BlackRock Reviews

Pros

Smart people
People are friendly and approachable
Incredible opportunities to learn
My 1st line manager was excellent.
Team work and collaboration are good
Management seems interested in hearing about employee concerns, and in some cases, they act on them

Cons

BlackRock does everything as cheaply as possible
Development environments need much improvement
Employee turnover is very high

Advice to Senior Management

Innovate more.
Enable people to move across departments more freely.
More management by walking around from the senior management team.

Pros

ability to have an impact and create a larger and best asset manager.

Cons

roadblocks remain on being innovative

Pros

BlackRock has a friendly working environment. Given the rapid growth of the company, there are more areas and more opportunities.

Cons

I think BlackRock provides relatively lower compensations to the employees. And when it gets bigger and bigger, there is more and more bureaucracy. Also people are not very motivated sometimes.

Advice to Senior Management

Good leadership and they are willing to provide employees what is going on with the firm and share the firm priorities.

Pros

The people you work with are intelligent. The work is challenging. And there's plenty of opportunity for advancement. I learned a lot at that job.

Cons

It's a big company, so it's easy to get lost in the fold. And I didn't always feel supported in pursuing work/life balance. The environment is aggressive and the pace is fast.

Advice to Senior Management

I had a positive experience with the management, overall. They were supportive. I felt like I was properly praised and compensated for my hard work.

Pros

It's one of the best companies in its field.
Led by a great management team.
Cares about new hires a lot.
Good training program, people are really nice.
Great review system.

Cons

You need to be smart about work/life balance.
You might end up getting stuck in one position, but the opportunities to explore do exist.

Advice to Senior Management

More work-life balance activities will help build a better morale.
Overall compensation is great, but annual compensation can be very disheartening.
Instead of waiting till the year-end to see how well one is doing, there should be a mid-year compensation analysis, so you know how well you are doing and what the projections of the year-end bonus are.
Also managers reviewing people under them is great, but it should also work vice-versa. (People working for a manger should be able to review the management style as well)

Pros

Challenging work, provides opportunities for learning and allows people to create impact within the company. Management structure is flat and encourages interaction between different levels.

Cons

Work/life balance is tilted heavily towards work. Management expects certain number of hours/week in NY office (similar to an investment management workplace). Compensation is muted due to nature of asset management business.

Advice to Senior Management

Provide more mentoring of junior talent and provide clearer guidelines for achieving sucess.

Pros

Well known brand
Large number of resources available
Easy to talk to and work with PMs
Global group but still tied together

Cons

Compensation is a bit discouraging, would like for it to match sell-side at the entry level
Nepotism - number of individuals who friends/relatives of the founders
Difficult to move between groups

Advice to Senior Management

RQA should be a more important group, it has been relagated to performance and risk but there are very smart people working in it and the firm should use them in a better way

Pros

Brand and work life balance

Cons

Poor performance development and promotion criteria is not trasparent

Advice to Senior Management

N/A

Pros

Professional development and stable firm.

Cons

Generally a lower margin business relative to Wall Street firms, which is reflected in compensation potential.

Advice to Senior Management

Management is excellent.

Pros

Great resources and technology
A lot of smart people work there
Interesting view of the markets
Reasonable hours and pay

Cons

Less comp than other financial firms
Not a ton of operational transparency
The work of junior people is not recognized as well as it could be

Advice to Senior Management

Make pay to junior people more competitive with the street if you want to attract/retain top talent
More transparency regarding roles and operations