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Bloomberg L.P. Senior Software Engineer Interview Questions & Reviews

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Updated May 23, 2012 – Interview questions and reviews posted anonymously by interview candidates.

Difficulty Rating [?] Based on 14 ratings

3.6

“Difficult” Interview

Interview Experience [?] Based on 14 ratings

Positive	43%
Neutral	36%
Negative	21%

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4.0

Difficult Interview

Overall Negative Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed May 2012 in New York, NY (took a day)

I had interview with them at least 10 to 12 times over the years and they are the worst ones to interview with. They as all these low level compiler questions and if you answer one question right they dig deeper into how the compiler works and all the features of the Language usually C++. Most all this information is just rote academic knowledge which has very little commercial value but they expect you to know it.

The last interview the some of the questions did not make any sense and when I looked them up it confirmed that he did not know what he was asking. I would forget talking to Bloomberg. I is a wast of time and if you get past the telephone interview and they bring you in then will ask more of these rote knowledge questions of you.

They hire very few people and I was almost never impressed with talking to the people who did the interviewing. They did not seem to have a clue about the applications they are working on and could not follow anything when I described what I had done in the past to design systems that did similar thing to what they were suppose to be working on.

The place is also filled with almost all H-1Bs so most Americans will not have a chance of getting in there.

Interview Questions

What happens when a constructor fails. And then what happens when a distructor fails.

View Answers (1)

Other Details

I got the interview through a Recruiter and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

4.0

Difficult Interview

Overall Neutral Experience

Received and Declined Offer

Interviewed Feb 2012 in London, England (United Kingdom) (took 1 week)

Applied only - Then technical online test

Interview Questions

n/a

Answer Question

Other Details

I Applied Online and the interview consisted of a Skills Test.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Neutral Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Jan 2012 in New York, NY (took a day)

We had a phone interview 2 weeks ago, they asked me some basic questions on C++: ctor, dtor, static, how to call c code; algorithem:big o notation, hashtable, bubble sort, DB: transaction; multithread: deadlock, race condition, mutex. And now I was still waiting for the result.

Interview Questions

Write a function that performs a string reverse: Develop a two-pass, pointers only solution using a char* of the following form - void strReverse( char *s)

Answer Question

Other Details

I got the interview through a Recruiter and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

2.0

Easy Interview

Overall Neutral Experience

Received and Declined Offer

Interviewed Sep 2011 in New York, NY (took 1 week)

The interviews consisted entirely of technical quizzes on the computing languages I had listed on my resume, as well as a little probing about algorithms to see if I could determine the complexity of a given algorithm. Until I piped up with my own questions, there was no discussion of my applicable business domain knowledge, my career ambitions, the work environment, workday expectations, or anything else.

Interview Questions

Can you tell me what a prime number is?

View Answers (1)

Other Details

I got the interview through a Staffing Agency and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview, a Group/Panel Interview, a Skills Test and a Background Check.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Nov 2010 in City of London, England (United Kingdom) (took 3 days)

Started with an online C/C++ test which I had no problem with.. Two days later I was notified I'd made it through to the next round where I'd be taking a telephone interview.. During the interview I was asked several general C++ questions as well as several questions relating to the Unix platform and operation system environment. I struggled to answer many of the questions effectively due to the fact that I had very little prior Unix experience coming from a predominantly windows-based programming background. I found this kind of unfair since the interviewer already asked at the beginning of the interview about my Unix experience which was confirmed from my curriculum vitae so he was aware of this before-hand..

In the end I received a phone call the next day of which I was told I didn't make it through the final round (face-to-face HR interview) due to my lack of Unix experience which was fair enough.

Overall a pretty well structured, streamlined interview process with good response time. I'll like to interview again sometime in the future once I brush up on my Unix skills/experience.

Interview Questions

What are signals in Unix and how are they used..?

View Answers (1)

Other Details

The interview consisted of a Phone Interview and a Skills Test.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Received and Declined Offer

Interviewed Apr 2010 in New York, NY (took 2 weeks)

1st telephonic interview was good. The guy grilled me on CLR and C# questions.It went for around 45 mins. 2nd Round with a panel of 3 was also quite decent by industry standars. lot of design and approach questions. 3rd round with Manager was mostly about what I have done and overall architecture.4th round with HR.

Interview Questions

nothing in particular.

View Answers (1)

Reason for Declining

I got a better offer for a big Investment bank

Other Details

The interview consisted of a Phone Interview, a 1:1 Interview, a Group/Panel Interview, a Presentation, a Personality Test and a Background Check.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

5.0

Very Difficult Interview

Overall Negative Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Sep 2010 (took a day)

A recruiter posted the Job in July on Craigslist
2 months later Recruiter told me to apply for a job # on their web site
1 month later arranged for a phone interview

Phone interview was 1 person. It was 7am My time on West Coast. I prepared for two weeks studying algorithms, data structures etc.

None of those came up the interview was **All** C# questions.

I tier to create a rapor with the guy and gain some insight into the company culture but he was rather uninterested, obviously busy and in a hurry to get the interview over with.

So we launched into the C# question session .. the questions were in no particular order and followed one after the other at a furious pace. Anytime I mentioned something like 'delegate' or 'mutex' we wandered off on that tangent until he was satisfied that his knowledge was superior to mine and then we would move on with a 'grunt'.

None of the questions involved problem solving or architecture they were all nitty gritty C#/CLR type questions. Things you can look up on Wikipedia or MSDN in 10 minutes.

Needless to say some things I didn't know or got wring in hindsight.

But it all ended after about 50 minutes...

I then told him why I wanted to work there , what I like about the position etc

I could tell that I wasn't going to get another interview.

It's been two weeks and neither the Recruiter or the Company has got back to me ..but I still have hope lol

Interview Questions

If you new a string inside a Using statement is it available outside the using statement?

View Answers (1)

What is a delegate, how do you run it in a thread, how is is used with events

View Answers (1)

Threads Threads Threads .. BeginWorker, AutoEvent ... everything you can think of including C++ Interlock

View Answers (1)

Garbage collection , IDisposable, Whats the difference between a C# finalizer and a C++ destructor, how does it work

View Answers (1)

Boxing ..when does it occur..what the difference between ref types and static types... IClonable x = 5; what does this do ... ??? when does boxing occur in this case

View Answers (1)

Other Details

I got the interview through a Recruiter and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

4.0

Difficult Interview

Overall Neutral Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Nov 2009 in London, England (United Kingdom) (took 6 days)

I took an online C++ test, I would say a 7/10 in difficulty. Passed with flying colors (97%).
Got an email ONE hour later saying they want me to go through a technical phone interview. Then the phone interview... I did not do well, he was asking mostly UNIX questions (signals and file system) and some stack/heap and pointer C style questions. No word after that until 2 months later I get an email that they will not be offering a job at this point.

Interview Questions

How would you implement an STL Map on the heap

Answer Question

Other Details

I Applied Online and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview and a Skills Test.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

4.0

Difficult Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Received and Accepted Offer

Interviewed Apr 2010 in New York, NY (took 2 weeks)

Got a phone interview right after my head hunter submit my resume. The phone interview mainly includes c++, basic data structure questions and a brainteaser questions. A day after the phone interview, I am scheduled for a on-site interview a week later. I was interviewed by 4 people in 2 groups. I was asked to write code in pencil for a few algorithms.The interviewers are very nice. When I get stuck with some of the questions, they gave us some hints to knock it out.

Interview Questions

What is the size of an instance of empty object? Why?

Answer Question

Other Details

The interview consisted of a Phone Interview and a 1:1 Interview.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Positive Experience

Received and Declined Offer

Interviewed Mar 2010 in New York, NY (took a day)

I was asked middle - advansed level C++ & Oracle questions. I was not under the pressure,
interviewer was polite & nice and didn't have a purpose to catch me. All questions was
appropriate to my background.

I was invited to face-to-face interview in NYC. I will have it in couple days.