Tech IndustryJan 3, 2019
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Two Sigma Career Growth?

I read a review on Glassdoor of Two Sigma with a con that rather than rewarding loyal long term employees, most high level senior positions/senior vp or above are given to external hires. Anyone from TS here able to comment on how true that is? At FB at least it feels like it’s more common to see the company develop people to grow into these higher level roles (E6+ and I’m assuming the equivalent being 5+ at TS) and much less common/harder for external hires to get them directly.

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Google flinkseeds Jan 3, 2019

I have been 1.5 years in TS and based on what I have seen so far that is true.

Facebook grlx Jan 3, 2019

How are the growth opportunities from E3 to E5 at Two Sigma? And how's your WLB compared to Google?

Google flinkseeds Jan 3, 2019

Wlb is roughly the same. You drive and are in part responsible for your workload. I'm a E3 so I'll tell you when I get to E5. :)

Two Sigma shadowburn Jan 3, 2019

Basically true

Facebook dbfsbjy OP Jan 3, 2019

@shadowburn Do you feel like this has to do more with the company failing to develop and give long term employees chances to grow or do you think it’s more a result of long term employees becoming complacent and not caring as much about progressing?

Two Sigma shadowburn Jan 3, 2019

I think it depends. My guess is maybe one of the best way to nurture engineering culture is to hire people from Google/Facebook and other tech companies

Nielsen quantumC Jan 3, 2019

Is this representative of SWEs, Quants or both?

Northrop Grumman frontbutt Jan 3, 2019

Good luck op

Two Sigma bxc Jan 4, 2019

True. Recent years higher level position are given to externals.

Facebook yolaohf Jan 4, 2019

So from what you’ve seen is it not that great of a place to remain after becoming senior if you want to keep growing?

Two Sigma bxc Jan 4, 2019

TS has technical track and management track. For the former, people can be promoted just like FB orGoogle. The CTO came from Google. For first line manager, I think internal employees get big chance to be promoted. No significant difference than external people. But level above first line, in very recent years, I see people more from external.

Two Sigma kWJilp Jan 5, 2019

I agree this is true. I would add that I think it’s due to incompetence and not having people who can develop talent, not willingness. I think the company would love to promote people over hire, but let’s say you need someone to lead a 800 person engineering org, like the CTO does. No one that was an engineer at Two Sigma 10 years ago when the whole company was under 250 has any experience doing that. So you have to hire externally, or just hope someone whose already in that role can learn on the job how to do it even though leading a 800 person engineering org is totally different then a 125 person org.

Two Sigma kWJilp Jan 5, 2019

I think there is a path, but if your goal is to be a CTO somewhere, you can get there faster by finding a place that is more aggressive about career growth then TS, or FB/G.

Facebook trefor Jan 5, 2019

So does TS have a more laid back, slow promo culture like G? FB promos definitely happen faster than G, but that's because we force people to promote in a certain period of time up to E5 and fire them if they can't :P And TS has 800 engineers? Saw only like 20 software engineer reviews on glassdoor so I was falsely under the impression you might've only had like < 300

Two Sigma MkRe68 Jan 7, 2019

This is very true and well known inside the company. In fact, the topic was even brought up during a town hall once. While some of those incoming senior hires are clearly superstars such as the CTO, most are fairly middle of the road managers from lower tier companies (lots of people from big banks, not many from FAANG or unicorns). Engineering management mainly consists of these senior hires and the old guard (i.e. people from the much earlier days of the company).

Facebook wknhuakw Jan 7, 2019

Do you feel like this is something that will improve? To me it sounds like that is a significant barrier to Two Sigma being a place to build a career over the long haul

Two Sigma MkRe68 Jan 7, 2019

It's hard for me to say how much emphasis TS will put on external managerial hires in the future, but I don't see much of a change on this front. However, I do think that the IC track is fairly solid at TS since it is a smaller company and there is a lot of low hanging fruit and potential to show a large scope of technical impact.