Skip the Analytics unless you want to work on a help desk - Advanced Specialist Bloomberg Employee Review

All of this is related to the Analytics/Sales program. Daily responsibility: In general, the day-to-day is working on a help desk (75-100% of your day on average) and making cold calls to clients to pitch features on the terminal. The program is marketed as getting financial markets training, which you do get, but it often only scratches the surface. For the first 4-5 months of the role, you're in a training program and you're basically IT support for Bloomberg's clients. In the training program, you have to take multiple choice exams where the answers to the questions can be very tricky or outdated. The teachers themselves often have to give "guided reviews" where they reword questions that you'll see on the test just so that you'll pass. If you don't pass, you retake the exam and that repeats until you do pass. You could truly be the smartest person the world, but if you don't know the answers to some confusing multiple choice questions, you're already going to be a step below your peers. On the help desk, clients will ask you questions like how to print screens, find certain news stories, adjust charts, etc. Sometimes, they'll ask you questions about things you were never directly taught or tested on. There aren't many resources out there when no one else was taught either. This happens a few times a month when you first start, but it doesn't feel great when you graduated with a Finance or Business degree and then you're walking clients through how to send emails. It's crazy to even think a high tech financial software company that's existed for 40 years can't make their software intuitive enough that they must maintain a 24/7 help desk, but that's a separate issue. As you progress and specialize in an asset class, it may get easier just because it's less esoteric IT support, but it does get old after a while. Performance measurement and compensation: Your performance is measured against your "peers." This doesn't only mean the people you started with, but also people who might have started months before you and are under the same job title -- people who may already be more experienced since starting. There are specific customer service metrics that are used for evaluating you, either it's the customer's survey or another senior internal employee who evaluates your chat. Both of these are subjective, meaning that you could provide the correct answer, but if you didn't provide a help page, you'll get marked down. You could have spent an hour working through a chat and helping a client troubleshoot, but if you don't give them an update within 10 minutes while you're looking into something else, you'll be marked down. Keep in mind, you're in at least 3 chats at a time and every client is treating their question as urgent. The other side of the coin is the amount of client outreach calls you make. The goal is to make 3 calls per hour where you actually talk to the client and pitch the features. Attempts aren't taken into consideration, so if you spent an hour where you made 50 calls, only reached voicemail and clients who said they were too busy, you missed your target. If you're unlucky with who was your manager (more on this in a couple sections), they would berate you for not meeting your target, talk to you about "strategies" you can use, explain that you can shadow other people, etc, just so that you could meet your target without taking to consideration that in the 21st century, most individuals are not going to pick up an unsolicited call from a random number nor are they going to want to listen to some new grad fumble through a sales pitch. Have you ever picked up or sat through a sales call form an unknown number? Regardless, your "scores" on these metrics and/or how many "proactive calls" you make determine how much money you will make. When you're being compared to others, even if you're doing well relative to your own performance, there will always be people above you or below you and they will make more or less money, respectively, than you. For those who are competitive, this may sound like a treat. For the rest of you, just take it into consideration. Career progression: This is a program that is marketed as a pipeline between Analytics and Sales. There are 2 main career paths from the entry level role: advanced specialization or sales. Advanced specialization is cool if you like self studying and learning more in-depth about the markets. Know that when you become an advanced specialist, you are expected to be the last line of defense for the help desk. Any hard question that no one else could answer? That goes to you, so either you know it or you don't, but it's your responsibility to figure it out. When it comes to moving to Sales, there are so many hoops to jump through and the target, at least for me, may feel like it's constantly moving. One month, I was told that it was all about product knowledge, customer service, and client outreach. Then, due to "business need," I was told that I needed to specialize in some "unpopular" asset class because it would make me highly marketable in Sales. Upon doing that, naturally, my customer service scores fell because I was taking harder chats and didn't have much help given the lack of popularity. When this fell, my opportunity to move to Sales was moved again because I had to work on my customer service scores. I focused on that for a few months, and then I was told that due to headcount needs (more on this in the next section), I couldn't move to Sales. They needed me to help with taking chats... so on and so forth. So either, you get pretty lucky, the stars align, and you move just when you want to or you're pushed and pulled by whatever the "business needs" until you can move. The real unfortunate part is that Sales (at least during the pandemic, working remotely with less opportunities to travel) was more often a continuation of the client outreach calls you were already making in your entry level role. The fun side is that the company blows money on all these happy hours for clients. If you like free drinks and faking a personality for clients, this may be for you. You might be on a fast track to company-sponsored alcoholism which is the only thing that will keep you going in this job. Lastly, consider moving on to a new company or role. What are the transferrable hard skills? Customer service, sales, Bloomberg Terminal expertise, excel maybe, cold calling... Soft skills: Time management, working well under stress, communication... My list is running short. All the "hard skills" are Terminal-specific, so either you work at a new company that is desperate for a Terminal expert or you start over in a new entry level role. It's almost as if they intentionally want to make it impossible for you to leave. However, it's all about how you sell yourself, after all. Hopefully you got a lot of good sales experience to network and really market yourself. If you want a true financial analyst, data analyst, business analyst, consulting, whatever role, then this is not the place to start. If you want to stay in tech sales, work on a help desk, or in a call center for the rest of your life, maybe this job is for you. Truth be told, the main reason why so many people have stayed at this company for so long is because they make a lot of money while doing nothing in sales. The quarantine made that even easier, so put two and two together for why so many people are quitting now that Bloomberg's asking people to return to the office regularly. Business needs, headcount needs, PTO, and remote work: Bloomberg offers generous PTO. However, when working on the 24/7 help desk, the help desk comes first. Picture this hypothetical scenario: You're an equity specialist, there are 10 equity specialists in the country, and you'd like to take time off around a holiday. You enter your request for time off and it gets denied because everyone else applied for the same days off, but they still need people to staff the help desk. Maybe 2 of the other equity specialists got the days off. It's now your responsibility to find a switch and hope that one of them would be willing to cover you. If they're not willing to switch, you have to work the days that you requested off. In the new age of remote work (at least last year), the Analytics department was incredibly confusing about who got to work from home and when. You may want to go on a family vacation and work a day or two while out of town. That may not be allowed. Also, you will occasionally be expected to work weekend and holiday shifts and the same procedure applies here. If you're assigned and you can't work the shift, the onus is on you to find a cover. If you can't find one, you're working that day. In terms of the day-to-day, everything is scheduled for you a week in advance by a manager. Your lunch time is assigned to you. If you need to come to work late or leave early for any personal appointment, you need to get it approved. If you scheduled a meeting weeks ago and the schedule can't manage to have you away, you will be forced to reschedule or cancel the meeting. If you're stuck in a chat heading into lunch or a meeting, you have to try to find someone to take the chat. More often than not, no one is able to take the extra chat, so you either work into your lunch which can't be moved, or you pass the chat off before your meeting where you'll receive feedback from another rep telling you that you're not supposed to do that. Every second of your day is logged and stored. Managers can see the amount of chats you opened and resolved in a given day. If you have to ignore a chat because you're slammed, that'll be used against you. Managers use this to determine your productivity. If you take a break for too long, you'll be accused of not being productive. If you're working on a difficult chat and you've held yourself from getting new ones, there's a chance that a manager will check in and try to get you back to taking chats again. If you want some personal time during the day, you won't get that here. Every second is needs to be "used efficiently." It's understandable that there are business needs, but because so many people are also quitting, headcounts are low, meaning that you could be working weekends and holidays more frequently. You might not get the days off that you want or need to take off. You might not get much time off during the day for a break either and you'll be taking chats all day except for your one hour of lunch. Management: From the top down, frankly, management is horrible. Some of the senior managers have never worked on the help desk so they don't really understand what the day-to-day actually looks and feels like. One of the senior managers brags that they really only got this job via networking which makes it hard to believe in their leadership. Every department meeting highlights some people for making a lot of calls or leading outreach campaigns. Then, they go on and talk about the amount of chats we resolved as a department because that's the only important thing to them. They can tell you how much they value you and your work, but ultimately, it's the chats. They're so out of touch to think that the best way to combat an entire burnt out department is a competition that will "incentivize" people to work even harder. The prizes often include free lunch or a gift card. For a company that often says that people come first, that is not demonstrated in this department. If you're feeling burnt out, your manager will likely tell you to take a few days off. But wait, what if you can't take days off because of the headcount deficit? What if you need to leave your desk to take a walk and decompress? Well, you may not get that, but at least you'll get a $30 gift card or an email that recognizes your efforts. Most of the time, you don't even get that. You're lucky if you have an understanding direct manager (team leader/TL). Some TLs will put the business first and push that on you. Some TLs will put the people first and will advocate for your needs with senior management. The structure is disjoint, disorganized, and inconsistent. The TLs are not always experienced either. Sometimes, they're people who've moved from Sales and they need a slower pace of work instead of traveling and talking to clients all the time to take care of their personal life. Then, once their personal life returns back to normal, they move right back to Sales. TL turnover is high too with them leaving the firm or moving to Sales. It seems like a lot of TLs are just babysitting us and making sure we're meeting our targets. I mean, the only reason why they'd require us to work in the office is so that they can monitor us at our desks. I have no idea what else they do. I used to see them in meetings, but we didn't often see a positive change come out of these meetings, so who's to say what they really do. They're constantly changing processes and then changing them back 2 years later. It's middle management at its finest. They justify their existence by creating their own problems so that they can be the heroes that find the solutions. The solution is often something that has already been tried by an old TL who no longer works in the department. Again, you're lucky if you have a TL who genuinely cares about you and your career. More often than not, they just care about their own salaries and making themselves look good by having a good performing team on paper. Diversity & Inclusion: Overall, managers preach a passion and dedication for diversity and inclusion, but the lowest performers and lowest retention rates are among people of color, specifically Black and Latines employees. The response to this has not been to work with these current employees to help them improve, but it's been to create some diversity program to hire experienced Black and Latine employees. The worst part about this program is that these individuals have often already worked in some banking or real finance role and they're now rerouting their careers to work on the help desk. Some people enjoy the prospect of growing to sales at a tech company and becoming a senior leader in the future. Many feel that it's degrading to return to an entry level role where they work along new grads, have to take multiple choice tests during training, have to work on weekends, and may not get the time off they request. Internally, from the department, the best you get is a book club. A D&I book club. TL;DR: -Not much flexibility on a daily basis. All your work is monitored which feels like gross surveillance. -Performance/compensation is judged based on how your peers are performing. Even if you're doing well, you may not be doing as well as others and that could mean that you make less money. -Almost all careers lead to sales and the timeline is vague. They may tell you it'll be a year to a year and a half, but that goalpost may regularly be moved. They'll break you down before they get you there anyway. -Business comes first. You will have to work weekends and holidays. You may not get your requested PTO approved. Everyday is scheduled by someone else who will put the business needs before yours. -Management is disjointed and disorganized. Most senior managers view business priorities that are inconsistent with the employees' needs. -Burnout isn't really taken seriously here. They may tell you it is, but you will be overworked. If you have strong mental health, get ready to be humbled. -D&I is stated as a priority, but the actions taken are ridiculous. To quote a famous rapper, the Analytics department "does not care about Black (and Latine) people" unless it benefits them. I've reached the end of my review. I acknowledge that this is written with a bias and already has a negative connotation given that it's written in the "cons" section. If you read this in its entirety, consider that your experience may be completely different than mine was. Those who are still working in this department are either highly satisfied or are currently job searching. Take a chance and make the most out of your career if you do want to accept this position. Ultimately, think about your career and personal goals and really, really consider if this role will help you progress towards those goals.