Pros: The FSD training class will teach you what you need to know about Bloomberg's proprietary technologies. It's a good opportunity for somebody straight out of uni who knows C++ to a reasonable but not expert level. For those with a few years of experience, getting the same pay and going through the same class is less appealing. Bloomberg's RAPID environment and BAS framework are easy to use and quick to develop new features on. Bloomberg work you hard, but the satisfaction you get from getting a lot of work done can be addictive. Free snacks and drinks in the pantry is also a plus. Lavish summer parties. Nice new "lunch room".

Cons: Bloomberg is focused on being first to market with new features, which means pressure and deadlines and a big tradeoff against writing good quality code. Business guys can be aggressive and look through you, and not enough time is given to planning or design. Compiling and linking against all of Bloomberg's dependent libraries takes ages and sometimes fails. The architecture is somewhat dated due to this, plus the presence of legacy Fortran code. Outages affecting development occur too frequently. You can befriend training colleagues, but most people keep themselves to themselves. The initial training class requires a lot of work and staying late, and has an 80% pass mark. Working hours: 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. or 9 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Pros: * Fast-paced * Opportunities for those who are prepared to seek it * Diverse organization – you get the chance to move around

Cons: Bloomberg is a very diverse organization with a very loosely defined management structure, so pretty much everything differs among the various teams. I would say that I am lucky to be working in a team with whom I get along really well. My advice would be that you should choose your team carefully when joining Bloomberg.

Pros: Working with extremely intelligent, kind, and dedicated people. Learning opportunities never cease in either financial or technical domains. Salary and benefits are unbelievable. The name is well-respected in the financial world. Very tolerant and patient with new developers. Offices throughout the world can make travel a lot of fun.

Cons: By virtue of being such a large company with thousands of developers, Bloomberg can't always offer interesting projects to everyone, so it takes a long time to make tangible impact on a product. Development is very slow because the developer tools are either nonexistent or impossible to use. There are many incomplete home-brew solutions. With that said, there has been a lot of effort to correct these issues and retain talent over the years. There is not a lot of interaction between the various divisions of the company.