Avantages
Some decent colleagues and interesting subject matter to work on.
Inconvénients
If you are content to work somewhere where experience, knowledge and expertise play second fiddle to ‘data’, then this is the place for you. The company is run on the fiction that complex political risks can be accurately quantified and predictively modelled. One day this might be true, but for the moment it is akin to tasking a Neanderthal with inventing an iPhone from the assorted detritus in his dimly lit cave. Analysts with many years of expertise are often reduced to merely writing some context around the ‘data’ that the software spits out. Unsurprisingly, the company has haemorrhaged many of its best analysts who have not been prepared to take part in such an intellectually dishonest exercise. Just last week, Bloomberg splashed on the company’s latest political risk data. This included, for example, the revelation that there is a 70% chance of a militarised dispute between the US and India in 2017. Yes, that’s 70%. Militarised dispute. The United States and India. Not a typo. This example is not an outlier but points to major shortcomings in the company’s approach to political risk. Numbers are constantly churned out to impress clients with a ‘scientific’ approach while genuine analytical judgement is dismissed or falls by the wayside. Anyone with the audacity to highlight these problems to superiors is labelled a troublemaker and pushed out.