Lab49 reviews

3.4

54% would recommend to a friend

(201 total reviews)
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Roman Trachtenberg

56% approve of CEO

48% positive business outlook

Lab49 has an employee rating of 3.4 out of 5 stars, based on 201 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Lab49 employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Management & Consulting industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

201 reviews
5.0
Feb 15, 2016

Above-average consulting firm

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The hiring process is rigorous, so most colleagues who get in the door are smart and motivated. Engineering expertise is cutting edge and company’s reputation with clients is good enough in most cases to prescribe modern tech stacks (there are exceptions of course). Good in-house domain knowledge, very finance-focused. Management is very interested in maintaining Lab as a premium brand with clients; therefore most projects are not boring (again, there are exceptions of course) and the work is more challenging than your average consulting shop.

Cons

Limited to finance industry, therefore not as many potential clients as a general consultancy would have. If you’re client-facing you have to represent the firm well; it’s too small of a firm for someone to hide if they’re not on their game. Most of the time your own manager will be busy on projects, won’t have much time to manage, so if you need a lot of guidance it might not be the best fit. Communication from senior management can be spotty at times.

5.0
Nov 30, 2015

Great company, great people!

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Lab49 is an exceptional group of people. I met some of the most brilliant yet completely down-to-earth software engineers there. Everyone is deeply technical, no PHB managers. You'll be surprised when you get stuck on a tough problem, and someone with an Associate Director title happens to walk by and show you real quick where exactly you have to set the breakpoint to diagnose your problem! If you want to advance your skills and work with people from whom you can learn Lab49 is the place to go. I was also surprised how cutting-edge most of the projects for the large investment banks are (I guess technology has become the main differentiator, so everybody is trying to utilize the latest and greatest). There seems to be a moderate bias towards front-end solutions (lots of JavaScript technologies), but plenty of interesting stuff happening on the back-end as well (Java 8, Scala). Great office on the 50th floor with conference rooms overlooking Central Park, need I say more?

Cons

No major cons, really. The reporting structure can be tricky, though, due to teams forming and breaking up frequently, as the project durations require. You could find yourself working with an on-site technical lead who reports to your deputy practice head manager (who has no visibility into your salary) who reports to a practice head (who has the full picture, but might only have met you once or twice). It's a common problem in the consulting industry, but it's a small price to pay for working with highly skilled people on extremely challenging projects.

1.0
Oct 18, 2015

Painful experience

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Some interesting investment bank projects.

Cons

There were a lot of people that were part of an "inner-circle", and they just kept everybody at bay. A 12 inch macbook pro is not the ideal development machine. Upper management were extremely arrogant. The work atmosphere is cold and unwelcome. There are quite a few people at all levels of management there that never greet anybody and feel that they are superior for some reason. The worst thing about working there was that projects performed at the home base turned into death march projects because solutions proposed were not pragmatic, and the advice of the developers are completely ignored.

Viewing 163 - 165 of 201 Reviews

Glassdoor has 210 Lab49 reviews submitted anonymously by Lab49 employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Lab49 is right for you.