Negative Reviews of Bridgewater

Negative reviews:

Name withheld by request says:
May 4, 2009 at 9:14 pm
Interesting reading. I currently work at BW, and here are some things more things you should consider if you are planning to work there. First off it, it is an “open” environment, meaning anyone and everyone can and will point out your weaknesses at any time. There is a well-defined pecking order, where your manager (or the person most likely to give you grief) will have his or her manager or grief-giver, and so on up the line to the Ray-man, who gives it to all. The “discussions” are generally one-sided, and as other writers have said, generally devolve into pissing contests with no resolutions or outcomes. Nothing seems to ever get fixed, no direction known.

They will call you out for the way you speak and write, which can be unsettling for anyone, especially an experienced hire. The worst sessions are the issue log meetings, which are generally pre-determined before the actual meeting is held and fairly well-scripted. There is a planned outcome, and the receiver is generally best off quickly admitting an error early and forestalling further probing. BW has an established 5 step problem resolution process, but it is rarely used. I have never witnessed anything that went past the problems stage, i.e., no solutions or changes in the processes or causes. Often the “root cause” is defined as someone’s personal shortcoming, and not really the real root of the problem.

BW believes it takes about 18 months to fully inculcate a person into their culture. It will be a long and possibly tortuous process. There are over 100 mgt. principles from the Ray-man himself, and people tote copies around with them and refer to it as if it were the Bible. Reminds me of an old joke, where there were a bunch of guys in a prison, and every once in a while a prisoner would shout out a number and everyone would laugh. Finally one of the guards asked what was going on. One of the prisoners said that they all were in jail so long together, that they all knew the same jokes so well, that after a while the prisoners just shouted out a number and everyone knew what the joke was.

Same at BW, someone refers to principle number 71, and everyone nods in sage agreement.

BW has grown too quickly the past few years, and they are suffering for it. As several other readers have stated, they have hired very young, inexperienced people from the best schools — that’s one of the principles — hire great people, they’ll figure it all out. They do not have a middle level of management, and are especially lacking seasoned people who have actually accomplished anything, and they are suffering for it. The young and smart people just don’t know how to get things accomplished. That, and a lack of people skills prevents them from really establishing teams with clear goals, tasks, and deliverables.

In some areas — IT, Security, DR — they are incredibly messed up and don’t know how to fix them. The people responsible for the messes are still there and resist any organizational or operational changes, usually under the guise of principles and culture. So a vicious cycle of “rinse and repeat” to coin a favorite BW-ism, continues where inexperienced, ineffective, and incompetent people continue on, resisting change and outside influence.

employee says:
June 9, 2009 at 12:27 am
As more than a year employee of BW looking to leave, I strongly suggest to think twice before joining.
You can learn something there (as long as you filter out bs) but company had passed the stage where it worth staying. But if you’re looking for just yet another job – might be a nice, though very very stressful, place. And it’s stressful not because of hard and interesting work, but BS and “negative” culture.
* issue log and drilldowns aka “pissing contests” (these are quite real and almost never lead to their goal – better outcome)
* very high people rotation and attrition rates in certain departments
* not very smart, but “culturally fit” people are in the middle
* almost cult-like environment

trader job in BW is not very creative. In a nutshell: trader has list of trades, and is responsible for executing them according to the instructions.

Can't say says:
July 21, 2009 at 5:40 pm
Bridgewater is all about seeking “truth” above everything else. Only a few “believable parties” (read: a handful of old timers, or some new ones that have sucked their way up successfully) have a monopoly on the “truth”. If you challenge their version of the truth, then you are being deflective, and not reflective. You do that a couple of times, you lose your job. “Excellence” means pissing on everyone else all the time. Of course, don’t piss on the important believable guys, you will be in trouble. Pick on the weak struggling ones. You will regarded as insightful. Money no good for experienced hires. If you want to be insulted everyday for why you sent this email, or why you called this person, or why what you wrote isn’t exactly worded the way I would have thought about it, then yes, Bridgewater is the place for you.

What says:
October 1, 2009 at 5:21 pm
It is a very average, not-so-smart organization with delusions of brilliance that defies any logic. Pretentions of humility, aka calling oneself dumbshit, are encouraged, while arrogance underlies every behavior. Well, a few folks up at the top are making great money for the firm, and everyone else thinks it is all because of their intelligence. You are on the top one day, and the next day you have pissed off someone considered “credible”, and then your stock goes to zero. Meetings are pre-scripted, everyone bows to the powerful, and if you challenge then your judgement is considered flawed. Someone important, who has probably just passed you once in the hallway in the whole year, will write a tome on your performance, and that will drive your pay and bonus. Whimsical and arbitrary. Once you join, very quickly you are either “in” with the right crowd (which means your life is made!) or out, which means you should look for another job. It’s got nothing to do with talent, but that is how they justify it inside.

Since your life is made if you get “in” (which is a gamble worth playing), you should take up a job with Bridgewater if offered one. But see if you can get your ex-employer to keep the door open for you in case it doesn’t work out.

The work itself is quite pathetic. The top guys make the investment decisions, everyone else just runs around thinking what a great difference they are making. Processes suck, systems are terrible. You will be doing clerical work most of the time just piecing together data from text files in Excel. Unless you are joining as a “leverager” or “manager”, in which case your work will be even more meaningless. There is no structure, nothing ever gets done as everything is doused out by constant pissing contests, as someone else rightly observed. They are making money, that excuses everything else. Organizationally, they are very mediocre in terms of their effectiveness. But they always think they are soooo way ahead of the curve. But making money and placing the right bets is all that counts in this industry, so you really shouldn’t take anything personally if you can get to participate.


DBL says:
January 9, 2010 at 8:22 am
I’m glad that I found this website, and want to encourage everyone who interviews at Bridgewater to post their experiences here.

I interviewed recently for an experienced hire position. For context, my background is ivy-league (Columbia, Harvard) and 10+ years of Wall St experience at top firms. I also worked 3 years at a startup. My background ranges from tech (early in my career) to client advisory (most recently).

A headhunter referred me to Bridgewater based on my strong achievements as a technologist. My first interview was a phone interview, digging into my technical background for a management role in their tech group.

I could tell that they were looking for someone who had a defined, formal process for managing projects vs someone who does what it takes to get the project done even if that caused their process to vary.

I’m in the latter camp, and have had huge successes in my career due to my flexibility and intuitiveness in managing. Nevertheless, the interviewer concluded that while he felt I was a cultural fit I wasn’t a fit for that position. Despite that, I was excited about a company that strived to find a position for me that I would be passionate about, and at a potentially high compensation.

Fast forward a month later, and I get a call from Bridgewater asking me to do a phone interview for a role in client services. The person who interviewed me clearly was ready to go on vacation. He even said that his goal was to be on vacation as much as possible soon.

The interview wasn’t recorded, but I could hear him typing as I answered the questions (I’m assuming, summarizing my responses). And once I answered, all I got in response was primarily “Uh huh” and “ok”. He clearly wasn’t engaged in the interview, and sounded as if he had one foot out of the door himself. This wasn’t a junior person either. I won’t out him, but you see his name quoted in the media.

No feedback after that interview. Plus, it said a lot to me that an interviewer would make it that obvious that he didn’t want to be there.

Fast forward another month, and Bridgewater wants me to travel to CT for in-office interviews. They called giving me only two days’ notice.

Last interview excluded, I still had a favorable impression of Bridgewater. Plus, the day was pitched to me as one where I would speak to a range of groups to find a best fit. So I moved client meetings in my advisory practice, and cleared a day to travel there by train. Not easy timewise, and almost $100 out of my pocket.

I also took the online team assessment and personality assessment. Both indicated that I was creative and strong on execution. So it was my impression that given this information as well as information in past interviews and combined with the intelligence of the people in the organization, my day in CT would be productive.

Boy was I wrong.

My first impression of their office was not a good one. Their website makes the office appear bright and fresh. It was dark, deep in the woods, and felt stale and 1970′s with wood everywhere. The cafeteria was even worse–cramped and school-cafeteria like. This is where I would theoretically be spending most of my day.

And it appeared odd and contrary to not only their image on the website, but also their image as the world’s biggest and most successful hedge fund.

In my first interview, the guy sits down and immediately says that since I switched from tech to client advisory and briefly from Wall St to a startup that based on my background, I appear bipolar. He used the word bipolar.

Next, this and every interview proceeded as follows:
“Tell me your methodology for doing X”
(I give my methodology)
“Why”
(I explain why)
“So based on your response, would it be fair to assume that you’re Y kind of person?”
(No, because this is just one day and one situation)
“No, I think I’m right based on this information.”

And the rest of the interview would involve either my refuting their observation if I felt it was incorrect, or (if correct) their determining if I could change. Because how could I be successful as as a manager if I didn’t fit their opinion of how a manager should think.

I also received a case study, and was given four questions to pick from for a debate. The case study was a great overview of how the company was structured, but was being piloted and was awkwardly structured for just an hour interview with someone new to the organization.

The debate was a joke. Imagine sitting in a coffeehouse in college having a debate over a philosophical issue. I poked more holes in the interviewees’ logic than they did in mine. I can see how it could be used to gauge fit, but it wasn’t organized and seemed like another case of just refuting whether someone’s opinion was right. Great for after work, but during work there are more effective ways to solve problems.

What blew my mind was that while each interview was for a different group, it was for the same type of management position. Each interviewer felt that I didn’t have the structured thinking that they were looking for although I was very strong in execution and creative. However, wouldn’t this have been evident from the first interview, as well as the online assessments?

I wondered if I could file an issue log for their wasting my day when it obviously could have been avoided based on prior information.

I also wanted to note that I was there the whole day, starting at 9 am. I was never offered water nor food. Also, if I tried to be humorous I was met with blank stares. No one said hi when you walked past even though it was clear by my badge that I was a guest. And I didn’t talk to any women managers, and saw one minority the whole day (besides Asian).

In the last session, the interviewer tried once again to get inside of my head to understand why I don’t think a certain way which they felt made for a successful manager in their organization. After all, they are the biggest hedge fund in the world.

However, most of their assets under management were apparently gathered before their organization grew to this size, and before these guidelines for a successful manager were put into place.

So it was absolutely absurd to me that they would ding me for something they don’t have strong evidence on. As a matter of fact, their assets under management fell big time recently.

After all of this, they still want to consider me for a different type of senior position! Which means potentially another day from my practice and a $100 train trip!

The last interviewer said that they are willing to lose a great candidate instead of making a bad hiring decision. I can respect that, but I was clearly left with the impression that the “person” was less important than the process.

And to comment on the role–a prior poster got it right. Unless you are the CIO or a higher-up in Research, you appear to have no or very little exposure to the investment ideas that made Bridgewater successful.

One of the interviewers even told me this explicitly, as this potentially prevents intellectual property being stolen when someone leaves. Yes, he said “when” not “if”. And in a post-Madoff world (not to imply anything) but wouldn’t you want to know exactly how things work and if they truly are working?

My overall impression is this. Bridgewater became successful on the shoulders of bright, nimble people. However, I’d say in the last couple of years, they grew very quickly while coincidentally losing assets under management.

The growth was unnecessary, and likely driven by hubris by a higher up. Buffet doesn’t have a large organization, but Buffet isn’t arrogant.

So today there appears to me to be panic and pressure from above to fix the money issue, and bright yet often inexperienced people below believing that they know what’s best to fix the problem. And if you don’t agree with what is declared to be best, you’re not in the “covenant”.

It helps that many of their workers never worked anywhere else, because anyone who has will quickly see that this organization today seems inefficient compared to others and inflexible (although I’m certain they believe the contrary).

Also, the power to be innovative not only appears to be relegated to the hands of a select few, but is psychologically battered out of you on a daily basis. They say that this process of getting to the root of why you think a certain way works–but if it works, why did their assets decrease so dramatically and why is there turnover?

I can’t imagine creating a proof of concept and presenting it in its early stages without it being picked apart (despite it being early stage). Positive feedback appears very rare, and it’s your job to pick apart. In fact, you are rewarded for it.

Ask yourself if you’re willing to work in an organization with high turnover and pressure to think and act in a certain way.

Or better still–ask yourself if you were in a gang that was literally kicking an honest and good person who was lying on the ground because he’s wearing a red shirt on a Tuesday (and a person who wears red shirts on Tuesday’s is established to be a bad person by the powers that be), would you join in and kick the person too or would you walk away?

I’m walking away.

I’m sure any Bridgewater employee who is reading this it thinking that I don’t “get it”. And that’s the saddest part of all.

I was genuinely excited to work there, but am thanking God that I “got it” before I lost several years of my life and had my thinking altered such that I’d have a tough time succeeding anywhere else.

(Sound of me running away as Twilight Zone music is fading away in the background)

Can not disclose says:
February 4, 2010 at 10:23 am
Easy answer to the question: How can the company be so successful with all these terrible comments? It is actually quite simple. Papa brings home the bacon, and all the kids at home think they are too cute/pretty/intelligent and have a unique place in the universe.

Fact of the matter is that the top 4-5 guys at Bridgewater control and manage the investment strategy and make the big bucks. Everyone else out of the 900+ bask in that glory and think they did it. All the terrible politicking in the name of “truth” where the truth is set by a couple of ‘believable’ people and everything else is nonsense. A believeable person who you might have just met once in the hallway will write a bad thing about you in your review, and you are done. Then everything you do is wrong, not according to the culture, and you are just garbage then. The ‘believables’ quite happily exercise this great power and over a period of time have come to believe that this is a god given right to them, ie to judge everyone else in 5 minutes of interaction and issue their pronouncement. A sham trial called a drill-down will follow soon, your ratings will go from ‘extraordinary’ to ‘incompetent’ in 2 months flat, and that’s that. You are not allowed to dispute anything said about you, because then you are not being “self-reflective” and that is an unpardonable sin.

The positive side is that if a ‘believable’ smiles at you, then you would do really well, even without doing any work, because all you have to do is pontificate on everyone else. The chances of that happening are 50-50, and those are odds worth taking. Who knows, you might even join the club of these ‘credible’ people, and you’re all set to a comfortable lifestyle and some decent money for not a lot of work. (Mind you, nothing ever gets done at Bridgewater, no project ever gets completed, no process is ever improved, it is just mind numbing meeting after meeting and analysis…pontificating is easy. Delivering is difficult. You will be doing the easy work, which is why I say it may be worthwhile to take the job if offered). Everyone is a psychologist analyzing everyone else.

The music will go on till the guys at the top keep making money, and they are good at that. But unless you are a part of the top 4-5 people in the company, you are not going to get any more insight into investing or ideas than you might have got from your CFA.

Comp explained says:
February 26, 2010 at 9:49 am
I posted a while back my experience as an internal person interviewing for a different position inside Bridgewater. I occasionally pop in here to see the comments. I noticed that many people ask about comp. BW on the surface pays very very well. I will break it out for you the best that I can.
I worked in the finance department. My straight negotiated base comp was 85k a year and a target 15k bonus. (And actually I negotiated getting my entire Bonus in December when I had only started in November). I was at a bond insurance company prior to that where my base was 70k and a 20% bonus. I thought that this base increase during the time I was looking was fair. The key thing to know here is your bonus can move up and down from your target. They have something called a “Company Grade” and 25% of your bonus is based on this grade. The other 75% is based on your performance. Examples: If you get a 3 (and I am using 3 as being the average standard) and the company gets a 3 then you get your target. If you get a 3 and the company gets a 2 you get less than your target and if you get a 3 and the company gets a 4 then you get more than your target. Let me put the caveat in: Getting a 3 at BW is not the easiest thing to do. The 360 process is grueling and people are very happy when they get a 3. There are 2 bonus pay out times. July and December. July is 1/3 of your target bonus. I was always told “Think of it as a down payment” and December is the rest. So if in July they calculate a lower expected “company grade” then you may get less then but have a chance to catch up in December. It’s really more important in December as that is the larger chunk of your bonus. I have no idea what the base raise looks like as I was not there long enough to experience that, but I would expect that it would be decent. Money is no object at BW.

At first glance the pay looks good but do the math: 100k a year was what I made. I worked on average 13hrs. a day, 6 days a week. (At the office mind you bc most jobs at BW are not allowed to have work from home permissions). Hourly it isn’t that great.

Someone above asked if Admins. were meant to work the same hours as finance people. Yes is the answer. Maybe not 6 days a week but you can expect to work at least 11-12 hours a day.

More importantly to the person that asked about relocation: I did that. I left the city and moved to CT. I would not advise full relocation. I would get in to BW, see what it’s all about and see if you are going to stay (as the turnover rate is 18 months) and then make that plunge. Just what I think would had been a better decision from my end.

Another HF Guy says:
March 4, 2010 at 11:21 pm
So I have interviewed with head guys there…

I have worked with one of the more famous high-performance HFs. BW has something like 6% annual performance. It is more like a StateStreet or Blackrock or Pimco. Big assets but lousy performance. I think the pay is probably similar… where they see 500k or a few million as a large paycheck which is not competitive with better hedge funds. Their is no “pay for performance” and I dont see many ex-BW guys around the industry (except for a few disgruntled guys who got out fast). Name a BW guy who left and started his own fund? I can name zero. Tells me they dont really pay well.

I have interviewed with about 8 people including 2 people I would speculatively describe as “in the top 10″. The lower level guys were ex-McKinsey types. They really had no idea what they were doing in asset mgmt, trading, or at a hedge fund. They could just as easily be in corporate mgmt at GM or working at Google. For people like me, who live markets, thats hilarious. They know so little. I tried to teach them a few things. They had zero answers to some very basic finance / markets philosophical puzzles and introspective questions. Didnt seem that interested and, I dont know if its the lack of focus, were just very weak thinkers. Kinda said, “I dont know” to very broad questions about alpha, markets, methods. A few put me through a McKinsey case, which showed what brainless duds they were. Didnt even make it about trading, alpha, or financial mgmt. Just a dumb “lemonade stand” style McKinsey case. I went through the motions (and I do “data-driven analysis” stuff well. my test scores are perfect and I’m a good communicator so BW is an easy interview.)

The top guys: one at the very top was arrogant, but not particularly astute. We talked at some length about how teams I have worked with have produced outstanding results. He asked alot of questions but I would call his mindset – “skeptical AND lazy”. This is a hard combo to deal with. Its one thing to be skeptical, ask questions, be inquisitive. But one needs to put forth effort to discern value and learn. Without that post-question effort, the skepticism just falls flat. I would rather you not waste my time with the question. Or just listen and nod and walk away with whatever opinion you already have. Ask a question only because you want to know the answer. Work hard with me.

The other guy at the top (more like #6-8-10) was broadly sharp. Quick questions. Quick judgement on high-level issues. But he was ex-McKinsey type and not 100% focused on hedge fund work. Probably just happy to have his job and trying to keep his head down and get that next bonus, based on Ray’s big bet (oops, down 7% in Dec, man!).

I suspect they are over-staffed. I have worked with much smaller teams where AUM per person is as much as 10x greater and performance is much better. I’m reasonably senior and pretty demanding, so we never got to the offer stage. I suspect they did not like how direct my approach is, how confident I am in performance.

All this said, I dont have any negative feeling towards them. The whole point of my meeting with them was I think I could straighten out performance. I would probably cut 1/2 the staff bloat (or more) and make separate teams more accountable for real delivered performance. See the weakness in Ray Dalio’s principles… is that “argument” and “open debate” is NOT at all the key to truth. Results are. They best people I know in the business dont want to “win arguments”, and especially not with a large group of mediocre minds. They just want to “win on the field” and produce consistently better results. The idea of the principles is correct… but no argument is necessary. Just a darwinian performance process where the best teams, and PM survive. And losses get cut.

So easy. No drama. No “personality cult culture” BS. Just a culture of worshipping “profit” and excommunicating “losses”. That is game we have chosen.

Anyway, sorry for my rant. For you young guys… if you want to play the game like me — I suspect DE Shaw, SAC, Brevan, Paulson, or any large bank are probably better for future careers. If you want to play politics… go to a big management consulting firm or BW.

YouDontWantThisAdminJob says:
April 9, 2010 at 4:29 pm
My wife worked as an admin at Bridgewater for a few years and basically had a nervous breakdown from it. Their “culture” essentially ruined things for her after a while. The Ivy League no nothings with their constant criticisms eventually wore on her to the point that she had to get out and people at the company were surprised because they thought she really exemplified the culture there. She was doing the work of three people and that was proven, because when she quit her position they had to get three people to do what she had been doing. The pay was great, but in the end not worth it.

The answer to anyone’s question about being an admin there is yes you will get hammered on just like anyone else and no, no one will come to your defense, so if you don’t like getting criticized for sending an email with the wrong tone or writing style (this sort of thing happened to my wife) then don’t bother applying.

Every criticism that has been posted so far is pretty much spot on. The people who like working there are twenty somethings with no lives, but even they eventually burn out on the place. The money keeps rolling in though so the place keeps moving forward.

Anyone who has worked in Fairfield County Connecticut for a while and has a life has heard about Bridgewater and doesn’t want to work there.

Charles says:
August 6, 2010 at 4:34 pm
i will post my experience and you can view it anyway you like. I might be slightly biased since I got rejected after this particular interview, but I trust that the company didn’t find a good match. I am not worried about it either since I have a bunch of job offers and was not particularly impressed with anything besides their company’s philosophy (honesty) and the first round interviewer. I hope this is honest and accurate to help potential candidates decide their path. This is my honest understanding of the experience.

I interviewed at Bridgewater with 4 total candidates. We took peronality tests. We went into a room and talked about vague ideas for a little while. In my mind, there were two seemingly not very smart candidates and two smart candidates. We had to discuss two things: “Is Wal-Mart good for America” and “Should the government run state lotteries”

We discussed for a while and there were two Bridgewater people interviewing us. One of the interviewers seemed to mirror my personality type and the other interviewer seemed like he was insecure. My thin slice of the second interviewer: The type of insecurity that I saw in him was like a couple of people I had seen before. Generally they are high strung and work very hard to get good grades but are not very smart naturally, they have to work very hard to get it. At the same time, their outlook on life seems to center more around their career and they usually want to have a career with glamour, I suppose like a hedge fund career. They do not seem to care about what will help them grow or try to really be themselves, rather they will more conform to others’ expectations. Call the more insecure interviewer B and the other one A.

We discussed the two questions and B interjected very often after a point. It is clear that he was pretty intelligent or at least competent at this type of discussion. He would give his arguments and say we could question him if we disagreed, which I did a couple of times. I tried to be honest, close to the facts, and really understand where he was coming from. At times I would make statements and he would question me back, sometimes I felt he disagreed with me and others I felt like he was challenging me to justify myself better. This is fine. But by the end he seemed to slightly dislike me in a covered way. Disclaimer: maybe B was not insecure actually but reminded me a lot of insecure people I had met often in my life.

Interviewer A was veyr calm and collected and he let the group discuss the topics more than B did. His points were very logical, but one bright kid spoke his mind about a subtopic of the state-lottery question and A seemed to be extremely repulsed with the candidate for the rest of the time. It seemed that he held a personal belief that the candidate disagreed with and seemed to hold it against him for the rest of the interview.

Thus, after the interview was over, I along with the other person I thought to be very bright were asked to leave.

Interesting notes: One candidate who remained was talking to his buddy from college who was trying to get him a job there. This candidate was not very smart seemingly to me. After the interview, I noticed that the interviewers left the recording device going and I pointed it out to him. He claimed “I would not act any differently even though there is a microphone there”
Cannot finish sorry.

I have to go, cannot finish now

JaniceR says:
August 22, 2010 at 8:58 pm
I left Bridgewater a little over 2 years ago, and I’m never one to burn bridges. I figured, I learned by experience, so that’s how others should find out the truth as well. However, my husband also works there, and certain recent developemnts (details of which I can’t divulge for obvious reasons) make me feel like it’s my duty to say something.
In addition to all the comments above, one thing that isn’t discussed here (because very few people know) – Bridgewater’s security department might as well be the second coming of the CIA. You would be SHOCKED at the tools they have at their disposal, and worse, how cavalierly they use them! I don’t know purport to know how the stuff works exactly (i was just an admin), but I know for a fact they have it, and use it (an old girlfriend of mine helps run some of their super spy stuff within that department). They will monitor everything you do, be it on the computer, on the phone, in your personal life, whatever. Again, without going into details, suffice to say nothing is private when you work at Bridgewater. They even try to trick employees by giving them certain “monitor-free” areas, but in reality, they monitor those even more, just to see what you do when they arent supposed to be watching! They are smart people, so they make sure that somewhere in the 500 pages of employment documents u sign, is something stating that you acknowledge their right to do this, blah etc. Now, I understand that when you manage billions of dollars, you need to be on the lookout, especially in this post_madoff world, but, some of the stories ive heard or things ive seen go way above and beyond the call of simple due dilligence.
For those of you working there, or considering it in the future, be warned – dont do ANYTHING on the premises (be it phone calls, videos, conversations, emails…hell even checking other job postings online) that you dont want people finding out! It’s easy to say “duh, everyone knows their work stations are monitored in this day and age”, but never to this extent.

JaniceR says:
November 2, 2010 at 9:10 pm
Dear ex-McK to Bw,

A decent amount (relatively speaking) of Bridgewater’s top people were at some point or another McKinsey people. As for colleges, Dartmouth undergrad and HBS are their biggest funnels; from lateral company hires, they view McKinsey as one of their top 3 desireable places to grab people. One McKinsey alum who is now a very important top guy in particular: Matthew Granade. He will most likely do your interview if you make it that far.

As for the SMA position, the real “players” at Bwater are basically divided into two groups: Investment Associates (IA’s) and Management Associates (MA’s). The basic differences should be self-explanatory from the name. You should know, IAs and MAs have a pretty big rivalry at Bwater, and IAs look down on the MAs, and sometimes it’s pretty palpable. MAs have the reputation for being all thinkers, no doers. You sit around and think about ways to think outside the box about a thinking problem. Managing people. Etc. It seems like a pretty interesting position (and its DEFINITELY stressful, and the turnover rate is ridiculous; MAs were considered one of the weak links by Ray, and if they dont think you are the right fit, you will NOT get a lot of time to adjust or figure it out; its right in his principles). That’s another thing: if you cant think of ways to incorporate the principles for approaching things, you will be out. Basically, if they like your style and you fit in, you can do great (and the pay, for that kind of job, increases pretty well as time goes on, relative to that at other places), but the odds are very high that either you wont like it, they wont like you, it will be too stressful, the work/life balance will suck, etc.

Check out this statistic (note- this was the stat from when I left around 2 years ago, and I heard it was the same relative number a year ago, so while it could have changed, odds are, not significantly) – for “experienced hires”, SIXTY SIX (66) percent are not with the company come their 1-year anniversary. Think about that before you make any big life-changing decisions (like moving a family or wahtever).

Epic Fail says:
February 11, 2011 at 5:04 pm
I had an epic fail of an interview recently and am happy to share insights. Certainly the comments here were useful for my prep but ultimately I wasn’t able to answer the questions in the way that they wanted. There are two key interviews as others have discussed, the discussion group and the culture interview.
On the discussion group I thought at the time that they wanted to see if you were willing to look at all angles of a topic and I was reluctant to reveal my personal political views. There were several subjects, death penalty, govt running lotteries, should media be barred from personal lives of political figures etc.
On reflection on this interview I think they were actually trying to get at the first section of Dalio’s principles document. Basically I think they want you to of your own accord take a step back and propose / discuss what the key principles are that are at stake before making a decision on the particular topic. So in my case I picked “should the govt run state lotteries” and we discussed all possible angles on this subject for 45 minutes. However I think the right answer is to say they key issues are, for example: personal freedom of choice vs state control of choices, personal benefits vs societal costs, microeconomic externalities, etc. So identify the key framing issues first and clarify what these are before diving into all the possible arguments and how they relate back to the framing belief structure. It is buried in Dalio’s manifesto but I am pretty sure on reflection that this is what they were looking for.
The second interview went poorly for me, possibly because I had already failed out on the first interview and their policy is to cut you loose and not waste people’s time. My sense was that the interviewer was already inconvenienced in some way by having to meet with me. She was upset we had to move rooms due to a scheduling conflict, didn’t even turn the light on. With the snow reflection coming in the window behind her in the dark room, it might as well have been a telephone interview from my standpoint.
The interview started out with the usual “what is something that went wrong for you personally or professionally” etc. We discussed this and then another unrelated example. She connected these two as both being due to my “overconfidence”. (I should add here that no one I know would accuse me of being overconfident, and I have double checked since the interview.) Due to our fundamental disagreement over this attribution the meeting devolved pretty quickly. Apparently due to my not having taken steps to remediate this character flaw (which I was previously unaware of) I apparently wouldn’t enjoy working there according to the interviewer. If you reach a point in the interview where she threatens to “pull the tape and replay something” you probably have reached an impasse.
Fundamentally this probably isn’t a particularly collegial working environment. Given the high turnover referenced elsewhere and the fact that nobody seems to have worked there for more that “4 1/2″ years, with 15 years of professional experience I can say unequivocally that there are better alternatives elsewhere. However if you read this far down the page, you probably think as I did that you can handle it as an employment alternative.
Following Dalio’s rule #258 I took the liberty of “not just double checking – double do-ing” and recorded the interviews myself. If I can figure out how to get the files off my iphone and edit out the toilet flushing and other filler I’ll post them online with a link here later.
Other suggestions, of course read through the manifesto / management doc on their website. It is riddled with internal inconsistencies but some are obviously more heavily weighted. For example #42: everyone has an opinion, they aren’t all good, or as I like to say opinions are like @ssholes, everybody has one. Apparently that is not acceptable in an interview, ie: if you have a different opinion from the interviewer over her interpretation of the things that have happened in your life, it doesn’t matter that she wasn’t actually there for the things that happened, nevertheless her opinion is apparently more valuable.
The broader question is how do you run the operations of a company with this sort of management style? I was interviewing for a job helping to rebuild their processes and systems. It seems clear to me that if you hire people through this very unusual filter (and they only stay about a year on average) you end up with a lot of “special snowflakes” as Tyler Derden would say, but nobody to take out the trash and keep trading systems up to date. You have to hire hoards of people to throw at problems who no doubt invest all their time in blaming each other for problems.
My favorite part of the day was when I was waiting in reception some security guards were bitching to each other about the fact that the rules about non-hierarchy didn’t apply to them in practice. One dude got shut down when he had tried to approach someone in senior management and told to talk to his supervisor. I guess that is what happens when you get that large as an organization, sooner or later you have to start to operate like other businesses…

Mr. Snappypants says:
April 13, 2011 at 11:40 am
I interviewed a while back for a “trading” position (trading is in quotes, because a trader at bwater is an execution monkey, not a risk taker). I interviewed with 2 other candidates. We were given an overview of the “culture” at bwater and a brief description of the job. We did a silly little math test and then we debated a couple of open ended, unresolvable questions. My fellow interviewees consisted of an affable young woman who agreed with anything anyone said, and a grumpy euro dude who said next to nothing. The debate was moderated by several very young, polite employees. After the debate, we were left alone. The two folks I interviewed with acknowledged that I was the only one of us who had made any good points during the debate. Shortly after, I was asked to leave. The building. Thanks for your time Mr. Snappypants. Oh, well, I’m not sure if I was not a cultural fit, or just too dumb, but after doing more research about the place, I feel fortunate I was not asked to interview any further. Frankly, the place freaks me out. Since my interview I’ve had the chance to speak with a few current and former employees. My conclusion; the place is like cold war East Germany, only with toilet paper and better pay. You are constantly monitored by cameras and fellow employees. Any fellow employee can ‘log’ a complaint about you, and if the complaint is discussed in a meeting, a videotape of the meeting is placed in the ‘truth library’. Truth library? Are you f’ing kidding me? Is that Orwell or directly from the Gestapo handbook? Oh, and occasionally, some of the truth library’s greatest hits are broadcast to the whole firm. Public humiliation, now there is a positive motivational force! I think Ray Dalio has lost his mind. He has grown tired of merely being a brilliant risk taker and is now amusing himself by brainwashing ivy league grads. Again, I feel fortunate they didn’t like me. Had they, there might be an video in the truth library of me throat-punching a 23yr old.

TS says:
April 25, 2011 at 8:05 pm
LOL Mr. Snappypants. I did business with Bridgewater (as a broker) for years. I sincerely appreciate all the business they did with me.

None of what I have read here surprises me…

Jim says:
July 17, 2012 at 2:48 pm
Yeah, I took the bait. I was a fool who should’ve known better! A recruiter called me and told me all about this great company called Bridgewater, and what a super opportunity it would be for me. Come on Jim, go on the interview! Please! She further said, they like people like you. I said, well, okay, I will check it out. What’s it going to matter in a hundred years if I don’t like it? Of course, I knew otherwise. I knew this from talking to a couple of friends who were once employees there: On a good day you walk in there at 8:00 am with a pit in your stomach and after a day of conflict you leave at 7:30 p.m with the same pit in your stomach, not feeling any better, thinking– “Do I have to go back there tomorrow?” I also knew there was a high turnover rate, higher than your average sales job.

The interview was on a late Friday. Outside on the Westport property there was some late Friday beer keg party going on with all the Bridgewater employees mingling. I bet if you left early to see perhaps your family—or your child or wife, that would be frowned upon.

The interviewer, David, a chinny guy, under 30, with shiny jet black hair (code for using wax in his hair to cover his receding hairline), looked like a combination Plastic Man and Spock.

Don’t believe me, take a look yourself at this old photo:

http://www.bwater.com/home/culture–principles/culture-videos/culture-videos-dave.aspx

Getting back to his hair. It looked like he spent hours and hours in front of the mirror applying different waxes to his locks, trying to get that rugged artful short look, but not getting anywhere close to it. Enough! Be a man! Just get it over with, and shave it all off, dude!

So during the interview I noticed he had on sandals and wore an especially garish tight bluish t-shirt. Why didn’t they tell me to dress casual? The “Let’s go to the Hamptons get-up!” made him look relaxed and laid back, but he was anything but. He was disinterested, annoyed, and a lousy interviewer. I can go into details, but I won’t. In simple terms, he was a dick who was in a rush. After 45 minutes of unstructured talk, he basically told us—the group–that we sucked. With a frown on his face, he said, “Goodbye! Except for you.” The prettiest girl was chosen to stay while the rest of use drove away. [This is how organizations go wrong!]

It wasn’t even an interview. It was a poorly run focus group in which seven participants (including me), weren’t paid for their time. How pathetic. If you go on the internet, you can read thousands stories about what a creepy place Bridgewater is to work at. Why is that? Are all those people wrong? I realize young people want to make money, but there has got to be a better way.

Stevens says:
August 21, 2012 at 1:42 pm
Except for the people who’ve been at the company since 1980s, I know of no case at Bridgewater in which someone who joined the company out of college is now making a million dollars a year. I should know, I worked there after I graduated from a decent school. Most people who stay for the long hall earn in the low to moderate six figure range. It isn’t the best, but it aint the worst. The food they serve there is pretty good, though. And the girls employed there are really hot.