Pros: I worked for the BDE (Basic Development Environment) team, and thus understand that my experience is not completely the norm. My team was composed of mostly subject matter experts from the C++ Standards community: John Lakos (who has more degrees than Sheldon Cooper), Alisdar Merrideth (the lead of the C++ Standards Committee library team), etc. They were all very personable and very knowledgeable. I was given a real project which I owned completely and was made to feel like I was a real member of the team, not just the intern. I also was given carte blanche to work as many hours as I desired (as an intern I was paid hourly), so that was really great as well. The HR/Campus recruiting did a great job setting up events and making a really great internship experience. In fact, they still take me out to dinner each time they come into town.

Cons: Working for John's team means a lot of time is spent on tasks that are not necessarily programming. I.E., writing documentation, and all of the sections of a BDE component that are really comments (at least from a programmer's standpoint). You get used to it, and once you learn what is expected from these sections, it is supposed to be less than 30% of your time. However, for a ten-week internship, by the time I got the hang of it, my time was over. Another point is that you test your own code (again, this is true for my team, not for many others). This is not necessarily a negative, but it again is work that some Software Engineers would prefer not be a part of their duties.

Pros: Good pay. Prestigious name on the resume. Work here only for the name and short duration. Stepping stone for higher ground.

Cons: Really hectic culture. They will make you work long hours. Management will give you small projects to work on. Take your commitment on the projects and then throw a lot of bug fixes and maintenance requests in parallel. I have more than 10 years of professional experience, out of which most of the experience is non-Bloomberg. None of the places are as bad as this one. I wouldn't work here. These people are still using legacy technologies like: * Fortran * ProgressDB etc., which will make you not marketable. A lot of people I know were brought in, giving assurances that you will get the opportunity to work on a .net environment, which rarely happens. They would give you some projects in the beginning and bury you in maintenance requests. Management spent 70% of their time in meetings and will expect you to find out what, when, how, and why of a problem which you don't know anything about. They may pay you higher than market, but at the end of the day, you will end up billing 10 to 11 hours a day. I would rather consult and not take any benefits.

Pros: Bloomberg is an exciting place to work. The company culture is great. The pay is great. The benefits are great. The office is amazing. The technology is being rapidly updated. Some of the smartest people I know still work there. There is lots of talent in this company! Plenty of training opportunities. * Generous vacation. * Generous maternity leave. * Diversity.

Cons: Once you quit, you cannot go back. You may get used to a lot of things that are Bloomberg specific and are not used elsewhere. Flexible work and remote work is hard to arrange. Limited number of offices (if you are in tech, you have a choice only between NYC and London).