Bloomberg L.P. Reviews in New York City, NY Area

Pros

Good Salary
Smart people
rapidly changing finance world makes it fun to work
ownership and work is appreciated and used by clients quickly

Cons

less opportunities to grow
Lot of oldies - change is tough
proprietary technology so you don't gain lot of transferrable skills

Advice to Senior Management

Ensure that you have all generations in company so that it doesn't become Japan
Create grown opportunities for new talent

Pros

Many excellent trainings: both on Finance and Programming.
The intern program is nice and I learned a lot from my teammates.

Cons

The work can be boring if you have been there for many years. Messy code base make it hard to change and maintain.

Advice to Senior Management

From my point of view, the architecture is old. It's worthwhile to invest on the new technologies before it is too late.

Pros

well organized training form. good pantry. fresh food and free coffee. fast pace working style is pretty wall street style. expanding firm.

Cons

some fields touch really old fortran code, and most of the positions have very limited opportunity to face client.

Advice to Senior Management

should kill fortran code..should pay more attention to employee to make sure they are working on something they have interested on

Pros

Got the chance to work with very talented people. Got opportunity to meet some senior management and take part in Bloomberg employee activities. Pantry. Great compensation.

Cons

The work was not super inspiring. The elevator floor restrictions are annoying but tolerable. TIcket system is slightly wonky and could use reworking.

Advice to Senior Management

Make sure to take care of career progression for employees! More frequent feedback would also be a good idea. (Also maybe move away from the metrics system?)

Pros

Competitive compensation.
Nice building and work evironment.
R&D treated with respect not just as expense like other financial institutions.
Free snacks.

Cons

A lot of proprietary development and technologies used.
Lack of interesting projectsdepending on which team you work on.
Limited career growth.

Advice to Senior Management

Provide more clarity and transparency about issues affecting the company.
Provide more communication with employees.
Focus on improving non-terminal growth.

Pros

-great perks ( free drinks, bagels, fresh fruit' snacks & occasional gourmet dinners)
-Fantastic benefits package...only few other big companies match ( apple, Microsoft, Facebook)
-4 weeks of vacation to start!
-Hard work...unless why would you want to be here?

Cons

-long hours, during project launches (I'm nitpicking here...comes with the territory)
-Allow the elevator to stop on the 4th floor!!!! (inside joke), but very valid critic.

Advice to Senior Management

None so far...haven't been around long enough

Pros

- Comprehensive training on the finance world and how money works
- Comprehensive R&D training for new programmers to help them get acclimated to their jobs
- Most teams are filled with programmers constantly striving to improve the products and the large code base they are working with (or in some cases, are stuck with).
- Management encourages teams to stick to 9-5 mentality except during the worst crunch periods, which are scarce.
- If you are ever forced to work late, there's free "night-time" company shuttles to get you quickly home & to your bed, no matter how far away you live.
- Good sexual and personal harassment training. Makes clear what peoples' boundaries are and where the law & the company stands on it.
- Good perks: Health & disability benefits, Gym Membership, Free Snacks to chomp on while you write code, most of them healthy.
- Decent company match in their 401k program.
- Occasional speaker seminars from big names in the finances and programming industry.

Cons

- Management favors certain subordinates over others due to personality traits, not ability to perform the job.
- Management focuses too much on time estimates & performance metric measurements, and too little focus on providing proper guidance to subordinates. Subordinates are often left in the dark on how to approach tasks correctly.
- Management often ignores subordinate accomplishments, and instead focuses on their mistakes, using them as a verbal & written weapon in yearly reviews, resulting in managers looking good to their managers, while the subordinate is demoralized. Management is also poor on properly suggesting how to help a subordinate fix or resolve mistakes.
- Too much focus on code "appearance" policies, and not enough focus on testing the code people write. It is almost as if management wants programmers to release mistakes to customers so they can blame the programmer when something goes wrong.
- R&D Training at the time I was an employee was almost 3 months long, with much of the material not even relevant to the job itself you get once you're done with training. There is clearly some miscommunication between the Training Instructors and the Programmers.
- Skilled programmers are often "promoted away" from programming into management, even if they are not good at managing people.
- Business is too focused on short-term quarterly earnings and refuse to let programming teams invest time on projects that could improve the company over the long term.
- Programming teams within company are too isolated from each other with almost no inter-team communication and very little lateral movement between teams. Every team appears to be "trying to do everything themselves".
- Depending on which group you're in, you could be stuck with "mundane code maintenance" instead of the more interesting job of coding new or enhanced features in the company products.
- Too many proprietory technologies. If you work here for too long, then leave to work elsewhere, you often end up "relearning" equivalent technologies.
- Even if you get a good yearly review, your raise is typically lower than the increase in overall cost of living in the New York City area.
- One nice manager I had was "banned from the floor" of a different programming group for catching bugs in their product & bringing it to their attention. People shouldn't be punished for doing the right thing.
- Typical workspace environment is full of hundreds of people (with no walls or cubicles) and can get very noisy. 10 people chatting is no big deal, but 100 people chatting is distracting when you're trying to code & rushing to make a deadline. Be prepared to be most productive in the late hours, after most people gone home, or at the very least wear some headphones with music playing to tune them out.
- Managers and business groups peer-pressure employees during company parties to "get in" on their mentality and whatever activity they're up to. If you disagree with what they're doing due to ethical or religious reasons, or you "don't get" what they're up to, you are immediately made fun of and ostracized.

Advice to Senior Management

Management needs to properly motivate subordinates and help them improve, and focus less on emphasizing their mistakes and demoralizing them. Through habitual destructive criticisms, management successfully made me believe I was a bad programmer and a bad person. I was later surprised at the next company I worked in to learn that none of this is true. It took a lot of therapy to remove Bloomberg management's effect on me. Also, the programming teams should cooperate a little more with each other, and this can reduce some of the inefficient redundancies. I can go on & on all day with more advice to management, but most of it is properly summarized in the con section.

Pros

It has free foods! It is a big company with nice benefits. Comfortable working enviroment. A lot of groups and doing a great variaty of business.

Cons

Too big, hard to get yourself promoted. Pay raise slowly. Reward less for exceptional work, and treat people more equally.

Advice to Senior Management

Seems it is transforming from relying on people to relying on policies. But still, people is the most important thing for the success of a tech company.

Pros

Great benefits, young and fun environment. A lot of exposure to different market players and environments- hedge funds, PMs, traders, etc.

Cons

There is very little time spent on building a skill set that can be transferred, depending on career goals and past experience it may not be a great springboard to buy/sell side or front office finance. Those who have worked on the street in general do better and gain credibility quickly with clients as opposed to the "fresh out of college" reps that are rushed through the process.

Advice to Senior Management

Provide additional "market player" training to make job a bit more relevant.

Pros

Great pay
Great environment
Fast paced

Cons

Stressful environment
Growth prospects could be limited