Pros
1. Good money: the general perception is that salaries are higher than what other, similar companies can offer, especially in Emerging Market offices; 2. The company is abundant in learning opportunities, thanks to the available internal training programs. The company also supports the education of employees by giving them substantial support to sign up for the CFA exam. Also, MSCI has very high profile clients and if you have the chance to work with them, you get richer every day with important experience; 3. The company provides a professional, well equipped and modern office environment.; 4. The competitve environment of MSCI forces you to learn to promote yourself and to build your brand internally - in my view, this is a pro; 5. Great work-life balance - all-nighters are uncommon; 6. Some team leaders are exceptional and great to work with. MSCI selects its employees carefully, so you can work with some really smart people; 7. If you like working in an international environment with many teams all around the globe, MSCI is your place.
Cons
1. In terms of career building, a lot depends on the office location and the team you start in. Employees are often satisfied with hard-earned & better-sounding titles, which often masquerade a lack of substantial change in role. 2. It can be very difficult to transition from an Emerging Market office to a Developed Market office: if you have plans to move abroad in a couple of years, it is better to hunt down a job opportunity right away in your preferred location; 3. As people in certain teams become frustrated with the lack of career prospect, they tend to move on, taking away crucial knowledge about processes and products, leaving a gap behind. As a result, newbies often need to start accumulating knowledge from scratch under severe time pressure; 4. Unfortunately, as in many large organisations, company culture fosters risk avoidance. If "playing it safe" is the rational path to follow, the result is detrimental contraselection, especially in the leadership of certain teams. In turn, contraselection leads to a series of not necessarily bad, but mediocre decisions, which accumulate and eventually lead to a loss of competitiveness for the entire company. The rise of leaders without a trace of a vision frustrates their team members, especially if the incompetence of the former is combined with arrogance. In such an environment, skilled employees lose their ability to trust and respect their superiors. Their discontent and growing cynicism erodes their motivation, damaging the efficiency of everyday work and fostering a culture of "button pressers" instead of active changemakers. Eventually, skilled but disenchanted employees leave, giving space for new people with less initiative. Mediocre attracts mediocre. 5. New initiatives and ideas are officially welcome and praised, however, they are not executed due to a lack of dedicated resources. Lot of newcomers are enthusiastic to embark on projects to further improve the work environment or the cooperation of employees, however, as they experience that they do not receive substantial support from management to realise their ideas, they eventually lose their belief that a positive impact can be made for the benefit of the company. 6. Management tends to re-arrange team structures too frequently. It can happen that by the time you are starting to understand your focus area, 6 months after the previous team structure was created, you are parachuted to an other team to focus on a brand new market or product type.
