Bridgewater Associates reviews

If you can't fit in with the company culture, you won't survive past 3 months. The turnover at the company is huge (30%+ in the first year), mostly because of culture incompatibility. The company advertises its culture as a true meritocracy, where anybody can call BS on anybody else, including their boss. It sounds good on paper, but what goes around comes around, and people can "drill down" on you; if you don't have a thick skin, you're a goner.

BW worked well as a startup. I love debate, goal oriented and ruthless improvement and beating the competition. I enjoy making money. However, I do believe that these ends have to be pursued through honest and fair means. I realize that these convictions are quite outdated these days. During the days of Ray, BW used to be fair and honest. Ruthless, but fair and honest. Now that Ray is gone, it has lost its edge and has stagnated to become an institutionalized cesspool of cleptocrats. People mindlessly follow and execute “culture” processes, but the conviction and understanding behind the principles is no longer there. United States had good intentions and ideology too, when it first started, too. But the influence of the founders has faded, and the ideas and principles they have set forth, have been subverted, corrupted and abused by power-hungry sociopaths . The very same principles that Ray set forth to defeat dishonesty, ego and stupidity have been co-opted by self-serving managers to stifle debate and dissent. Instead of exploring weaknesses to help coach others and to drive for self-improvement, managers use a focus on weaknesses to take down people they perceive as threats and to destroy the confidence and self-worth of juniors to solidify their control over them and to boost their own egoes. Managers use debate not to find truth, but to deflect attention and blame from themselves and onto others. Instead of being managers, they have become politicians in the middle of re-election ( where re-election is every single day) , twisting words and slinging mud, aiming to take out the opponent. With electioneering happening every day, it is no wonder no work ever gets done. Imagine all the idiosyncrasy, bloat, ego, politicking, conflict of interest and bickering in the US House of Representatives. Now imagine all of that transposed onto a Hedge Fund. – well that is BW for you. If you want to learn how to be a politician debater, expert at deflecting blame to others,- then BW is right for you, and it pays better than working for the government. However, if you actually want to learn anything of substance, learn some transferable skills and get something done, then forget BW. BW is not a quick and agile firm, it is an inflexible, slow to act, soul crushing bureaucracy. True, their bureaucracy is built differently and crushes the soul differently ( other reviews have explained that in depth) than the bureaucracy at other big IB banks/institutions. However,- the end result is the same: progress and change is stifled to the max and the soul is crushed. The heavy weight of BW processes and culture creates its own kind of red tape, which is difficult to cut through to get anything done in a reasonable amount of time. Ray set out to restructure human nature in his image for his company, - but he couldn’t keep out the parasites, and the parasites have taken over the host, subverting the culture to their own purposes and sucking it dry.