AKUNA CAPITAL reviews

4.0

78% would recommend to a friend

(291 total reviews)

74% positive business outlook

AKUNA CAPITAL has an employee rating of 4.0 out of 5 stars, based on 291 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The AKUNA CAPITAL employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Financial Services industry (3.6 stars).

Reviews by job title

291 reviews
1.0
Sep 13, 2015

The Truth about Akuna

Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Some good people, in a culturally significant area which makes going to lunch nice, in a spacious office. Good experience with high frequency trading.

Cons

Long hours, tons of pressure, workspace is average, no free lunch or snacks, no free drinks (CEO does not believe in tipping), arrogance. Nepotism: CEO & CFO are married.CEO, COO, Head of Trading, and CEO are best friends. Be careful if you have an opinion that disagrees with them, they will not like it and you will not rise in the company. Terrible work/life balance: there are constant "initiatives" that you have to complete yesterday so the compnay can succeed. When we deliver, and profit the leadership does not share the gains. No or low bonuses. CEO micro manages everything. He is leading developer scrums and telling HR how to do their job better. The CEO also plays favortism with certain ethnic groups. If you are Australian you are well liked, otherwise you are on the outside of the decision making loop. Arrogant and inexperienced are the key words here. Also I would like to mention that the CEO walks around in his bare feet all the time which is super classy. That being said, you may have to endure a "workout" meeting where he does pull ups while you try to convey important information about the firm between a set.

1.0
Jan 25, 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Nice lakeview remains when decent people are all gone.

Cons

A great place for developing your office politics skills in a free-for-all. Extremely toxic culture and stunning amount of red tape. Micromanagement and gaslighting. Below average compensation/benefits and poor transparency. Fragile technology and imaginary risk control. The upper management are all arrogant click traders who want to play fintech make-believe. The bossy ones got to lead departments and large teams although none of them has any meaningful background or understanding about tech. They constantly threaten to fire people and randomly smash your work to demonstrate their authority. Priorities change on a daily basis due to their ignorance of tech. Some people in the upper management publicly claimed that they have no interest in maintaining a good working relationship with employees since everyone is dispensable and PnL is the only thing matters. In mid and junior levels, clueless traders are trying to ignite everything potentially combustible, and technical people are running here and there like firefighters. This is what "fast-paced", "challenging", and "hard-working" in many positive reviews really means. Doers get all the blame because lip-service providers never make mistakes. Accountability does not exist. Across all departments and all levels and all offices there are people constantly creating duplicate projects and stealing credits so that they can get fat cuts from the bonus pool. You will be treated as a troublemaker if refusing to join this game. Consequently innumerable services and tools have been created repeatedly and abandoned immediately. No real innovations occur in the past two years. Losing strategies are running only for political reasons. Turnover rate climbs as vigilant people start to plan their way out. Meanwhile, the upper management did nothing but extending non-compete periods and spreading rumors to malign former employees. To new grads: AVOID AT ANY COST. This job is not even a stepping stone for your career. No experienced employees can help you grow because doers never survive. BSers will consume all your time. The longer you stay, the less you are worth. Ultimately, the company will devour you.

1.0
Nov 17, 2020

Like the Whitehouse

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Good place to learn the industry, fast-paced, some nice people.

Cons

The parallels are striking with the WH (the current occupants!): - Entirely transactional relationships at the top - Pervasive nepotism (see other comments on this, there are many) - Sycophants surround the senior management, basically an echo chamber where its impossible to break through the accepted wisdom - Negative feedback is ignored, or actively punished - No empathy - High turnover at all levels Not exclusive to this firm but there is a huge pay disparity between the do-ers and the management/founders. Its understood that they were there first and its 'their money' but that's not how you build loyalty and it's not a long term strategy. If you're willing to live with all of this, and even embrace it I'm sure you'll do well, but at what cost? Be wary of the reviews that obviously are sanctioned from within, often it seems in response to a negative one. Just ask yourself this, which is more likely to be fabricated - the 5 star glowing review or the 1 or 2 star critical review?

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Glassdoor has 378 AKUNA CAPITAL reviews submitted anonymously by AKUNA CAPITAL employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if AKUNA CAPITAL is right for you.