Bloomberg reviews

1. All work life in Bloomberg is devoted to one product: the Bloomberg terminal. Because of this, the company does not need to develop their staff as much as other companies. All side products are at least in part based on the terminal: AIM, TOMS, etc. - you need the terminal first. I guarantee after a year or two you will be sick of that product. 2. The company is not public, there is a personality cult in there which links back to the founder - Mike Bloomberg. The current CEO (D. Doctoroff) tries to steer the company the same way MB did. There is little room for having your own opinion, there is no need for that. The product took off massively, the goal is to maximize revenue and the leadership is centralized. The structure is anything but flat. 3. Every now and then the management in the UK or globally will slide into a panic attack.. This is typically triggered by weaker than expected sales or some other figures which hint about worsening economic landscape. You can expect useless call-campaigns, lots of facetime and generally a lot of effort going in to justify everything you do. 4. One of the biggest cons of working for Bloomberg is the work/life balance. You will work 10 hours flat (8-6pm). Mind you this is not a bank... You do not get paid as well and any bonus you earn is a joke. Essentially you put in the hours without the prospect of getting rewarded for it. A guy I knew, senior sales (been with company 4-5 years), got around GBP 45,000 per year. I dare not ask what he started on as a graduate.. 5. If you're a graduate or someone with little experience - don't even think about the "Sales and Analytics" programme. For the next 1.5-2 years you will be answering 4-8 questions at a time on a Bloomberg helpdesk. This can be anything from "where is button x" to "why is my y price wrong". I've seen 50% of graduate intake leave DURING TRAINING. I have NEVER seen this in any other company. The ones who stay quickly get fed up with this type of work. You then have two routes: sales (terminal or other product) or staying within the helpdesk and becoming a manager. 6. In terms of turnover, the company is split nearly 50/50 between those who leave within 1 year and those who stay for a very long time. Once you join, you will frequently encounter staff who worked there for 10, 15, even 25 years! They form a small group of people who just "grew into" the company and lack motivation or opportunities to move elsewhere. The younger employees typically quickly realize that they can do better and leave. The middle is the smallest part. 7. Bloomberg tries to brand itself as a financial services company. It is not. If you're thinking of going to Bloomberg to move into e.g. banking later on you're much better off applying to bank, fund or a brokerage. There have been cases of salespeople moving to work for their clients (typically banks) but do a search on LinkedIn yourself: majority of people who stay and go into sales end up with some small never-heard-of financial companies. Not exactly a career express. Bear in mind everyone knows Bloomberg is a vendor, a TV company.. try filling out a job application to a bank and see what Bloomberg is classed as for yourself. 8. The Bloomberg marketing is truly mental. The company utilizes sharp colours across their offices with live TV playing on almost every floor. After 10 hours per day of listening to that you will be pretty exhausted. Also the famous fish tanks which are scattered across the office cost approximately USD 10,000 per month to maintain. Next time you're wondering why your bonus is so small there's your answer. The money available to market the company and the product is significant, the money to invest in staff is very limited indeed. A colleague of mine had his CFA refund declined after he moved departments internally..

-Do not work a finance job; this is a technology company first -Compensation is not built of effort or experience but rather of how long you have been in the company -Very poor compensation advancement structure -Lack of career progression -Difficult to transition to a different job (in finance) due to lack of useful experience -Career/Experience is very heavily dictated by your manager -No freedom in time management; everything is dictated what you need to do by the minute -Potential to get stuck at your current role