Pros: The Location (New York, NY). Free snacks and fruits at the pantry. Perceived brand value in the job market. Networking with other people. The finance courses (most of them taught by Stuart Veale).

Cons: If you are a person who likes to be an independent contributor, technologically focused, and be given some free rein on your projects, or if you are a decent programmer who expects a disciplined approach to programming (most of the code is haphazard and difficult to maintain), this company may not be for you. Bloomberg has many ridiculous bottlenecks that would make any sane programmer cry with agony. I'm not understating this; you can get hints from all the reviews before mine. These bottlenecks/annoyances are not just in your day-to-day development but also while you are in the building. The badge-in/badge-out, the security making rounds around the office who stop you and sternly ask to wear your badge, even while you are just going to get a coffee in the pantry (I've had to literally go back to my desk to get it). I encourage you to visit the premises and talk to existing employees beforehand to get an idea of what you are getting into. There's no proper cafeteria area to eat your food. The running joke was that the bigwigs expect you to eat at your desk, so you will be around to be called upon by your manager/peer during that time. You might end up in teams (from what I've learned, this is most of them) where there is rampant micromanagement, including hints dropped about you being expected to work on weekends/late hours to meet an arbitrarily set, extremely tight deadline, even for internal projects. I believe that the "thought worker" who takes pride in his/her work cannot thrive in cultures like Bloomberg.

Pros: Very good compensation, good health insurance plan, free snacks and soda, and breakfast.

Cons: 1. There's no career growth at all. There's too much political stuff in this company. I've seen many people who don't contribute more than others on the team but get promoted to team leader or manager, just because they have good personal relationships with their boss. 2. It's not very professional in terms of software development. Bloomberg hires a lot of non-professionals to do the software development. Many people never or seldom developed software before they joined this company. So, there's a lot of poor code waiting for you to maintain and fix.

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.