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: Nice snack bar, not too much overtime. Easygoing management style. Lots of events going on. They have great benefit packages.

Cons: R&D is not treated too well, sometimes being pushed around. Salary is not so high, especially for senior hires. Don't have too many promotion opportunities; you may get one after 5-6 years.

Pros: Good pay. New York. The financial knowledge involved in learning the product. The CFA's training classes are keeping the internship program afloat. A pantry, if you have never seen one.

Cons: This company is anything but Hogwarts, even when Hogwarts was being torn down. This company is Ron Weasley with a broken wand. The technology is so outdated, it's unbelievable that they still lead the industry, just like it's unbelievable that Ron gets with Hermione. A lot of employees have never had any experience outside of Bloomberg because they are that stupid; they never get hired elsewhere. Finding an employee who has experience at a decent company like Amazon or Google is nearly impossible because Bloomberg does not attract quality. Forget Amazon and Google; finding an engineer with a computer science background is difficult at Bloomberg. The project assigned to me was so terrible, I am embarrassed to put it on my resume. As an intern, it was painful to realize that all engineers surrounding me were unbelievably stupid. One engineer (over 2 years) did not even understand Git, even though his code was using Git. Speaking of Git, a lot of the repositories I saw had no .gitignore. And even though they have GitHub, almost nobody uses it because, did I mention? They are that stupid. If Google or Microsoft ever decided to get into the financial industry, they could easily take out Bloomberg. This company has hammered my expectations of working in a corporate setting, which may be a good thing. If you have a degree in anything other than computer science, you will adore this place. The current employees are not passionate about the product as much as they are passionate about New York. The conversion rate for interns is unbelievably low because nobody wants to experience hell twice.