Pros
From top to bottom, the employees are really capable. I felt intellectually challenged by peers, even if the immediate work wasn't interesting. Non-investment roles are very well paid. Probably a 20-50% premium compared to similar Fortune 500 roles. Investment roles compare unfavorably to hedge fund peers, but it's hard to make a direct comparison because the work is substantially different.
Cons
1. People management is absurdly bad. Employees at all levels of the organization spend 7-10 hours a week with "culture" work with little relevance to the role. A subset of employees are adept at using the Principles to aggressively further their career/agenda. I was too naive to understand this and was one of those thrown under the bus after 3 years. 2. The technology is horribly outdated. The majority of analytical work is still done on Excel. Culture management is done with manual forms in Sharepoint and on the Ipad. 3. Bridgewater has an edge in the market, but you likely won't be "in the circle". Of the 1400 employees, I estimate that less than 50 have high level involvement with the investment structure, decision making, and trading. The business is so profitable that there's incredible levels of waste hiring hundreds of people with minimal contribution to the overall organization.