BlackRock

Great office at nice locations, though a lack of places to eat nearby.

Nice cafeteria, a bit on the expensive side, but I like it.

Good to have the company name on the resume.

• Immense number of meetings - at BLK we just love them. Even meetings about meetings. It's hard to do any work.
• I think they track everything you do.
• "Unlimited vacation." But I'm pretty sure if you allocate more than 3 weeks, you will either be laid off before you even take it. :) I've seen it.
• Legacy systems - pretty much everything on prem, with minimal cloud exposure. Everything engineered with either C or Java 8.
• The DEV environment is shared with thousands of employees. If one person messes up something, you can't do any work. The managers just shrug off when you mention this, and don't take any initiatives to improve the working conditions.
• Lot of politics - if you are not loud or not a good talker (or don't have a manager who stands by you), you'll be eaten by others.
• I get the impression they pretty much try to be like Goldman Sachs, but not very well.
• The leadership is quite amusing - you can see guitars and rock & roll pictures in their offices. But they are quite distant. They hardly say hi, or try to be friendly, or ignore you in the elevators even when you speak with them.
• Every other day, there are climate activists and protesters peacefully protesting in front of the building. You are prohibited to speak, talk, or even take a flier from them. If you do, you risk being fired.

Improve the culture. Encourage contributors, not just those who are the loudest. Fire a few bad MDs that are there just for being there a long time, and heads, and hire smart people. Do something about the environment. Don't just ignore the protests. Let your employees talk to them, show that you care about the environment. Do something about DEV and legacy systems.