How is it to work at Bridgewater ?
Pretty far down the interview process for a role at Bridgewater and was wondering if anyone had any pointers about the place
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He talks about life at Bridgewater
I haven’t personally made any experience with Bridgewater. However, I have heard a lot about the firm from people that know the industry very well.
From those conversations (in-line with what I’ve read online) it seems that people either really love it there or hate it. More people fall into the hate it camp. It all comes down to the extreme level of transparency at the firm, which has been known to cause a lot of office politics and backstabbing.
Had one guy tell me: “I wouldn’t tell anyone I like to work there.”
Everything I’ve heard is pretty black and white. You either love it there and don’t want to work anywhere else or will hate it and be out in 2 years.
I have just heard stories from people who worked there. Do you have to do that group interview stage where you all debate a random topic and they watch from afar? My understanding is that everything at bridgewater is very compartmentalized so you are primarily working on random econ problems with no understanding of how it fits into the larger strategy or concept, and that just a few people in charge really know how it all runs together and what the strategy is. That being said, they also took on a few market neutral equity PMs recently as they need to incentivize new talent to come on board, and that's where all the talent is these days (risk taking PMs) rather than the discrete problem set solvers. The culture thing has been well documented, and you will find far more useful anecdotes in dalios books / musings than anywhere else I assume.
I was told that the radical transparency and scrutinizing of problems actually generates more problems than it solves sometimes - one example being that they had a system outage once and instead of solving it they spent like 3 days assigning blame and going through their handbook's process first, when it simply should've just been fixed. One of those places that says they are proud when 70% or whatever people leave within the first 1-2 years because that means they know the people who stay really mesh well. I think you need to be brutally honest about whether you really really believe in the culture and process, because if not it will eventually smoke you out (by design). Another anecdote that you hear from time to time is they make everyone watch a video of them making a department head cry during performance debriefs or something.
I tend to have the opinion that there are probably a handful of useful elements from their culture/philosophy, but there is no picking and choosing when you are there, and then the rest of it becomes a massive headache for most people. I also have a feeling it starts to become more about who follows the book the best vs. actually being outcome oriented (which is what they were trying to avoid in the first place). I could be 100p wrong btw, but just my limited take...
Should read the book Principles by Dalio. Literally lays out the principles you are expected to adhere to.
Knew a guy near the top who loved it. He couldn’t say the same for juniors below him though…
I have no personal experience there; but I know at least a dozen people who worked there or interviewed there and every single one of them says all the horrible stories are true. Granted, I only know people who left, and if they were happy at Bridgewater, they wouldn't have left, so I have a biased sample.
But I don't know any other firm where the reviews are so consistent. I know lots of (for instance) ex-Citadel people who hated Citadel but also know lots of ex-Citadel people who liked it (or at least don't go out of their way to badmouth it like former Bridgewater people do). Ditto every other company. Only Bridgewater seems to consistently generate so much hatred among former employees.
Friend of mine who interviewed there said the interviewer told him to his face, "We're concerned you don't have enough intellectual horsepower to fit in. Would you like to respond to that?"
I get the idea of radical transparency -- better to honestly tell you why they don't want to hire you, and give you a chance to correct the misunderstanding. But there are other ways to ask that question without calling you stupid to your face.
Do these people all have autism or something
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