Bloomberg reviews

I guess that a few stories to represent the level of this company are better than a list of the cons: - Week 4 of training, we are taught how to answer the phone/make a phone call following a script. Been called off as I was laughing during this "lesson" (note I was coming from Commodities Sales at Citi) and was obliged to make mock calls with the "teacher" until I got it "right" (bloomberg style right). - Comments/sexual allusions that would be unacceptable even at a Uni party made towards women colleagues (I am a man, I worked on trading floors, I saw most of those stuffs in many places, but here it was literally "oh we have this opening, you want it? Then why don't you show me your tits?" - disgusting). - Micromanagement part 1: after working straight 7 to 11 (meaning I didn't even leave my chair to get a cup of water or going to the toilette), I decide to take a 10 mins break to pee, drink, and smoke a cigarette. When back I see chats coming from 5 different "managers" asking me where I was and why I wasn't taking questions flowing in from clients. - Micromanagement part 2: I come in the office with nausea, I end up vomiting in the toilette after 30 mins on the desk, disappearing for a good 20 mins. When back, I see I received the usual amounts of chats from people asking me why I wasn't working, I ignore them and go to the "supervisor manager" asking to leave as I just got sick. He asked me EXACTLY what I had and to give him more details. Well, I gave him all the details he wanted. - Snitching part 1: after months doing a particular process in the same way, I got called by manager who is livid and shouting at me as I didn't follow the correct process for that task. The next day I find out there were many people that knew about what I was doing (it was my 1st month there) and didn't say anything but were instead complaining about what I was doing... because of course in any normal company you spot an error and you don't help out, right? Absurd. - Snitching part 2: the infamous story of a guy who started with me, 35yo with wife and kids. He left his previous job as a store manager to start at Bloomberg, after 6 months he was fired. The funny thing being, his manager put him under "performance plan" after 5 months, which means you have 1 month to get better or you are out. He did become better. His manager calls him to get a meeting with HR on friday afternoon, telling him not to get worried, as everything will be fine and he passed his performance plan. What happened that friday? Fired. - Many stories, really many, of very stupid, not smart at all people getting promoted just because they were brown noses. Literally, as long as you say yes to managers ans swallow all their sheeets you'll have a great life, but then how can you look at yourself in the mirror in the morning? - Once we had a "meeting" to discuss a new product (a bloomberg function really, nothing more), we were asked to call clients (traders, equity) first thing in the morning at 8am. I suggested that maybe, just maybe, is not a great idea to call traders around market opening as 1. They won't listen to you, 2. They will shout at you, 3. If you keep doing that, they will finally hate Bloomberg, 4. Is simply a very stupid idea. Guess what? I've been called off by the manager and the guy doing this ridiculous presentation. I would love to call out names, those people really deserve the public shame. I'll limit to this, but please, if you really want a career in finance and you want to be recognized for your work, then don't work at Bloomberg. The job description they place online is one the best scam ever done on heart!

Again, I can only judge it in an engineer's points of views: - Just so-so tech infrastructure among financial companies (not even counting some HFT firms). They use extremely out-of-date infrastructure that many had abandoned in early 2000. The key thing is: software engineering is NOT the money-maker; technical improvement is always secondary to "keep things working as they are because clients need foobar before next week". In fact, even among financial companies, Bloomberg's tech infrastructure is no more than the average. You would be crying once you get into this company and learn what they're still trying to get on-board is something that mainstream has been using since 10 years ago. Seriously, take a look at what’s popular 10 years ago and you’ll know how slow and frightening that Bloomberg moves ahead. - However, compared to regular tech companies (not even to mention the big names), Bloomberg's tech stack is something that engineers may feel shame to talk about at their class re-unions. In fact, this is the most critical thing for young engineers who'd like to keep sharp in tech. To put it in the simplest way: Bloomberg (at its best eng teams) offers great opportunities to make single-cylinder combustion engines. Other tech companies provide engineers with some engines (proprietary and/or open-source) and they end up making rockets and space shuttles. At its regular teams in financial divisions, the tech stack is just... It’s all about the business logic. NO TECH! - No respect to former employees. Bloomberg never hires back former employees as loyalty is a key. So if you left, HR is not likely to take you serious anymore because they know you’re not coming back. This happened to many of my colleagues who left the company. They got poor or even no support from the company for tax, health, immigration and legal needs. Some of them got into troubles because of that. Just sad. - Blame-based performance evaluation system (they'll tell you it's merit-based but nope). Not too many chances/incentives to outperform. - Work/life balance at some teams can be disastrous. - Any fault is recorded. Low tolerance to faults, especially in divisions that make money. - Pays much less than the top tech companies.