Worst company I've worked at - Software Developer Bloomberg Employee Review

2.0
May 19, 2018
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

It's a widely respected company with a good graduate program, on the job training and (in theory) career improvement. There are free snacks (but not meals, unless you count breakfast at 6AM and dinner after 8PM - I kid you not). The money is good (before tax!) and there are yearly pay reviews which can be generous if you're fortunate enough to have helped the company out in some way (like fix a disastrous outage) or are especially sycophantic.

Cons

Bloomberg is a big company organised into product silos and where you land will make all the difference to your experience (hence the polarity of opinion here). You may or may not end up with an idiot for a team leader, you may find yourself working on proprietary systems, completely isolated from industry standards, business practices and protocols, you might be working in a team with no social cohesion whatsoever. And things can change radically overnight. The team whose company you do enjoy might need you to work on another project in another team or the boss with whom you have a good working relationship might suddenly move back to the US and a clueless, dogmatic, despotic, company-man appear in his place. The hours are long and you will find plenty of colleagues, bereft of social lives, who will show you up by arriving early and leaving long after you go home. Although you will be contractually obliged to work 9 hours per day, expect to consistently work at least 10, many work 12 hours or more. You might work there for years and never have anything challenging or important to work on. There is a company policy known as keeping-the-lights-on which translates to if-it-ain't-broke-don't-fix-it meaning the rate of development progress can be slow as molasses. This is especially frustrating and can be soul destroying for the creatively minded. Technologically, Bloomberg is incapacitated by decisions made decades ago and its terror of losing market share is tangible. This manifests as the front-end looking like something from the 1980s but, worse still, developers are forced to use company-specific versions of tools and programming languages, meaning they will not be able to keep up-to-date with modern versions and practices which is poison for career programmers. It lacks effective testing frameworks and the majority of teams are required to develop, test and release everything themselves, at their own peril. Some teams do have dedicated roles for QA and deployment but there's no company-wide policy. Expect to be called regularly at weekends and unceremoniously at 2AM because the network undergoes maintenance every day and anything consuming tick data will set off alarms when it stops arriving. Promotion to positions of authority is patently based on the Peter Principle and micromanagement and an absolutely obsessive focus on negativity are the norm. It's well known that the Team Leaders and managers often form cabals so just one of them not liking you could spell game over for your position at the company. If this happens, get out before they fire you, and they will - you have been warned.

Explore other reviews about Bloomberg

5.0
Jul 9, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great work life balance, plenty of cool projects and teams, extremely friendly and smart colleagues

Cons

The company is really large so communications can be a bit overwhelming and sometimes there’s competition for the same project

4.0
Jun 28, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Opportunities to do lots of work with data and finance to apply knowledge in both programming and Subject-Matter Expertise (SME). Excellent Work-Life Balance (WLB) and extremely welcoming culture. You can reach out to anyone for help or just to talk, and they will get back to you (although management does require more scheduling in advance). Generous compensation (good wage) and benefits, including housing for interns. If you heard the rumors that the Bloomberg Princeton office has a great Bloomberg Pantry (read: company-provided breakfast and lunch), the rumors are true.

Cons

Not the place for those looking for cutting-edge AI. The company is not as fast with AI as the company prioritizes reliability and accuracy above all, and much of AI is not at an acceptable threshold for management to be willing to take that risk with financial data (at least in 2026). You may get a project to automate menial processes, which is really cool, but that tends to involve actually doing the menial processes, which feels unproductive. Princeton office is good but New York is considered preferable. Coworkers are not very reachable outside of work hours. Compensation is low in Data compared to Software Engineers.

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