Great Benefits Outweighed by Culture of Fear, Inflexibity
Pros
Benefits are outstanding, from medical to 401(k) match to vacation and some very nice colleagues, but the bloom falls off the rose after a few months at a firm whose original editorial chief built a culture of fear, an intense 10+ hour workday and a style that condones uniformity. Editorial folks' comp is good vs. what else is out there, and why many never want to leave.
Cons
But there's a rule for everything at Bloomberg that's paralyzing and has highly competent, intelligent professionals constantly feeling the need to seek affirmation of a half dozen leaders/authorities before acting. In my role, for instance, I've got 4-5 people to manage but 5-6 bosses. It's a much different vibe than anywhere I've been. Also say "adios" to your personal time. If you commute, expect a 12-14 hour day. Bloomberg has finally evolved with the times a bit by allowing people to telecommute here and there, but each day is drudgery. Instead of fixing a simply typo of a company name, for instance, the offender deals with a belabored, almost embarrassing process of having to re-run a story with the correction, deleting the old one off the system, then writing a letter to several managers to detail exactly what went wrong; so God forbid you spell it Proctor & Gamble instead of Procter & Gamble -- total rabbit hole that eats up tons of time and distracts. This is where Bloomberg takes its mantra of being candid to unproductive extremes and creates a sense of arrogance among the higher-ups that what Bloomberg does is above the level of its rivals. It's utter nonsense, as is the sense that employees can be rated based on cockeyed data points focused on production levels rather than quality of the work.