Pros: The culture is work-hard, play-hard, with much thought put toward philanthropy and the environment. These altruistic goals really come from the top-down. There are great snacks and a great office/environment. A lot of smart people are present all across the board. The location is convenient. Great connections throughout the city are due to the CEO being a former mayor. There are lots of educational opportunities outside of the field, such as financial training for R&D folks and technical training for business folks. Payment is offered for further education. Sports teams are available to play on. Great healthcare and a great 50% match on 401k are provided, along with generous pay raises and bonuses. An awesome training program exists for fresh-out-of-college hires. It is 12 weeks long and has fantastic instructors for advanced C++ and JavaScript, plus a lot more. Great networking opportunities are also included. It is really well run. The whole company works like clockwork, from facilities to help desk to sales to software to the data warehouse. Quite impressive.

Cons: A lot of proprietary software development tools. A lot of customers don't like change. Customers are paying a steep price, and thus often have a stronger say than they should.

Pros: Princeton office provides free lunch.

Cons: I received an oral offer as an R&D software engineer a year before my graduation. Three months later, their recruiter called me and reneged it, without caring or taking responsibility for the other offers and interviews I had declined for them. I received an oral offer over the phone after interviewing them on campus around the end of September 2015. Since I still had a year left in school and was only taking two master's courses, I asked for a part-time intern opportunity to work in their Princeton office, mostly to get familiar with their teams and development environment. Before the intern started, I told their manager about my availability constraints (only available this semester & winter, and would take time off during exams), and they told me it was fine and sent me a part-time intern offer letter to sign. On the contract, it stated, "Expected work hours per week: 10 hrs." Also, neither the manager nor the part-time offer letter mentioned anything about its potential impact on my full-time offer. Then I interned at a team throughout November 2015 - January 2016, working mostly 4 days a week, averaging 25-30 hours for the weeks I came to work. I took a whole week off during finals and another week during Christmas and New Year. The program itself was very disorganized: no intern/new hire training, no clarification of performance expectations, no assigned project, and no desk. Yes, I never had a desk assigned to me throughout the entire internship. I was told to fix bugs in their current production code, and I worked closely with my mentor on a daily basis. I managed to fix all the bugs they assigned to me, and my code went to production. After telling them I wouldn't be able to work part-time after my last semester started, as we had agreed upon before I started interning, I received a phone call from Bloomberg's recruiter a couple of weeks later. They said they would renege on my full-time offer. "Based on your review from your team, your technical ability has no problem, but it's the communication issue. Therefore, we decided to not give you a full-time offer." Later that night, I called my mentor, and he told me he knew what I did. He was satisfied with my performance since I was able to pick up their project and fix bugs quickly. He insisted on keeping me on the team, but their team lead, who never assigned anything to me or worked with me, claimed I was not dedicated to the company since I took days off during finals. The recruiting team did not take any responsibility for the other offers and interviews I had declined, insisted the decision was final, and that there was nothing I could do about it. I talked to my friends and professional engineers who had experience with Bloomberg. This company has a terrible record of reneging people's offers/firing new employees during their recruiting process. They basically don't care how it would affect your career as a software engineer. You are a new grad who is not experienced with employment laws/processes, and they will do whatever they need as long as they think it will benefit their company. Be very careful if you are considering Bloomberg as your full-time employer; they have reneged/fired people before they join, during their new hire training, even in your first six months. After all, this is a company that would say, "Technical ability is fine, but the team lead doesn't like your communication" to renege an incoming engineer's offer.

Pros: Good training program for entry-level people. Quite a few smart people around. Great offices to work in: very attractive, good location, communal kitchen, lecture theatres, etc. The office in general feels quite busy and bustling. Lots of perks like free theatre/exhibition tickets, events, etc. Good amount of responsibility from early on. Good pay. Good name to have on the CV.

Cons: Lots of the codebase is pretty antiquated – Fortran code, old 1000-line C functions from the 1980s, etc. Lots of proprietary stuff you have to learn that isn't transferable, so you run the risk of getting a bit institutionalized. Also, Bloomberg often unnecessarily has its own little version of something (file I/O libraries, etc.). Senior management have their heads in the clouds and are fairly political. Many have been there since the dawn of time and have an outdated view of how the company works. They will push through initiatives that they have 'sold' to their superiors, even if they just don't make sense at ground level. One of those companies (and there are many) that sell themselves to applicants as having a 'flat' structure, when what this actually means is that hardly anyone ever gets moved up. There is also lots of bureaucracy and a culture of micromanagement – every working hour must be ticketed, accounted for, etc.