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 22, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Good management + good people + work life balance

Cons

NA - can be stressful

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.

See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All