Pros
Superior health benefits, food often provided in the office, job stability due to exponential growth and record firm earnings every year even during recessions, good on-boarding salary (always negotiate a counter offer).
Cons
Subpar raises, stagnant and restrictive promotional track with no transparency whatsoever. People will take title demotions because Ares is a big name and then they won't get promoted back for years despite doing solid work. It really seems like promotions are based off of how much your manager personally likes you and how willing they are to expend the political capital that comes with vouching for you during the annual year end all manager meeting where they discuss and agree on who is promoted. Requiring employees to work in the office with minimal transparency about COVID transmission rates among employees also working out of the office alongside of us. Extremely heavy workload, very high turnover. More than 20 people have quit or transitioned out of the department in just the past couple of years. Many of the people in compliance are extremely competent and a pleasure to work with. However, it seems like there is a substantial subset of workers that are retained only due to favoritism or bias, workers that do not seem to have a good grasp of basic financial industry concepts (this even applies to some senior members in the group who in my opinion should have never been rehired or promoted). This group also seems to have a patter of hiring, transitioning, and promoting ex-admin assistants into the wider compliance group across multiple compliance teams who also, in my opinion, should have never been hired because they are not adequately trained/monitored, lack fundamental critical thinking skills, and are now a net drag on the entire department when it comes to efficiency, quality of work product, and reducing the work load.