Pros
This place really cared about its employees. It was probably the most transparent trading firm in the city. They had semi-annual firm update meetings. Many of the employees were owners and the group leaders knew the firm financials in detail. The firm had outstanding benefits and I knew of several instances were senior management and partners gave extra bonuses out of their own shares to take care of people.
Cons
There was a non-active partner in the business who was constantly causing distractions and took the firm's leadership focus off of making money to attempt to resolve the issue. They ultimately paid too much money to buy him out and harmed the firms capital structure in the process. The firm tried to take on too many initiatives at the same time, often being mediocre in all of them. The technology team was not organized enough and wasted money on projects where they didn't have a clear edge. The technology team needed to be managed better.