Pros
If you’re looking to nestle into a career where you can coast by, safely underperforming while contributing the bare minimum, conserving your discretionary intellectual capacity for more rewarding endeavors, this is without a doubt the company for you. If you fully embrace cronyism and look forward to doing the least amount of work possible, in the least efficient way possible, to create the illusion of importance in the hopes of one day climbing the ladder and passing off your meaningless work off to someone else who got sucked into the corporate culture Ponzi scheme that is CME, this is also the company for you. If you’re looking to surround yourself with equally adept and motivated peers, and to be challenged to do meaningful work for a company that innovates rather than stagnates, please do yourself a favor and look elsewhere.
Cons
You may be pitched the concept that CME is “a technology company,” which could hardly be more laughable. The name of the game is LEGACY and STATUS QUO at the company that innovated Globex which became the industry standard, and now will ride that competitive advantage until the wheels inevitably fall off. Internal systems are clunky and outdated, simple fixes and iterative improvements get bogged down in endless bureaucracy (and alarmingly frequently, intentionally in the name of protecting job security). Exacerbating the problem is the fact that CME is absolutely not, in no conceivable sense of the word, a meritocracy. Be prepared to watch colleagues get promoted because of time served (oops, I mean "spent") with the company even though they’ve done so at a fractionally effort-exertive capacity, oftentimes with little to zero other practical industry experience or even a rudimentary understanding of basic industry concepts. Barely carrying out the most basic of job functions is totally fine as long as you’re in it for the long game here at CME (and yes, it is definitely a game, and is played that way by everyone from the top down; see countless other reviews mentioning some of the half-thought out ideas to "innovate," self perpetuating time wasting, unapologetic bootlicking, etc.).
