Worst job ever - Anonymous employee MarketFactory Employee Review

1.0
Oct 20, 2017
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

* Free lunch one day a week * The current director of software development is a mensch (I worked with him when I was there). He is committed to doing the right thing despite the general toxic nature of the company. * The paychecks haven't bounced yet * Many interesting problems to solve

Cons

When I worked at MarketFactory there was no work-life balance. From system startup Sunday afternoon at noon NY time until Friday 5pm NY time we lived in fear of two things: the unstable technology doing something to prevent a customer from using it and the whims of the CEO, Darren Jer. It's also worth noting that all system deploys and maintenance happened between 5pm Friday and noon on Sunday, so forget about things like "summer Friday" or a relaxing Sunday if you work at MarketFactory. At least when I was there. Maybe it's better now, but I doubt it. Darren is a hostile, manipulative guy, a horrible manager, not a leader, and he has anger management issues. When I was at MarketFactory, there was no culture to speak of and no effort to create a comfortable, inclusive environment. If you work at MarketFactory be sure to set boundaries with Darren. You'll definitely need to manage up. It's also worth noting that they had trouble retaining sales and marketing people, and that almost the entire customer success team in NY quit during 2017. Darren will say "those people self-selected out" or "they never were A players anyway" but the one common denominator in all this is Darren. Make your own conclusions.

Explore other reviews about MarketFactory

5.0
Feb 5, 2019
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- The company has great potential in this space as there is no single company that does FX IT well - Very smart group of and experience people which you get to work directly with - Everyone's work has an impact to the bottom line - Very dynamic environment which makes the day to day more interesting - Direct access to very senior counterparts and banks, hedge funds and ECNs - The culture is Improving overtime as the team scales

Cons

- Live trading is a tough IT environment to run - Very demanding clients since we are running live trading environments - You can feel all of the stress of a trading as if you were working on a trading floor

1
5.0
Oct 24, 2017
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

I'm a well-seasoned C++ programmer in the FIX et.al. messaging world. I love to work on old code, finding bugs, both obvious and obscure. I love code surgery, isolating business logic for making safe changes to frankly brittlel code. I've been able to apply my keen attention to detail to solve logical, technical and business requirement issues. I've been here for a year and have implemented a number of taker, maker and pure market data handlers, over a variety of protocols including FIX, FASTFIX and SBE. If you want exposure to 60+ different feed protocols, this is the place! Free lunch weekly, free snacks and drinks, both soft and hard. $20 seamless allowance for dinner after 6:20 PM Frequent travel to London, staying at the company apartment. New spacious office in the heart of NYC's Silicon Alley. Great medical plan at a very reasonable price.

Cons

We've had some serious technical debt, both in software and infrastructure. It was a very rocky and dramatic place when I started, but has settled down considerably. Most of the negative reviews of the infrastructure no longer really apply, and drama, at least in my world, is pretty much non-existent. It's a drag that many clients refuse to upgrade from old protocol versions, though honestly, if they are making money, I can't blame them.

4
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