BlackRock Reviews in New York City, NY Area

Pros

Good benefits package and bonus pay

Cons

No transparency in management decisions
Little career advancement

Advice to Senior Management

Better opportunities for growth needed

Pros

Can learn a lot
Some very smart people
Not too much red tape

Cons

Some not so smart people
A bit too much politics and cliques

Advice to Senior Management

Don't morph into such a corporate behomoth

Pros

encourage initiative and thought
provide encouragement
complicated and challenging environment
great colleagues with vast institutional knowledge who are willing to share

Cons

long hours
recently expanded, feels like wholesome
undisclosed rule of lunch at desk
complicated systems, can lead to complicated projects

Advice to Senior Management

keep pursuing those who can manage projects well. disclose what your plans are for the advancement of the employee. allow employyes to focus on an individual project (remove multi-tasking for time-sensitive items)

Pros

Looks good on a resume
Good exposure to senior managers
Decent benefits (medical, dental, 401k, gym)
Intelligent people
Many chances to build different skill sets

Cons

The "master plan" they have changes from week to week. Together with poor communication down the line, leads to frequent waste of time on projects made redundant. Opportunties for real advancement and decent compensation all depend on what group you are in. Certain key areas can get you from analyst to director in 7-8 yrs. The majority however, practice lateral career moves and promotions in name only that will leave you doing pretty much the same thing for x amount of years with only a modest increase in your pay, and usually not much decrease in your hours.

Advice to Senior Management

Too many people that drank the kool-aid in mid-upper mgmt. Focus more on making sure groups are run properly instead of an unsustainable pace of expansion.

Pros

- Decent pay (for interns; from what I saw, salaries for new analysts are pretty much at market)
- Nice perks
- Great location
- Good name for resume building

Cons

- Very stressful environment
- Unsupportive management (see the first point)
- Very hard to pick up anything on your own (not a good idea to join outside of "intern season")
- Equally difficult to make a discernable difference as an intern.
- Old technologies (including the software being sold)
- In-house solutions for everyday general software (IM, application management, etc) pale in comparison to market-proven technologies.

Advice to Senior Management

Don't be prepared for interns only during the summer months.

Pros

Incredibly collaborative culture from a senior level all the way down. There are no fifes from what I have observed in my time there (just under two years). It is also quite cerebral and BRS (with the exception of the Financial Markets Advisory Group) is basically a technology company (if that's the culture you're looking for).

Cons

There isn't an aggressive commercially focused culture that you would typically find elsewhere on Wall Street. Knowledge management / dissemination is relatively poor. They do not treat lateral hires that well.

Advice to Senior Management

BRS needs to hire technology people rather than people interested in finance. The whole job is an absolute charade for people who don't know what it's really like.

Pros

Resume builder
Large firm and growing

Cons

Technical job, not enough finance
Lack of senior leadership; managers are all too inexperienced
Lack of opportunity to grow and transfer within firm
Lack of support and learning

Advice to Senior Management

Focus on allowing employees the opportunity to understand a wider spectrum and the other groups at the firm.

Pros

- Good Benefits (401K match, tuition remibursement, health club reimbursement, etc.)
- Somewhat stable in the present economic environment
- Good name on the resume

Cons

- Absolutely no career growth. Promotions are in name only. You can stay with the company for 5 years and basically do the exact same job.
- In some departments there is a culture of "Just Get it Done" without thinking of the downstream effect. This will lead to many late/stressful nights cleaning up messes.
- Incompetent middle manangement. Amateur HR department.

Advice to Senior Management

Morale is at an all-time low right now. Invest in your junior people or you see a mass exodus when the economy gets better.

Pros

- great name on your resume (but that is about it)
- you get a general knowledge about financial markets and product
- depending on position, you can get access to portfolio managers

Cons

- very poor career development/ it is better to know the right person than be the right person
- incredibly long hours
- compensation significantly below rest of the street
- incompetent middle-level management

Advice to Senior Management

Management is incapable of understanding the needs and wants of their employees. They constantly over-promise and act as if nothing happened if they cannot deliver. That does not only reflect bad management but also makes for lousy people.... Just a thought to consider!!!

Pros

Great culture and people, lot of freedom

Cons

Business is not profitable enough to justify work force of 2500+

Advice to Senior Management

Make more money