Pros
Amherst is a high octane institutional investor environment. The company has assembled a vast array of data sets -- beyond what I am familiar with any other real estate-related company having assembled (I would speculate Zillow may be close, in terms of data assembled -- the breadth and depth of the data sets here is truly impressive!). Amherst is a very fast paced environment. Amherst is not for everyone. People that fit in here usually fit in very well; conversely, people that do not fit in here are typically pretty misfit. Whether you fit or not becomes obvious to everyone pretty quickly. In my experience of several years here, misfits usually leave less than a year after they start; just about everyone else hangs on for years and years. Specific Pros: - BRILLIANT colleagues. At Amherst, you'll be surrounded by the very best in their field. - Hardware awesome enough to support analysis and modeling of the multi-terabyte mountains of data. - Lunch is catered every day. - One of the goals of management is to bring in the very best people and then get out of their way. Management does not constrain your ability to achieve. In general, your own ability and work ethic will determine your level of success. - The company is not afraid to invest further in the business. Need a more powerful computer? Is it necessary to acquire an additional data set for a new process you are building? Do you need a new software license for a project? Not a problem -- Amherst will make justifiable investment in the business. - This place is ALL ABOUT innovation in the technology, data, analytics, and investment decisioning spaces. Clever solutions and revolutionary ideas are not merely welcome -- being successful here without them will probably not happen.
Cons
- As stated above, Amherst is not for everyone. If you are a poor fit at Amherst, it will be very obvious to everyone in short order. - Amherst is probably not a great fit for people that want to leave at 5 PM everyday. It is a pretty flexible environment in terms of hours (which can be very useful for the necessity to run an occasional errand during business hours), but this flexibility is a two way street. Both a pro and a con. - The team is small -- both a pro and a con. The upside is a lack of bloat, bureaucracy, and unnecessary baton passing between teams; the downside can be struggling to get deliverables done in the desired time frame.
