For every year that I have worked at Bloomberg, I have found that the leadership somehow found new ways to hurt their employees.
Healthcare/Covid
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Even though our company has made record profits, amounting to almost $12 Billion USD, with my department alone booking over $250 billion in new revenue annually for the past 3 years, they decided to cut our health benefits. The copays increased so that now, almost every medical professional you see will have a $40 copay. They also began charging employees for health care at around $125 per month for you and your spouse. While this does not sounds like a lot, considering we are making record profits, it is a slap in the face to all of the hard working employees.
The HR department is a joke. In my office alone, I have been directly exposed to COVID over 4 times. I never found out I was exposed to Covid from HR. I had to text the person with Covid to find out and then alerted the people who were effected. This put myself, my wife, who is immuno-compromised, and my older parents who are immuno-compromised at tremendous risk.
Return to Office
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Leadership forces employees to work from the office. We are currently on a hybrid schedule; 3 days in the office, 2 days not in the office. This does not mean 2 days from home. If there is a holiday, or you are sick, or decide to take a vacation, then you only get 1 additional day not in the office. On top of that, flexibility, at least for my department is non-existent. I have had managers and senior leadership actually hang up on employees when discussing reasonable accommodation. This would include working remotely for an extra day so that they can visit their family, or working from home for an extra day because they had an international flight to catch.
The mandatory 3 days in the office rule has also caused tremendous turnover. From the leadership team directly, they stated, that there was over 14% turnover. This was in the summer of 2021. Since then, it has been more like 20% of the Entire company. To put that in perspective, the company currently has around 18,000 employees globally. So around 3,00+ people left, mostly due to the stringent rules put in place during return to office. They even said that they are happy to see people go. That "everyone wants Bloomberg employees". The issue, is that we cannot retain or even attract talent.
Pay
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This brings me to pay. This company, as a whole, will mess you over with pay. For most employees, pay discussions will only occur once a year in February. That means, that if you are promoted mid year to a manager, you will not see the pay increase for a full year. You absolutely have all of the responsibility though. So, if you switch departments, you may get a small bump, but otherwise, you have to wait until February to see anything meaningful.
On top of that, the pay bands are meant to absolutely mess you over . Everyone is stack ranked against others in their department. Then, they take the average salary and compare the difference between you and your peers and the job band. If you came from a department that didn't pay well, which I will get to shortly, then you will see a merit increase. As you get towards the top, they simply do not increase your pay, no matter how good you are. I had colleagues who had been at the company for 20+ years and not get any pay increases for 3 years. They simply do not care about their employees.
There is such a large pay gap between departments that it is almost inhumane. Coupled with the once a year increase in February, when you transfer from a department that doesn't pay you well to a new department, you are left with the same workload as your peers, but with, at times, HALF the salary. Great examples of this are BCS (Bloomberg Customer Support), Bloomberg Analytics, and Global Data teams. BCS gets paid something on the order of ~$62,000 in NYC per year. Analytics is slightly higher with around ~$68,000 in NYC and California. Global Data gets paid at $75,000 around the country in New York, New Jersey, and California. Imagine going from this team to a new team, with greater workload and longer hours and work for a year at the same low rate when people next to you make double what you have made. Pay increases for all of the positions that i mentioned are around $2,000-3,000 annually for most people.
Leadership
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As I mentioned before, the leadership just does not get it. They sent out an email a few months ago, during the heart of the pandemic, that said that any new hires in the analytics and global data departments must be in the office, full time, for 6 months, and after that they would consider allowing for some work from home. If that doesn't say it all about this company, i don't know what does.
The leadership team is so out of touch. They are a bunch of rich, old white guys who, 1). Don't understand what it is like to be a parent or have a family during the past few years, 2). What an average person really needs and wants...better pay, enhanced benefits, being treated with respect, and flexibility, and 3). That morale is so low and they are doing nothing to stop the bleeding. In fact, they encourage people to leave. It is just mission as usual. We are overworked, underpaid, they keep slashing benefits, we keep losing close coworkers, and they are doing nothing. Everyone I started the company with, just a few years ago, has left.
