perks” he was even referring to.