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: Private company, no shareholder pressure, high compensation, reasonable growth opportunities.

Cons: Lesser interaction with management, not a really good culture.

Pros: - Junior hires are given a good load of responsibilities. - Salary and bonuses are good. - Free snacks are provided (better than Microsoft, worse than Google). - Customers are satisfied. Having worked at other companies, the high level of customer satisfaction is abnormal and deeply rewarding. - New York City is much more fun than San Francisco, Boston, or Seattle, but that's just my opinion ;).

Cons: - No offices. - Time not as flexible as other tech companies. - Expected to be on call after hours. For IT/networking/systems people, this may be normal, but as a software engineer, I was not used to this. - Culture of kissing up to higher levels (worse than other tech companies, but better than most non-tech corporate environments). Many superficial efforts are made to combat this, but it is still present. - No company cafeteria leads most people to eat at their desks rather than with co-workers. - No whiteboards (maybe that's a pro for some people).