Goldman Sachs Managing Directors make a tech company
Pros
If you work in Finance and want something a bit faster paced and less hierarchical, you'll really enjoy working at SIMON. Notwithstanding, working here feels like working at a bank (and not a tech company). Upper management has a unified vision for how SIMON should grow, which is reassuring. SIMON is managed top down (typical corporate structure), with procedural formality, which will be shocking for anyone coming from a startup (and expecting a startup). That being said, the vision is itself good. The implementation of that vision however is often jockeyed by what I would call middle management. Teams don't collaborate because they want to, and as a result, work can feel siloed.
Cons
There is a lot of technical debt, with little regard from upper management for how it compounds. SIMON aspires to be a fintech company, but it does not feel like tech leadership is represented in the thought leadership of the company. This results in grueling technical design which must be done to overcome gaps in technical infrastructure. In other words, the SDC at SIMON is slow and arduous, for no reasons other than lack of investment (and perhaps oversight). Leadership feels like people have earned their place either through inheritance via a Goldman Sachs title – or corporate jockeying, less so through excellence. I would expect this from a bank. I would not expect this from a tech company.