Pros

Enormous amount of information sharing.
Very relaxed culture in terms of attire, interaction.
People are very respectful in terms of not losing their temper or criticizing each other openly.

Cons

The firm doesn't market itself well to experienced, new hires - it is difficult to get a clear idea of what the job involves in some groups... especially on the fixed income side. There is also a tedious learning curve with respect to mastering database systems before you have an opportunity to actually do interesting work. Finally, there is a culture of 'pay-your-dues' which appears to stem from the fact that the firm was built organically i.e. many new hires from college are now senior management. This approach has its disincentives.

Advice to Senior Management

On the fixed income side, do not hire experienced MBA's unless you can give them roles which are aligned with their skill sets. It can be frustrating to do tasks that don't leverage your strengths.

Pros

Top notch and dedicated coworkers. The firm is well positioned to handle the current crisis, despite the recent fall in stock price. Overall compensation is strong. Management supports movement within the firm.

Work and life balance seems fairly strong across the firm, although long hours can be expected in most positions. Opportunities for advancement are plentiful, and hard work seems to be well rewarded.

Top management is well respected, and has a great deal of experience.

Cons

Hours can be somewhat longer than at peer firms. Base salaries may not be as high as at some other firms. There really is not very much to complain about here.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep up the good work

Pros

Compensation and senior management are very good, most of the executive members have been with the company since the beginning. Bonuses were better each year and the company grew at a steady but controlled pace. The culture in the office was a positive one and I made good friends with most people in the office. Socials and outside the office get togethers were positive experiences. Benefits were solid and a reasonable cost to employees. In the Wilmington office there is a free gym and a cafeteria with decent food. Even after leaving the company I still keep in touch with multiple colleagues.

Cons

After the MLIM merger, BlackRock lost opportunities to promote from within as there were just too many employees. Princeton sucked the life out of other office, forcing employees in NY and Wilmington to work harder to compensate. Overnight, these same employees had to do more work while the larger number of employees in Princeton continued their lackluster output. After the merger, all original employees of BlackRock felt that it immediately became harder to be promoted and the small company feel vanished into a pile of bureaucratic paperwork and meetings. I left to explore a more interesting opportunity that I felt would not have been possible.

Advice to Senior Management

More focus on fast tracking and training junior employees who show high potential.

Pros

Chances are, lots of smart people in your entering class, and (on the surface), CEO seems decent enough but whether or not you enjoy the "call-center" division is pretty much up to luck. "Solutions" is the division that produces portfolio risk tools/metrics for Blackrock the "Asset Manager" and also outsources the platform to third party money managers. It is split in to two groups: the Financial Modelling Group who are really the brains behind the risk analytics are a bunch of PhDs. And then there is the Portfolio Analytics Group (PAG) which is basically a glorified call center. If you luck out and join a sub-division within PAG that has a responsible third year associate, you'll learn quite a bit and will probably land a nice job elsewhere after a year or two. Otherwise, be prepared spend your days plugging leaks and to take the shaft when things go wrong. Chances of moving into portfolio management or financial modelling are slim based on past promotions. Most people in PAG end up leaving if they are looking for more than a tech support role.

Cons

6 work days (Sunday through Friday). Certain middle management in Solutions (MD) are careerists and certain third-years are brown nosers with little concern for your development. Expect to get little feedback or guidance. Due to business growth, expect to be spread thin and work hours.
Depending on which sub-group you end up in, you might get unlucky and work under a self-serving third-year analyst. (and during evaluations, done twice a year with nary any feedback in between, the third year has the last word on you).
You are expected to take on most of the responsibility from the beginning. Because of the complexity of the software (which some have likened to a big rube golberg machine), it's sometimes difficult to exactly pinpoint where a problem started. As a result, most of the "management" that goes on is more of "arse-covering", and if you're not a prolific enough of a blame-deflector, you'll end up with a "strike". So be smart, and watch your own arse first. Be proactive and complain to your hiring manager about third-years if need be before it's too late.

Advice to Senior Management

Stronger oversight and feedback from hiring manager. don't trust everything your third-year tells you.

Pros

Fast paced and smart people everywhere. Very client focused.

Cons

Long hours and no respect for the family or family time. Stingy with the compensation. There is a lack of organization and small company mentality. Everybody wears different hats and it seems chaotic.

Advice to Senior Management

Provide more communication and possibly organization charts? and enforce a culture where family time is valued. More charity work is also recommended

Pros

A lot of my colleagues are very competent. There's real valuable work to be done in BRS in product development. Less red tape involved in getting stuff done, although its increasing.

Cons

I've found that there's a lot of favoritism and ass kissing that goes on. I don't see that people are rewarded for hard work or accomplishments but if someone does something wrong its blown way out of proportion... at least at BRS from what I've seen in the product development group, politics is huge. People scheme against other people and in several cases I've experienced individuals who have been forced to quit because people in senior positions didn't like them for unacceptable reasons.

Advice to Senior Management

There's next to no management training... It's like they've never dealt with people before. Senior management makes me feel like a resource instead of a person. I wish that there were 360 degree reviews of management that were actually taken seriously. A lot of the management in the product development group at BRS is unprofessional and scheming.

Pros

Job safety, learning opportunities. One has to monumentally screw up to get fired. Also, the firm en large is very skilled and competent There are reasons BLK became the largest asset manager in the US, and the uppermost management really knows what they are doing. Depending on the group, BLK can reward dedication and hard work very well. If you choose the right team and work hard, you will make a good career and learn things you would not learn pretty much anywhere else. In addition to upper management, BLK has a 'skeleton' team of very smart and competent professionals. If you can become one of them, you are set.

Cons

BLK is very team specific. While work experience on a number of teams (Portfolio management, Financial Modeling) is extremely rewarding and pleasant, other teams can be quagmires, filled with incompetents, for the lack of a better description. Keep in mind that the asset manager side and "Solutions" business are run very differently. Solutions is a software company with few of the glamor and opportunities found on the asset manager side. Watch out for your MD. He or she, more than anything else will make or break your career at BLK. While there is a number of very fair, objective and merit-focused MDs, you may run into a bureaucrat/careerist, who will think nothing of using you as a slave and trample your career to make a few extra bucks for him/herself. Granted, this kind of person can be found in any company, but this is probably the biggest danger at BLK, as the upper management does have a clue and leads the company well.

Advice to Senior Management

Purge the middle management ranks in Solutions, and pay more to the remaining people (and the grunts). You will get rid of the dead weight and increase efficiency many times over, as those who remain will be compensated and motivated.

Pros

BlackRock is a great place to tell people you work at. The pay is good and benefits are standard. It is the place to be in this difficult market time.

Cons

Longer hours, high stress at times, people are uptight. Office locations (outside of nyc) are not the best and offer little amenities. People think they are more important than they really are. Some managers belittle employees and blame you for things that were not your fault.

Advice to Senior Management

C-suite management is doing a great job. Other MD's could improve by being less uptight and less concerned with following bureaucratic procedures. There can be too much focus on things that really do not matter like cc'ing one person too many on an email.

Pros

As part of large organization, it provides ready support to meet objectives.

Cons

The company infrastructure needs much work. It is very frustrating to watch inefficiencies in multiple departments.

Advice to Senior Management

Pay attention to the corporate departments that are currently inefficient and causing personnel wasted time.

Pros

Best people of industry work here . Knowledge you gain at work so precious. If you like competitive environment and/or workaholic env this is place for you. If you put efforts , you will see good results in term of your career and salary.

Cons

difficult to balance work and life, if you wish to compete in BlackRock. Everything is based on performance and skin color.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep rocking! Now we have earned the name on street , please please please make decisions and policies that will help keep promises we gave to our clients and CLIENTS.