Pros
A common complaint I heard from peers while I was at the company was a lack of work-life balance and constant comparisons to the employers where their friends worked. While I understand those concerns, I'd actually take the opposite position. There are not many jobs you can find, save for start-ups, that allow the kind of freedom that Third Bridge allows. The same can be said for the average age of employees at Third Bridge (~22-24). The issue I think Third Bridge faces is that since it is such a young and social office low morale can have a severe snowballing effect. The grass is always greener, but I think one of Third Bridge's strengths is its young and social employees. I also found the method of measuring performance to be a positive. While the system itself is lackluster in some ways, its great to be able to monitor your performance in real time and compare it with your peers. Again, this can be a negative in some ways, but for me, it was a positive. While management might not always be willing to act on feedback, they were undoubtedly available to receive it. There is no push back regarding sick days. This leads to the system being abused sometimes, but management is trusting for the most part. A decent focus on social events, though unfortunately, some employees didn't handle these events well. Nice break room and fantastic office views. The opportunity to work out of another office for a week or two is an enjoyable experience.
Cons
Little to no upward mobility. You might see a title change, but the actual difference in salary and responsibility is minimal. Very high turnover. Employees burn out and get frustrated quickly. Morale is often low. People complain a lot. From my very first day, there was a considerable amount of talk about learning, development, and training. The trainings were pretty mundane and repetitive. I don't feel that my time was well spent in these sessions. I think this should be revamped, condensed, or eliminated. There just isn't that much to learn to do this job well. There is almost no development of hard skills. Your day-to-day consists of phone calls, and scheduling conference calls for clients. Whether you are a Senior Associate or you're 3 weeks on the job, this is what consumes your day-to-day. It may seem harsh, but anyone with the motivation to be productive for 5-6 hours a day can do this job. There are no specialized skills required. The top performers are either those who grind all day long or those who take the time to really understand their projects. That being said, this understanding is a shallow understanding at best, and it is not translatable to another industry or another job. To reiterate, it's challenging to pivot to another industry from this job. The vast majority of people who leave either don't have something else lined up, go to graduate school to try to change sectors or they take a job at a recruiting firm. If this bothers you, don't accept a position at Third Bridge. Managers are all young. They are promoted every once in a while from the position of Senior Associate. I'd venture to guess that the average age of managers in connections is ~25-26. This isn't inherently a bad thing, but unfortunately, there are far too many team managers that go on a power trip as soon as they're promoted. They think that the promotion somehow makes them 5x as smart overnight. It's a total fallacy. There are a handful of team managers that are great, but they are the exception. For me personally, it was tough to wrap my head around the fact that someone with only a few years more experience than I had would somehow have all the answers. I believe that it is important to have mentors with significant experience. It would be as if you expected to go and study for your Ph.D., but you had no intention of going to class and learning from the professors that have been studying the information for years. Instead, you decide that you can get by with only learning from the teaching assistants. I'm not sure how this problem can be solved, but for me, it was a big issue in assessing my future at Third Bridge. This might not be a problem for everyone. I just couldn't rectify it. Team managers had a tendency to be immature and a bit unprofessional. Absolutely no investment in technology. This is my biggest grievance. It was a joke. The company operates on juicy margins, but they don't seem to be pumping any of that cash flow into improving the business (beyond constant hiring). To my knowledge, Third Bridge's biggest competitor does precisely the opposite, every employee gets a laptop (which should be a given in a job where you're expected to answer emails and work on projects while you are at home). This competitor also hired an accomplished engineer to come in and revamp their internal systems. Third Bridge is still running on the same clunky system it started with from day 1. It's evolved, I'm sure, but they are just building on the back of the same system. This clunky technology led to tasks that should take 2 minutes taking 20 minutes. To this day, I can't understand this. This may have changed, but while I was there, you still had to schedule calls manually. There was a tool that was supposed to do it for you, but for all intents and purposes, it was manual. For a business that is literally centered around scheduling calls, you would think this would be a point of focus. I'm no expert, but it seems to me that a company that invests back into their business and ensures they have the best technology will win the end game. They might even be able to reduce their hiring and recruiting efforts if they did this, which is the most expensive part of running a business. I know it might seem from this review that I'm negative on the company overall. I am not. It was not a fit for me because I didn't find the work stimulating and I didn't see this is a career. I don't have anything against the company, and I had plenty of positive experiences. I don't regret working at Third Bridge, and I learned a lot. Third Bridge did wonders for my time management and organizational skills, and in that way, I think it has prepared me for my new job. Unfortunately, it's also my belief that after 4 years of college you should have honed your soft skills to some degree. If a friend asked me, "Should I work at Third Bridge?", I'd hesitate to say yes, but I'd also hesitate to say no. I'd make sure my friend truly understood the content of the work they were doing and the structure of management. If they were okay with that, I'd say go for it. Again, I think because of the young average age of the company that people on Glassdoor have a tendency to over-exaggerate the negative reviews because they have nothing to compare the job to. Third Bridge is not a terrible place to work. If you are interested in finance, this isn't the place for you. If you are more into customer service and communicating with people on a daily basis, this could be a good fit for you.
