BlackRock reviews

3.7

68% would recommend to a friend

(6,561 total reviews)
avatar

Laurence D. Fink

83% approve of CEO

69% positive business outlook

BlackRock has an employee rating of 3.7 out of 5 stars, based on 6,561 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The BlackRock employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Finanzas industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

7K reviews
2.0
May 28, 2010
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Blackrock has some very intelligent people that work here, so on a personal level one can stand to learn a lot. Great name to have on your resume.

Cons

There is a lot of division within the company between Ex BGI, Ex MLIM and BLK employees. People seem to introduce themselves by declaring which group they belong in, which is contrary to the 'One Blackrock' culture that the Senior Management harp about. The company also has major culture devides which makes it a very political environment to work in and also does not inculcate any trust across the said groups. The culture is not very tolerant of strong dissent, anyone who stands up to senior management to say this is not how things should be done seems to get thier hands slapped. Very very fear driven culture. Feels like a bad wallstreet movie from the 80s.

2.0
Mar 29, 2010
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Leveraged opportunities and lending to increase it's size over the past few years by agressively purchasing (right place / right time) Fortune favours the brave mentality (risk takers) Entrepreneurial drive Purchase of Merill Lynch and BGI brought in lots of fresh talent and bright people Buy versus grow business model

Cons

Unless part of the original BlackRock team, everyone that has started from a transition/merger or joined later, does not get a look into the senior positions New York centric management team and small firm mentality, it's run by the original founding members, the whole global reporting line, business functions and power sharing is split between the founding members. Power base in NY, if not in NY, then not really a decision maker Risk takers and lack of planning means approach is not ideal and things are duplicated or manual solutions put in place Not leading edge use of technology, more archaic and cheap (vendors are chosen as they are cheap or aggressively negotiated down) Firm's reputation is built around the front office, with middle and back office treated badly and paid below par Aladdin technology and the MD's that run BlackRock solutions are over protective of their proprietary software/system. Negative feedback is frowned upon and career limiting. Aggressive management with big egos to stroke in NY Redundancy pay is just above statutory (cheap) Stock price linked to Larry Fink (who knows what will happen if he stops buying companies and tries to grow the business organically or retire) - key person risk No downward delegation of decision making due to a lack of trust (run the same way as when it was formed in the 80's) Lack of investment in people or facilities - cheap company to work for (rewards to the front office to maintain reputations and keep star fund manager's - everyone else is discounted to support this culture) It's not what you know but who you know

1.0
Mar 20, 2010
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Pay was decent but nowehere near an IB

Cons

Prett poor systems - Long working hours. Everyone kept talking about one blackrock systems. These are archaic and writen in really ancient languages that only one or two people could use. The systems would only work in IE6 (No firefox) and were slow!!!

Viewing 187 - 189 of 6,561 Reviews

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