OK for a while, boring in the long run - Software Developer Bloomberg Employee Review

2.0
Sep 11, 2010
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Non work related: the pay is pretty good, the building is fancy, they have free drinks + snacks. There are a lot of outside of work activities that are not only offered but also strongly encouraged, such as donations, food/backpack drives, gardening, etc. Also, there are lots of free tickets given out to cool events in the city that you would otherwise never have access to. Work related: you get to work on projects that affect a lot of people, and depending which group you land into you may love the work you do. The management is less "flat" than what I was told it was like when I joined (early 2009), but there are definitely fewer hierarchical barriers than at most other places.

Cons

Bloomberg has tons and tons of legacy code, mostly in Fortran and C, and to add insult to injury, it's rarely commented/documented/explained in any shape or form -- when you make a function call, you often enter magic land. While there are no new Fortran files (company policy), you will almost certainly have to at least look at lots of Fortran in debugging it, and you may need to make code additions for bug fixes. Bloomberg is a fast paced company (due to it being driven by Finance), but this means that you focus on getting the final product done ASAP -- which can be exciting -- but rarely will you get the chance to take time and properly design and develop a product, or refactor old code that, while not technically broken, is inefficient.

Explore other reviews about Bloomberg

5.0
Jun 10, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Good work life balance and generous company benefits

Cons

Upside in bonus was capped low. People with wall street experiences are highly valued than those who are with the firm longer

5.0
May 31, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Only a five-hour-per-week time commitment, which is very manageable with my class schedule. Bloomberg provides ideas for challenges and activities to host at my school, so I would not have to come up with everything from scratch. There is flexibility to choose when I table and to tailor the role around my schedule.

Cons

The budget for the program is tight, which is frustrating because advertising to law students is exactly how Bloomberg Law builds a dedicated user base. In my opinion, whoever makes the budget is not seeing the bigger vision. A lot of attorneys may not like Bloomberg Law, use it regularly, or ask their firms to purchase a subscription simply because they were never meaningfully exposed to it in law school. This is exactly why Lexis has taken over in such a big way: its presence and budget are felt at law schools across the country. If Bloomberg wants future attorneys to become loyal users, it needs to invest more seriously in reaching students while they are still learning which legal research platforms they prefer.

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