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: Pay is extremely good -- twice what anybody else is offering.

Cons: Brutal hours. People die here from overwork. Be prepared to work 14-hour days and weekends. Utterly ossified management, micromanagement, downright harassment, and brutally invasive oversight. Zero flexibility on rules or hours. Complete contempt for employees, with no credit for ideas. Incredibly bad design and obsolete technology.

Pros: The compensation and the transparency are the best reasons for one to work for Bloomberg L.P.

Cons: The job is monotonous and limits opportunities sometimes. A job as a financial software developer deals with creating software for financial data.