Great packages but beware. - Software Engineer Bloomberg Employee Review

4.0
Jun 17, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Drawing points for Bloomberg: great compensation/packages, intelligent co-workers, industry leader. At work you'll be working with some very intelligent people, some known widely throughout the industry. It's also nice to work for a company that is the industry leader in financial data and news - it blows all competitors out of the window. Depending on your personality, you may or may not like the fact that the pace at Bloomberg is very fast. Unlike traditional software companies, where time is spent on requirements gathering and design, Bloomberg emphasizes time to market and getting things out the door: software moves once a week, not once a year like other companies.

Cons

The technology is ancient (the majority). A lot of programmers are simply maintaining legacy code (fortran, c) that cannot be retired or converted. The company also uses a TON of proprietary software, all developed in-house. For example, they've created their own Service oriented architecture (ala WSDL), two home-grown databases, entire UI framework, and other things. It's very easy to get "stuck" at bloomberg because you might be using proprietary tools 75-90% of your day! Also, there is an entire lack of structure when it comes to the software development cycle. Projects are handed out with no formal written documentation: let me repeat, NO formal written specs! There is also NO official testing (no qa teams whatsoever!). The programmer is expected to perform the testing of their applications.

Explore other reviews about Bloomberg

5.0
Jun 1, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Free food, good salary, incredible Pro Bono opportunities

Cons

Lack of flexibility around RTO policy

4.0
Jun 28, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Opportunities to do lots of work with data and finance to apply knowledge in both programming and Subject-Matter Expertise (SME). Excellent Work-Life Balance (WLB) and extremely welcoming culture. You can reach out to anyone for help or just to talk, and they will get back to you (although management does require more scheduling in advance). Generous compensation (good wage) and benefits, including housing for interns. If you heard the rumors that the Bloomberg Princeton office has a great Bloomberg Pantry (read: company-provided breakfast and lunch), the rumors are true.

Cons

Not the place for those looking for cutting-edge AI. The company is not as fast with AI as the company prioritizes reliability and accuracy above all, and much of AI is not at an acceptable threshold for management to be willing to take that risk with financial data (at least in 2026). You may get a project to automate menial processes, which is really cool, but that tends to involve actually doing the menial processes, which feels unproductive. Princeton office is good but New York is considered preferable. Coworkers are not very reachable outside of work hours. Compensation is low in Data compared to Software Engineers.

See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All