Pros
-The company has a phenomenal public image, you tell people "I work for Bloomberg" and you get a lot of "ooh's" and "aah's". -There are literally tons of extras -- free food and drink, financial market related training, cultural events, a summer party that obviously cost a bomb, a building with GORGEOUS common areas. -An unheard of fully financed benefit plan that is pretty comprehensive (medical, dental, vision at NO cost to you AT ALL). -No dress code for anybody that doesn't deal directly (face to face) with customers. -Coworkers (not management, but coworkers) are very well screened prior to hiring, and I've never worked along side people this smart anywhere in the past.
Cons
-A incongruous maze of workflow management tools that are ineffective and self defeating due to their inadequacies which the company compensates for with added bureaucracy and ill-thought-out policies rather than changing the system they concocted and implemented with home grown software. -Managers are often abusive towards subordinates both systemically as well as interpersonally and such behavior is tolerated and almost seems encouraged. -Managers are often promoted/selected on the basis of who has been there the longest and not in consideration of any actual ability to manage or lead. -Programmers are permitted to behave in defensive and accusatory ways towards systems and internal-end-users whenever questions about their product arise. -Employees at large are often treated as though they are attempting to take advantage of the company and policies are issued from senior management that are both heavy handed as well as indicative of a general distrust of the average rank-and-file employee. -The technology here is old hat, and there are a lot of in-house solutions that won't help you acquire skills that are at all portable in the marketplace. -Expectations of herculean efforts are common place and the hero mentality is prevalent; working 50, 60, 70 etc... hours per work is considered to be the sign of a good, great, incredible, etc... employee. -The method used to actually gauge an employee's value to the company, and in turn determine their compensation, is highly subjective and usually left to a team leader who is frequently biased. -Review process does not allow an employee to respond to or refute any claim of underperforming or failing to meet goals -- these claims can and do affect the final review and in turn compensation. -It is common place for the rank and file in R&D to be kept in the dark about upcoming projects and changes/additions to the overall technical environment until it is their turn to "do X" and even then said employee is still clueless about what is going on. -The company does not encourage learning about the industry in operates in. Training is made available through "Bloomberg University" (aka BU), but at no point does the company encourage or require an employee to learn anything about what the financial services industry is or how it works. -Policies are applied to R&D, if not the firm, in a blanket fashion; but it is not uncommon for these policies to be contrary to the common good of selected groups that must now adhere to such rules. -Some groups within R&D have little to no accountability and create customer impacting outages with impunity while other groups are near crucified for even the smallest ripple in the end user's Bloomberg Terminal experience.