Can be great, but definitely not for everyone
Pros
-Extremely smart, interesting people; I can say from first hand experience that the people here are a significant cut above other "top tier" companies or grad schools on this dimension -Always being challenged (can be a pro and a con), since everything is held to a very rigorous level of logic and there's a huge focus on figuring out the best answer -Huge investment in training and development for Investment Associates -Find out things about yourself that you wouldn't in other environments (could be a pro or a con). At Bridgewater, everything is "personal" in that everything important ultimately has something to do with someone(s) who failed or succeeded at something. And we scrutinize those things to improve. -Close-knit culture, especially among the Investment Associates but it's true generally - people here are friends and family, not just colleagues -Rapidly changing company, across many dimensions - particularly management and leadership. So there's a lot of opportunity to have impact (though there's a flipside in that lots of change makes things more chaotic)
Cons
-Always being challenged - nothing is easy. Even small things that may not be that important are focused on. Lots of reinventing the wheel -Still working out the management challenges around future leadership transition, things are changing rapidly and somewhat chaotic - e.g. lots of turnover in senior managers -A bit of decision paralysis - too much decision-making is done by a handful of senior leaders who become a bottleneck. Middle management is mostly not empowered (some exceptions) -Sometimes the culture can be exhausting - it takes a lot of energy to have difficult conversations about mistakes and what people are like, their strengths and weaknesses, at the level of depth and frequency that we do here -Location. Westport is ~2 hours door-to-door travel if you live in downtown Manhattan -Some areas of poor training and onboarding. Investment Associate training is great, but a lot of the rest still hasn't been worked out well