Pros
Food, perks, hours better than some other finance options, some smart people
Cons
"Oceanic society rests ultimately on the belief that Big Brother is omnipotent and the Party is infallible. But since in reality Big Brother is not omnipotent and the Party is not infallible, there is need for an unwearying, moment-to-moment flexibility in the treatment of facts. The key word here is black-white. Like so many Newspeak words, this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary." Basically sums up the bridgewater experience. If you're interested in working at a big hedge fund, fine, just don't go in with some naive expectation of "radical truth," "radical transparency," and "an idea meritocracy" as they advertise--unless, of course, the "radical truth" equates to whatever Ray Dalio or his loyal minions say.. They have their own ridiculous version of Newspeak hand-crafted by Ray, including phrases like "getting to the other side" by overcoming your "blindspots and ego barriers," which essentially amounts to blindly adhering to whatever your masters believe while ignoring any attempts at logic. All this is made harder to stomach by the weirdly moralistic culture that you have to applaud as "holier than" the rest of wall street (holy is an apt word here, as one must respect Ray's Principles as though they are the Word of God). A deceptively awful place for any intelligent/curious person to work, where the best case scenario is that you are a relatively well-paid and only sometimes harassed yes-man doing pointless work that won't impact any investment decisions