thoughts on eze castle ?

I can only speak as a client of Eze. I work with them on the operational side of the fund employing me (I do ops and TMT research). The consultants I've spoken with there have been nice people who are generally pretty smart and go the extra mile. They know their shit and provide a good service. We underpay them like hell since we (I) do a lot of stuff manually, but even then they're always happy to help. They seem to work them pretty hard, so 12 hour days are certainly not out of the question. Warning you now, I'm always really nice (if a bit dopey) to my guys at Eze and they seem to respond well to it. That makes me worry some clients treat them like shit because they're effectively a second-back office that can't sue you. So you may get shat on a lot.

As a connectivity person, you'll probably do a lot of FIX connections. That means you'll be setting up hard lines to execution teams at banks and to the NYSE or other exchanges. So you'll be dealing with Primes, clearing teams and HFs. In terms of skills, I can't say for certain, but I imagine you'll learn a lot of Transact-SQL and a fair bit about networking (of both varieties). You'll certainly learn a lot about how securities lending and Prime brokerages work, as well as how Hedge Funds work as a business.

My predecessor came from there, said it was more of a mixed bag. That said, there are a few horror stories about him from there (one of which involves the old "trader put a phone through a wall" trick). Using what he learned from there, he built the operations side of our fund from the ground up, which is pretty impressive. I think a lot of guys/girls who go there become ops people at HFs/PEs, which isn't as soulcrushing or horrible as it is at, say, iBanks (except for my fund, it is soul crushing to the max, god I need to escape). For instance, our old ops guy was 2 years out of college (both at eze) and scored 120k/year here for a 7-5 job and now works for some big French firm doing "consulting" work for a high base, great bonus potential and an HR package that makes me weep. Like, bawl like a baby. Other exit opps probably involve going to client services at a bank or working in a prime brokerage or execution team. Of course, there's always business school

Oh and I hear the salary doesn't blow. It's about 70-90% of ibanker base. My contact there lives in a pretty pricey part of town and he's only been there a few years.