Pros
I’ve worked at Bloomberg Intelligence long enough to know the future here is far brighter than stuck in a broken bulge-bracket boiler room (do you remember the heyday - when the buyside trusted their views, Associates loved their jobs and Analysts didn’t live layoff-to-layoff? Then you are alone...). Like most of my senior colleagues, I was a successful Analyst at a traditional research shop you‘d know. Here I have more client access, more access to companies and experts, and more resources to build my franchise. It would take a true lack of vision to ever go back.
I decided to write this after reading several narrow-minded nuggets, lobbed into this forum by some grumpy elves (so scarce at BI, most of us can guess who). I hope I can offer some balance, and not sound promotional because, frankly, working here is pretty good. I’ve taken enough interviews to know I have good options, and seen a few peers leave for seats they really wanted. To me, BI is the best place to be.
I’d also like to counter some of the unfair baloney leveled at management. I’m not a manager, but their fairness and vision is a key reason that I joined and that I stay. Know any “leaders” you’d follow among those still squeezing pennies out of sellside sweatshops? Ours have the honesty to see the legacy biases, vision to shape a novel product, and guts to get started.
The BI product is fun to write and powerful to read because a generalist can quickly engage it, an expert can dive deep, it is soaked in data and it is modular in a way that brings the right analyst’s voice into the right part of any report. Imagine writing a detailed research piece, but knowing your peers would link your best paragraphs right into their own work – and that you’d better recheck it often, because the graphs are live!
As an Associate, the pieces we author on industry basic concepts and indicators will be yours to write sooner than anywhere else. You’ll build company models experienced buysiders use to actually make decisions (not ones designed to play the “call me, I’m far out of consensus!” game)
You’ll also battle a bunch of weird new technology systems, and always wonder that the “rules” are! Why? Because, this is NOT an ancient financial house where a bunch of well-connected jerks rig rules to make sure you can’t get your full bonus or take their cushy job. This IS a (well-funded) startup, where quickly making anything new or cool clients want comes before designing a clear, simple career path for you and us. But, as always in life, uncertainty comes with benefits.
As an Associate, us Analysts will actually teach you to pick up coverage. We are growing, we have a lot more to cover and we don’t have to defend ourselves against your career progress! Oh, and we’ll let you have time to have a life at the end of the day. Oh, and you’ll actually make some friends, because it isn’t “you or them” in the next round of inevitable layoffs (see history of “real research” shops). Oh, and the top-to-bottom pay disparity here is FAR narrower than any I’ve seen on the street. Oh, and you’ll get to work at Bloomberg – where people are much happier overall than most places.
As an Analyst, you either already see why this is a great place – or not. In the latter case I’d probably respect you, but not want to work with you. I came here for novelty and innovation and to be with colleagues who were also uninspired by the bare-knuckles battle down the old-school path. Frankly, I’ve been paid well enough that I’m still glad I took the risk. Best of luck with MiFID 2!
Cons
It's tough to balance the stable research product clients expect, against the fast technology change expected within an innovator like Bloomberg. This drives some false starts and uncertainty into daily life.
