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Trading Technologies

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Trading Technologies Reviews

3.1

44% would recommend to a friend

(213 total reviews)
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Tim Geannopulos

60% approve of CEO

44% positive business outlook

Trading Technologies has an employee rating of 3.1 out of 5 stars, based on 213 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Trading Technologies employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.9 stars).

Reviews by job title

213 reviews
1.0
20 Dec 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Was a great company to work for. Was an industry leader. Still has some great people but given time, management will weed them out. A lot less clients that need tending to. But hey, you get free breakfast....

Cons

Before I explain why I have decided to give my review and warn anyone thinking about going to work for or staying employed by TT against doing so, let me first say that I look back at TT as the best job I ever had; I learned a lot and worked with some amazingly smart, talented and creative people. What was once a fun, energizing, merit based, groundbreaking firm has been horribly neutered and lobotomized into a systemically dysfunctional firm full of 1) depressed veterans looking for an exit that won’t get them sued and 2) clueless young yes men who don’t realize (yet) that the light at the end of the tunnel is actually the headlamp of an oncoming freight train. It’s sad to sit back and watch this once great company spiral towards the ground due to mismanagement and a fear to admit that they were wrong. The current regime has this dream of running a young, edgy fintech start up but instead have taken an established industry leader and cut out almost everyone who had anything to do with it becoming that industry leader. This is ironic because if those exiled people hadn’t built TT into an industry leader, the guys who fired them would never have been interested in joining the firm in the first place. The knowledge and experience drain that has taken place over the last 3-4 years is staggering, and the industry is watching and rightfully worried. Their arrogance has manifested itself in many ways, but is particularly evident in their decision to create a product that the majority of the industry (and their existing paying customers) do not want. This compounded their insistence to force everyone on to it instead of allowing them to choose. This has resulted in an adoption rate still in the lower single digits, about 4 years of stagnated innovation, and all time high "anti-TT" sentiment in the industry. One might excuse this as simply bad executive decision making and blind narcissism, but what I find absolutely inexcusable is the way management has treated so many of these people with such complete disrespect. If you’re over 40 or someone who has worked hard to add value to your role and have actually been rewarded for it, now suddenly you are viewed as a liability and are shown the door. Their most despicable tactic is when, instead of saying something like, “Thank you for all of your hard, productive work over the years, and we apologize for not being able to keep you on board. Here is a severance package to help you and your family during this life altering transition”, these people are essentially holding your severance hostage unless you allow them to enforce their ridiculous Non-Compete clause. Now, in fairness, if an employee decided on their own that they wanted to leave the firm, it would be understandable to not want them to go directly to the competitor. But to just callously fire someone without cause after years of exemplary service and then say “Oh, by the way, you can’t do your job anywhere else or we will sue you”? That is not only unethical and morally reprehensible, it is just being a bully. They know that you can’t just "pull a TT” and sue them; You’re unemployed. They know you can’t risk the legal costs even if you could win. I would say this is shameful but they have no shame. I mean, either you find someone valuable, and want them to work for you, or you don’t. If you find them to be valuable, don’t lay them off! If you don't want them to work for you, say thank you, give them a fair severance package, and wish them well. But unfortunately, they have to figure out some way to cover the costs of this disastrous new platform. In the meantime, they will continue to ignore the needs of their customer base, roll out unfinished software before it is ready, announce bold "enhancements" that the rest of the industry already built years ago, and most importantly: work on the highest priority items, like having the CEO and CTO spend their days personally responding to these legitimate Glassdoor reviews and having HR suddenly plant a bunch of vague, buzzword-loaded and obviously fake positive ones. Fire up the old “Keep up the good work!” spin machine. And don't spare the exclamation points. Those really add to your credibility.

1.0
20 Sept 2017

company reeling on past reputation producing unreliable software.

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Few good and knowledgeable folks that truly care about the company are manning their posts. Sadly this may not stick very long.

Cons

CEO, CTO, CFO have good vision but the product and engineering heads, directors are nothing more than morons giving out crappy products with lots of issues. No coordination between different groups, they don't know what they want and how their end product is. Even the earlier stable product line is on the verge of a breakdown. Promotions are based on personal relationship with boss' rather than skills and experience, a pure favoritism game. There are some experienced, skilled and knowledgeable employees who deserves to be managing their teams or products but they are side lined and assigned more work while folks who put up working face with no management skills are promoted to managers, specially women in testing team, guys in development and clueless product managers. TT adapted a policy of stressing out employees in chicago to leave or laying off employees to hire cheap labor in India. Its time someone file a complaint with department of Labor and the company should be Audited. For Marketing team, Stop those crappy and useless marketing posters. If interested, invest in something real creativity.

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Trading Technologies Response
8y
Hey there -- first off, thanks for taking the time to provide feedback. I’m sorry in this case your experience at TT has not been a great one, but I want to clear a few things up. You know how to get a hold of me, so by all means feel free to reach out directly if you have additional concerns or want to discuss ways we can improve what you view as deficiencies. Let me start, though, at your assertion that individuals are promoted because of favoritism or because they’re women. I can assure you that anyone who has been promoted -- to a manager or otherwise, female or otherwise -- was promoted on merit. It’s true, not everyone who is promoted to a manager comes with years of management experience, and it often is a skill learned on the job. One area we’ve acknowledged we could do better is on management training. But the qualities for which we look to put someone in a position of leadership are generally simple: do they consistently deliver at a high level, do they care about their teammates, and do they take ownership in what they do. My favorite colleagues are the ones I can depend on the most, the ones who consistently deliver quality, and the ones who put TT in the greatest position to succeed; so in that sense, I guess I do play favorites. These are pretty simple principles - and something we take seriously at TT. Regarding the “crappy posters” the marketing team puts out -- I couldn’t disagree more that they are useless. As much as marketing tends to employ outward communications, internal communications are equally important and vital for a distributed company of our size. The development of content (like the posters) representing what the company stands for is one way we can have some fun in a creative way while still unifying our offices around the world with a core set of principles. Rallying around our goals, principles, and vision is vital to supporting a strong culture and reinforcing a sense of who were are as TT. Regarding India, I’m surprised I need to make this point considering you’re either a current or recent employee at TT and should know better. It’s an insult to the team there to imply they amount to “cheap labor.” As you know one of our most senior engineers who has been with TT for over a decade decided to move closer to home (India) several years ago, and rather than saying goodbye to a trusted member of the team, we agreed to let him try building an extension of TT engineering. From day one we made a point to hold this team to the same high standards we hold all engineering hires, and it’s turned into a roaring success. Finding engineering talent that can thrive in such a challenging space such as ours is one of the most difficult parts of running TT -- the ability to tap into the incredible tech talent in the region was a gift to us and we are thrilled at the team they’ve built. I hope you take me up on my offer to chat 1-on-1 because while you clearly have some concerns about the way we do things at TT, I would hope I can at least clear up some misconceptions you have and learn how we can do a better job communicating with other employees, if you think these are commonly-held misconceptions. Thanks again for taking the time to reach out. -Rick
1.0
6 Dec 2016
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Free snacks, beer on tap. Friendly and knowledgeable co-workers.

Cons

I used to work at TT and left a few years ago. After the management change the situation became unbearable. Where do I even begin? Constant pager duty for engineering while being told to ignore basic programming practices (CEO still thinks copy and paste is a legit development style). Absolute lack of advancement opportunities - no matter how long you've worked at TT your title is simply a "Software Engineer". I wasn't the only one who who felt this was designed to make it harder for employees to go elsewhere. CEO keeps coding and checking code into production system behind everyone's back. No wonder the platform is unstable and keeps confusing buy for a sell. CEO has a huge ego and compensates himself very well. Yet he does nothing to sell the company so that ordinary employees can benefit. We are still waiting for our shares to be worth something. The stock valuation has been the same for a few years now, meaning they are depreciating due to inflation. Management is useless. They keep pressuring developers to release new features but don't understand that in this business stability and correctness is king. Nobody cares about shiny UI if you can't get the basics right. With all this, sometimes I wonder why so many talented people are still with TT? There are so many trading shops in Chicago that easily beat TT's yearly revenue in a month. Many of them offer better atmosphere and working hours than TT. Not to mention they pay actual bonuses and not what TT calls bonuses. Stockholm syndrome? Too complacent to look for a new opportunity? [scratching my head]

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Trading Technologies Response
9y
It seems like you left while the company was in the midst of some major changes a few years ago and as a result your understanding of how TT operates is incorrect. First of all, it probably goes without saying that the snacks, beer, and friendly and knowledgeable co-workers are indeed some of what is best about working at TT. That said, you point out a number of things that are simply not true. (1) We do not constantly page people. There is an on call schedule that each team manages independently without senior management involvement which is not new after the ‘management change’ to which you refer. The only change is that it was formalized so expectations could be managed as we rolled out the new product over the last 18 months. As you’d expect, people were paged more frequently in the initial months than they are now. The on call schedule has not been an issue that anyone has raised to me in more than a year. (2) Regarding titles and advancement, you are correct that we don’t treat titles as the way to progress your career. Instead, we focus advancement on development of new skills, opportunity to move across teams at TT, or taking on new and different responsibilities. (3) The CEO does not check code into production behind anyone’s back. When he is involved with the product, it’s alongside the rest of the development and testing teams and generally creates excitement that an executive can roll up his sleeves along with the rest of the team. (4) I don’t know why you talk about confusing a buy and a sell. That is a lie and a dangerous one too. You say ‘sell the company already’ and then make false accusations like this that undermine that very notion. If you think there are real defects that need to be addressed, let us know details, but don’t make false accusations like this which damage the equity you acquired while working here. (5) You also say we pressure developers to release new features without valuing stability. Again, this is false and while our pace early on did create too much downstream instability, that was addressed more than a year ago and your information is dated and incorrect. (6) Lastly, and most importantly, you ask why so many talented people are still at TT. Perhaps it is because the culture we’ve rebuilt over the last 2 years and the ability to work on innovative and new technologies while chasing a very bold vision is engaging and rewarding. Combine that with the fact that schedules are incredibly flexible and the benefits are good, and what we find is that people think TT is a great place to put down roots (or keep them down for the surprisingly high % of employees who have worked here for more than a decade). I’ve only been here 2.5 years but that’s how I feel. It’s a great place to work. You accuse them of complacency or some kind of psychological issue but that’s just disrespectful. Along with the ability to deliver results, the only other thing that best determines an individual's success at TT is their ability to contribute to their team and treat their colleagues with respect -- based on the way you talk about your former colleagues here, it's probably best you are no longer at TT.
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Glassdoor has 234 Trading Technologies reviews submitted anonymously by Trading Technologies employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if Trading Technologies is right for you.