Bloomberg LP

If you land on the right team, there is a lot of flexibility and great work-life balance. Fortunately, the percentage of the "good" teams is growing steadily, especially within the Derivatives and Infrastructure departments of R&D.

There are a lot of opportunities to grow professionally, but you need to forge your own path.

Very intelligent colleagues, great ideas.

Free snacks and drinks/juice all day, every day.

Excellent compensation and benefits.

A lot of red tape (as with many large and successful corporations), meaning that great ideas need a lot of persistence to really take off, or else they will be swept aside for the next money grab enhancement.

Some old technologies and implementations are so established that they're tough to supplant with smarter/faster/newer ones.

Open floorplan. While it fosters collaboration, concentration is very easily broken.

Within R&D, strive towards increased flexibility (already in the right direction).

Allow more "hackathons" and side projects that can expedite the launching of excellent ideas from employees.