Pros
Great benefits and PTO Good work life balance and WFH policy OK base salary with a potentially great bonus Pension (though small, most companies really don’t even offer this) If you really look, you can find small groups of smart talented people Insanely profitable business, with little competition (really almost none at all)
Cons
Lots of favoritism, especially towards remote Belfast and India offices, and frustrating organizational politics. Additionally, there isn’t any transparency from upper management on how decisions are made or if there’s any data to back those decisions. These points, as well as all the “security” related policies, which just end up wrapping everything in red tape, ultimately drove my decision to leave. Also, there exists in CME a know-it-all culture among senior management, where they seem to bury their heads in the sand in regards to pain points and the insane bureaucracy. This attitude of “everything is great and we have no problems” results in nothing changing and all these pain points only becoming more and more painful. Another huge frustration is the “throw some stuff at the wall and hope it sticks” mindset, with zero accountability when projects fail and it doesn’t “stick” (and usually it doesn’t). From a technology perspective, lots of talk about “innovation” and “hiring the best” but that’s mostly just talk. The tech stack is a quite boring in most teams, with a few exceptions. In fact, when it comes to tech, the company is really just playing catch up at a brutally slow pace (mainly due to extreme red tape brought on by “security” measures, many of which are excessive and have nothing to due with real security). From a hiring perspective, the technologists that are hired tend to be picked based on either industry experience or just the gut feeling of someone with a big shot title, and rarely on the applicant’s actual technical skill. Too many hiring decisions are made from the top down.