Software Engineer I Interview Experience - New York, New York
Process
I have read a lot of reviews, and most people seem to have a positive experience, so maybe I just got unlucky.
It was so bad that it was funny. First, the interviewer was late. Then, he asked me a single question about what current projects I am working on. After I gave him a pretty lengthy answer, without any follow-up questions or anything else, he said, "Anyway, let's move on to the coding part."
Then we moved onto HackerRank, and he gave me a problem. I asked him if I could do it in Python, and he said, "Sure." He then tried switching the language on the page from C++ to Python. In the span of ten minutes, he could not figure out how to do that. So, I said it's okay, I can solve it in C++. He then told me no and instructed me to solve the problem in Python using the C++ IDE.
With a lot of time lost, I started to attempt to solve it in Python, where everything I was typing was getting autocorrected into C++ grammar. I was talking to him about my thoughts and how to solve the problem, but he completely muted his mic, wasn't listening, and was talking to someone else. When I asked him questions, he would not reply.
I struggled for about 30 minutes, and then he told me that the interview was over and that I should have solved it in C++ and not Python. I was literally crying from laughter.
I think I just got very unlucky.
Questions
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What projects are you working on?
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Write a class that takes in stocks attached to stock values. Then, store those stocks and sort them according to those stock values. If the same stock with a value is added to the class, then increment that stock's value by the new value that is getting added.
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Interview Statistics
The following metrics were computed from 1 interview experience for the Bloomberg LP Software Engineer I role in New York, New York.
Success Rate
Bloomberg LP's interview process for their Software Engineer I roles in New York, New York is extremely selective, failing the vast majority of engineers.
Experience Rating
Candidates reported having very negative feelings for Bloomberg LP's Software Engineer I interview process in New York, New York.
Bloomberg LP Work Experiences
- 3.0Good place for startersSoftware Engineer • Former EmployeeNew York, New York, United StatesSeptember 18, 2012Pros: Perks plus average salary. Good place for newly graduated students to gain experience. The right place for guys and girls who want to rise to the top; smart guys have no ambitions but an easy life. The office in Skillman and Ridge Road is not that bad; it is not as crowded as the 731 office in NYC. If you do not have family, you do not need to cook, as there will be breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The Skillman office is minutes to shopping centers and restaurants, making it convenient to invite friends to dine out. There used to be a shuttle bus to the NYC office, making it convenient to meet your colleagues in Princeton and NYC. The NYC office is near Central Park. You can take the subway to 56th St, Lexington Ave, then walk several minutes. In the 731 Lex bldg, they have one of the helix elevators in the world.Cons: Old technology (most of C, C++, even F77, homegrown databases). Bureaucracy on project budgets between the business and R&D departments. Inexperienced managers without management training and background. Requirement of daily PN notes, billing time politically correct. Shuffle of R&D management teams whenever the R&D head changes. You will need to follow the right guys to go to higher positions, otherwise, you will be stuck there or demoted. And yeah, the manager's preferences. Very long working hours, unrealistic expectations.
- 2.0Previous Full-time Software EngineerSoftware Engineer • Former EmployeeNew York, New York, United StatesFebruary 11, 2017Pros: Good benefit. High impact in the financial market. Good gateway from CS to fin-tech & hedge fund. If you have a pure CS or engineering background and a great interest in finance, this is the right place to work. With a few years of experience here, you can have access to almost all types of financial/quant/hedge fund developer roles. Good training classes for new grad students. Good immigration policy for non-US employees.Cons: Not a good place if you are a tech person. This is a place where argument wins over code. Good interpersonal skills are much more important than your code quality. As a developer, you will feel you are always second-tier in the company and have little control over the product, but must follow business and sales. Few of the upper management have a tech background, so they do not know much about how to improve the efficiency of developers by improving the overall software infrastructure. Most of the developers work hard and are generally smart, but the overall productivity is quite low. One example is that we "reinvent the wheel" a lot. For instance, for almost every team that uses Python, they write their own Python utility module. Let's say there are 100 teams that use Python, and there could be 100 different versions of a `parseTimeInput` method in their own Git repositories. I have no idea why the whole company does not maintain only one general Python library that all teams can use. In this place, it is very hard to get rewarded or promoted by just doing a great job in coding. Communication and other interpersonal skills weigh more than tech skills. That is why there are more upper-level managers with business and non-tech backgrounds in the development departments.
- 4.0Decent place to workSenior Software Engineer • Former EmployeeNew York, New York, United StatesDecember 16, 2021Pros: Smart people to work with.Cons: A lot of time spent on coordinating with other teams.
Bloomberg LP Interview Questions
