Pros
There's been a lot of effort put towards building an iconic culture and make BlackRock a great place to work. Presuming it's sustained over the long-term, I think it will work. Feels like it's a genuine effort, and in a lot of ways the firm has great roots to build from. There's a lot of pride from legacy BGI and legacy BlackRock employees - in some cases that leads to conflicts, but also has the potential to lead to great things if the cultures can be reconciled to capture the best of both legacy cultures. In San Francisco, I feel that there's an overall positive vibe. BGI-ers felt a connection to the firm, and the passion showed as a result. I think some of that has gone away post-merger, but I think as people adjust to working for a much larger and different kind of firm, it will come back in a lot of (different) ways.
Cons
There are still some challenges post-merger. There's been a lot of focus on improving many things, but a few things seem to stand out as yet unresolved problems. One is technology and resourcing, which both continue to be constant struggles. Another (and often related) is that decision making is still centralized among very few people at the top. And as part of that, there's also a bit of a bravado culture at the top, and decisions can often be made based on someone escalating to someone higher up and gaining their alignment, rather than on the merits, which I think is unfortunate. To be fair, I think that some of the cost management is actually a function of good management control over costs (there's waste at BlackRock, just as there is in any firm). The problem is that there aren't great mechanisms to recognize which parts of the business run very lean and responsibly, versus those that don't, and that can cause frustration...and worse, gridlock at times. And to be honest, I think some of it is also a function of overly constraining the business in order to squeeze out margins.