Job Responsibilities
Capital IQ is a financial data provider. Their competitors
include Bloomberg and Factset (just to give you an idea of what
they do). As a developer, you are responsible for technical
design, implementation, debugging and testing, code review, code
maintenance and optimization.
Upon a quick first glance. CIQ is no different from your
average IT company. But be warned that the work hours can and
often will be long and that the management has a tendency like
or dislike employees for social reasons.
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Job Requirements
Capital IQ prefers fresh college graduates. The management
thinks the new college grads haven't yet been polluted by office
politics and various bad professional habbits.
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Uppers
Capital IQ has very loose (almost non-existing dress codes). On a hot summer
day, it's common to see employees with sandals and shorts.
Capital IQ, from time to time, has these 'Townhall' meetings on Fridays
(typically) where employees, management, owners of the company gather and drink
beers together. These 'townhall' meetings usually coincide with important
milestones of the company such as a big software release or the end of a raving
month for sales.
From what I've hear, CIQ gives a relative generous end-of-year bonus.
Management is generally ok with people taking their vacation at any time as long
as you let them know ahead of time (a month or so, the earlier the better).
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Downers
Employees (except management and senior employees) don't get the
respect they deserve. You can and will get funny looks.
Sometimes, you may even become comedy topics.
Senior employees and management are very self-centered in their
approach to problems and ways of doing things, in general. They
are generally unaware of this. New and fresh ideas or
suggestions may likely get shot down almost purely due to this
factor.
Popularity game is unfortunately at execution. In order for
employees to gain recognition, they almost have to participate
in baseball game talks and go to bars with senior employees.
Management has poor (over-aggressive) estimate for project
management. This means that a project that, in reality, takes 3
months will be treated like a project that only takes 1 month
and a half or so. During my times with CIQ, we've never met a
single deadline.
Quality-assurance team is completely out-sourced. Communication
barrier and time zone difference can lead to frustrating and
inefficient debugging cycles.
CIQ doesn't have formal employee training. Their philosophy is
similar to how eagles teach their younglings how to fly -
survival of the fittest. You are expected to learn and adapt to
many things in a short amount of time.
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Lifestyle
A typical work day begins at 9:00am when you get in the office and ends at 8 or
9 pm (or later). Capital IQ will cover dinner if you order food with the rest of
the department. People usually make dinner orders around 7 pm. Dinner orders
range from diner food to Chinese and Indian (anything goes, really).
Occasionally, employees may be summoned to work on weekends. As the deadline
approaches or technical problems stack up, weekend hours increase.
CIQ has team meetings regularly. Frequency increases as deadline approaches. A
team meeting is where each person verbally goes over their progress since the
last team meeting to the entire department.
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Compensation
50k + bonus is typical for new college grads.
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Advice to Jobseekers
Get familiar with extreme programming life cycles.
Get used to give short speeches in public. You will be expected
to go over your progress in team meetings.
Get very familiar with .Net.
Start following baseball.
Join corporate sports teams with your department peers.
Build up some alcohol tolerance is a plus.
Finally, the most important advice:
TAKE IT EASY!
You will be faced with rough times (for good reasons or not).
So please be forgiving, towards others and towards yourself.
Stay physically active! (tennis, yoga, hiking, martial arts,
what have you) I found that staying physically active helps to
get rid of stress tremendously. Don't lose your sence of humor
and cool.
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