Pros: Line on the resume. Good pay, but if you count all the hours you really work, it's less impressive. The building is really cool: multicolored glass, transparency, lots of open space. Events scheduled for interns. Flexible work hours.

Cons: Work is not really challenging. Lots of repetitive work. Need to fill out programmer's notes every day. If you're a programmer and you hope to learn more about finance by working here, it won't happen. If you're an intern, you cannot bill more than 40 hours per week. Almost everybody works more, but you won't be paid for overtime. Free food and drinks are always there, but if you're health-conscious, most of it won't be of much benefit to you. IB - "Instant Bloomberg" - instant messaging for Bloomberg employees - can get in the way of work. Old technology.

Pros: This is the kind of place where you feel honored to be among the smart people working here. Lots of opportunity for advancement and to learn, both formally and informally. Very cool perks, like free admission into any museum you can think of and great company parties. Having a TV studio in the building meant occasional celebrity sightings.

Cons: Long hours, usually worked until 8 p.m., and I was too worn out to do anything after work. Senior management would sometimes tell us that we needed to stop working so hard, but it was just lip service. The culture and the project deadlines required constant long hours. I felt guilty leaving at 6 p.m. There seemed to be a lack of organization at the team lead and management levels, which trickled down to the developers. The open work environment basically meant constant interruptions. It was hard to focus and get anything done until the end of the day when most people had gone home. On the other side of training is the unofficial requirement to spend time training new developers. Normally, when building a team, this is a good thing, but in the two years I was there, I trained five temporary consultants. So, instead of building a team, all that training just went to completing their short-term project, then they were gone.

Pros: Free food, flexible work hours (if you do not work in trading systems), corporate perks, and a health benefits package.

Cons: Backstabbing. Managers behave like dictators with no accountability throughout the chain of command. Outright lies on performance reviews. Performance is proportional to sycophancy. The culture of meritocracy and fairness is being systematically dismantled. Basically, a H-1B sweatshop. Blame the person you don't like instead of the real culprit and get him/her fired.