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Bridgewater Associates

Engaged Employer

A very negative experience - Anonymous employee Bridgewater Associates Employee Review

2.0
Dec 6, 2014
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Starting salary was above average. The training program was well designed. That's about it (I'm not going to include the free food or the Friday afternoon "Happy Hour").

Cons

During my short time here, four people in my department left the company. Three were fired and one quit. The person responsible for training me was one of the fired. He had "lost his box" and was being "sorted". If you're like me, and need to have some sense of job security, stay away from here. Every mistake discovered, no matter how minute, is entered into an "Issue Log". I was once issue logged for failing to capture the letter "C" in the word Complete, when I C&Ped it from one document into another. Had I made this mistake a second or third time, it would have likely been selected for "diagnosis". This is where you have a sit down with a bunch of managers who attempt to "get past your ego" to the root of the problem. The least painful way to get through these sessions is to agree with their assessment that you lack attention to detail, have an insufficient level of paranoia, are inherently careless, and lack discipline. You walk away feeling like a loser, but at least they're in a great mood for the rest of the day. Your workload starts out manageable, and is steadily increased until you're struggling to maintain productivity. You start putting in more and more hours. You start making mistakes, which means more issue logs, more diagnosis sessions, more frustration, more anxiety. You start dreading going to work. Eventually, you're labeled as "not a fit for Bridgewater", and you are "sorted". On the plus side, it was highly amusing listening to kids fresh out of college (with this place being their first real word job) diving head-on blind into Ray's "culture", using as much (by and large) of the BW language as possible.

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