OptionMetrics reviews

4.1

67% would recommend to a friend

(20 total reviews)

David J. Hait

67% approve of CEO

67% positive business outlook

OptionMetrics has an employee rating of 4.1 out of 5 stars, based on 20 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an excellent working experience there. The OptionMetrics 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

20 reviews
2.0
Jun 20, 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

I've met some amazing and talented people during my time at OptionMetrics. This was my favorite part of the company. Besides that, the company has a very nice work life balance. You are given unlimited work from home days and management is understanding of life circumstances such as doctor visits. Software engineers are on call 24/7; however, they're not often contacted after hours. Also, there is some flexibility on the hours you work. It is acceptable to come in anytime before 11 as long as you do not miss a meeting. If you want a stable opportunity and care highly about work life balance, this company can offer it.

Cons

If you read the other reviews, you'll find a consistent theme of poor management. I believe there is truth to these reviews. There is a systemic failure within the company that has led to an extremely high turnover rate. Within the last year, around half of the company has either quit or been fired. The year before that was probably worse or on par. Management tries to justify the turnover as growth issues or bad hires. The fact that this has not improved for years and that the company is small in size makes it very alarming. The work can be interesting, but is primarily dull. The company will lure you in with exciting technical challenges and projects, but will fail to allocate time and resources to accomplish them. Also as a result from the high turnover, projects consistently take a step back while new team members ramp up. The CEO being technical is a blessing and a curse. One downside is that he will work on projects himself and hand them off to other developers to finish. This isn't conducive to a collaborative team effort and can feel like a dictatorship. Development sprints are chaotic and unpredictable as the processes that dictate them are not well defined. It is common that you will need to abandon your sprint to put out a fire, developers do not get asked for time estimation, tickets randomly get assigned during the sprint, etc. All these factors contribute to a slower development speed. It is not hard to find employees who are dissatisfied with their pay and feel it is below industry standards. Bonuses appear to be based on new sales throughout the year and not recurring revenue. This model can be frustrating as you can be an excellent employee working on internal processes, but might get a low bonus if the company does not have great performance for new sales. All the while, the company appears to be getting fat on recurring revenue. I held on to hope that these issues would eventually be solved. I was optimistic that I could play my part in helping to address these issues. Unfortunately, these issues consistently keep reoccurring. It drains morale and increases frustration to the point where it's easier to look elsewhere.

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OptionMetrics Response
6y
Thank you for your extensive comments. As CEO, I’m glad to hear that you at least appreciate the work/life balance! I want to respond with a few thoughts and some objective data. Let me start with your last point, which pertains to compensation. We do our very best to ensure that our employees are compensated fairly, that they participate in the successful growth of the company through end-of-year bonuses, and that they have many and varied opportunities to grow and advance their career within OptionMetrics. I’m not sure why you think that “it is not hard to find employees who are dissatisfied with their pay”, but if it is truly the case, then they must not be sharing this dissatisfaction with the people who are in the best position to change it: their manager, or me directly. And if they did bring it up to me, we would have an honest discussion about their current compensation, their goals, and how we can help them realize those goals. I promise, I’ve never thrown anyone out of my office for asking for more money! But I honestly don’t know what to do about an employee who carries a grudge about feeling under-compensated and doesn’t share his concerns with his manager or with me. I’d be happy to hear your feedback on this. We have had a higher turnover rate in the company than I would have liked over the last year. But you are way off in your suggestion that it is “around half the company”, or that the year before was “probably” worse. The job market in NYC right now for skilled developers is very competitive, and sometimes that means that our developers are approached with other opportunities soon after joining OptionMetrics. A job is about more than total comp, and I like to think that our work/life balance, opportunity for learning and career growth, and fantastic supportive team members gives us a competitive edge over some of the other opportunities out there. Either way, we continue to strive to look for ways to improve the incentives for our team members who might feel that they are not getting all out of OptionMetrics that they are looking for. Yes, we have had our share of bad hires, and we have learned much over the years regarding the interviewing and hiring process. I have tremendous confidence in my managers, as I do my employees. Blaming “poor management” is too easy and not really very credible nor helpful. You say that the work “can be interesting but is primarily dull”. Our core business is to provide analytics and visualizations of financial data to our customers, to allow them to better understand risk/return tradeoffs and make more intelligent investments. We are not building flying cars or spaceships, or neural networks or blockchains. The technical challenges here involve being able to run extensive, mathematically intensive calculations on extremely large data sets and coming up with useful summaries and analyses. If that’s just not your thing, I understand, but at OptionMetrics we have solved, and continue to solve, extremely challenging technical problems. Everyone here on the technical side is given the opportunity to learn and grow and participate in the advancement and implementation of our technology solutions – no one is held back. And yes, the CEO (that’s me) is an active participant in the technical side of the business, working with my developers to understand our challenges, suggest ideas for solutions, and provide direction for new tools and technologies that might be useful and relevant. It’s odd that you refer to it as a “dictatorship”, I think that “mentorship” might be a more apt description. Overall, it sounds to me like this position just wasn’t right for you, and you decided that it would be better to leave the company rather than try to figure out how to make it work for you. I’m sorry we did not have the opportunity to discuss this in person. I wish you the best of luck in all your future endeavors, and I hope you find what you are looking for.
5.0
May 2, 2019

Quality company to work for with great employees

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Interesting, niche product with a newer tech stack - A growing, profitable company with room for advancing in your career - Employees are able to add value and contribute to the company's success rather than simply execute tasks - Management cares about employees improving their skills and has a budget in place for each employee to take a course of their own choice (approved by their direct manager) - A place that encourages the suggesting of new ideas or process improvement - A staff that always strives to continuously learn/improve by their own volition. You can tell people love what they do rather than come to work to get a paycheck. - Nice office located close to multiple subway lines - Free snacks/drinks. Attractive benefits package. Other perks. - Easy to interact with various departments and upper management. No micromanagement. - One of the best office cultures I've ever seen. People actively speak to and collaborate with each other as well as work independently.

Cons

Nothing glaring. Teams are being built out thoughtfully and to accommodate growth. Management is on the same page.

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OptionMetrics Response
6y
Thank you for the great review! Looking forward to growing the firm together.
3.0
Mar 13, 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Good comfortable, startup-like environment

Cons

The upper management is not in a mission to build a team, they are building the company

avatar
OptionMetrics Response
6y
Thank you for your candid review.
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Glassdoor has 20 OptionMetrics reviews submitted anonymously by OptionMetrics employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if OptionMetrics is right for you.