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

Pros

Diverse company
Active in the community
High energy
Lots of opportunity

Cons

Unclear path to higher compensation

Advice to Senior Management

Make things a little clearer with regards to compensation and peer comparisions

Pros

There's a lot of media reports about working at Bloomberg, especially in the news division and most of them are exaggerated. A lot is expected, but comp is based on performance - not seniority.

Cons

Long hours (although not as long as reported). There is pressure to get work done quickly at times. There has been a cut back in expenses.

Advice to Senior Management

My advice would be to keep it up with expansion plans. Bring in more seasoned reporters. Increase branding by buying the naming rights of a baseball stadium.

Pros

It is a great name to work for and will certainly bring in a good reputation. There is always an opportunity to learn more and take advantage of different career paths.

Cons

The compensation, especially when you are moving up withing the company, does not keep to industry expectations. Management can be a hit or miss and truly makes your career here.

Advice to Senior Management

It is great to find new ways to entice employees and keep great talent, but first you have to get to know them.

Pros

Pay is decent when factoring in bonuses
Benefits are better than most employers in the financial industry
Work Life Balance is acceptable

Cons

Upper Management does not communicate to employees and often makes decisions "in the dark" that do not make sense
Policy is not applied equally to all departments specifically work from home
Management promotes from within based on politics and not abilities or knowledge
Favoritism is common practice

Advice to Senior Management

Start hiring senior executives from outside the organization as these individuals can bring vast knowledge and experience that is typically missing in most departments

Pros

If you feel the need to get a Big Name on your resume, like I did, you could hardly go wrong with this company. There is an army of smart people working here.

Cons

Unfortunately, the business has accumulated incredible of bagage around software development and the byzantine terminal always yields less information then you would expect. It's a small wonder that any development takes place using those archaic systems.

Advice to Senior Management

Complexity kills. This has been recognized in building a newer version of terminal, but the core of the complexity process is still out there. The only way is to expose more of the data API, so smaller companies will consume them.

Pros

Good benefits package
Snacks
The people who are not in any "leadership" roles

Cons

Meaning of leadership is lost on TLs and PMs
No room for advancement
A lot of self-important people

Advice to Senior Management

Get over yourselves and realize that people matter; quit with this metrics stuff.

Pros

fancy office and you are allowed to show off by inviting personal gusts anytime.
Work-wise - trading floor environment, no privacy - which is good, as you see your coworkers and share. they pay for your exams you passed them. decent compensation package.

Cons

as company grew - so did bureaucracy. very often you just waist time on absolutely unnecessary and annoying things.
no mater how hard you work - you not gonna get what you 'think' you deserve - the only way is to either move to another department or to a different employer.

Advice to Senior Management

you want employees to be flexible - so allow they to have flexible schedule as well.
switch to 8hr/day instead of 9hr/day

Pros

The culture and colleagues make it a great place to work. good pantry. fresh food and free coffee. fast pace working style is pretty wall street style. expanding firm.

Cons

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

Advice to Senior Management

Create grown opportunities for new talent, 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

The flat corporate structure and 24 hour pantry promote dialogue and teamwork in the workplace.

Cons

Departmental segmentation makes workforce unitized.

Advice to Senior Management

Try to instill greater allegiance to Bloomberg L.P. rather than just to your department.

Pros

Great Benefits Package
Smart and stimulating colleagues
Opportunity to learn about the world of finance.
Regular working hours after you have been here for a while(more or less)
Pay is good in good years. At the first sign of a lean market the incentive pay is disproportionately reduced.
Great place to stay if you have kids and need an easy job to coast through or are waiting to collect social security.

Cons

Technologically in the stone age - hence once you are here for a while it is very hard to get another tech job outside as your skills deteriorate.
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Absolutely no opportunities for growth. Management does not really care about growth of their employees - they just provide lip service with all the latest initiatives as they have to tackle the alarming attrition rate.

Senior management is very old school and does not know how to run a 21st century knowledge shop. It is a very 1980's mafia style work culture. Loyalty and appearance of loyalty is prized above everything else. New York Times called it a 'digital white-collar sweatshop'.

There is no thought given to software processes - it is a single minded focus to get stuff out to clients as fast as possible without regards to quality. As a result the product is a hotchpotch mix of applications which no one understands how to use. In their rush to get products out they have made some really bad software decisions which they have then spent man-decades correcting.

Advice to Senior Management

Umm, right like they will listen.