Software Development Engineer Review

My experience was very enjoyable. There were lots of events, especially for the engineering interns, which were not only fun but also a great way to get to know other interns. The work itself was challenging and complex, and therefore more enjoyable than and preferable to the work software dev interns are given at several other companies.

The employees at Bloomberg were very humble and open and friendly. Nobody is too high-up to speak to interns; you can get in touch with anybody should you need to talk to them. I had several chances to interact with full-time employees, e.g. at charity events or club activities, and I was respected and well treated by all.

As with many big companies, Bloomberg has its own development environment and architecture, which need getting used to. This can often be difficult, especially since interns are only around for a short period of time, but the company made every effort to enable productivity. We had a comprehensive training in Bloomberg technologies to begin the internship, which familiarised us with the key aspects of the development environment. My mentor was also very supporting: he specified clearly the requirements of my project and was on hand to answer any questions I had.

Employees at Bloomberg have long hours, and interns are supposed to be no exceptions. I generally stayed at office for 10 hours for the first half of my internship, and 9 hours for the second half, although of course this varied. Compared to the other interns, I had an average workday length, but the full-time employees on my team generally stayed for longer. I always had something to work on (as I was working on my project) so I was kept fairly busy for the hours I worked, but I never had to do any work at home.

I was in charge of developing an internal project, so it wasn’t a role with massive consequences. However, I was given a fair degree of freedom, and was expected to produce results over my internship, hence I had a decent amount of responsibility as far as my project as concerned. The project was a real project which my team would use.

The training and skills I developed (languages, development tools and philosophies) will stand me in good stead for finding software development jobs in the future — after all, it’s all about experience. In that way, Bloomberg was excellent: I got to work full-stack development, with some really cool technologies to talk about in interviews! Owing to the freedom given to interns in terms of how to go about the project, I also learned initiative and making good choices, both of which can be useful in a software development career.

The atmosphere at Bloomberg amongst the engineers was great (not to say other departments weren’t, but I had limited experience with them). It’s very open — you can go and ask anyone for help, even across borders. It’s really cool when you get to ask the creators of a particular bit of technology for help regarding it! Working hours were flexible (albeit slightly long) and everyone seemed relaxed, so overall it was a nice place to work.

We started off with an induction day, followed by a week and 3 days of training, before breaking off into our teams. This structure was good because it helped us meet each other to form relationships. When I got to the team itself, there was some disorganisation to begin with — overall, the requirements for intern projects can be vague for a week or so — but this disappeared over time.

In addition to the excellent technology training (as explained above), there were numerous workshops on skills such as communications, public speaking and CV writing. There were also opportunities to gain a broader idea of how the company works, which was definitely useful. Finally, there were tech talks every couple of weeks which served as useful overviews of a new idea or technology — so we didn’t learn anything in depth from these, but they widened our perspective on what kinds of stuff is available and what stuff people are doing.

Since Bloomberg is so big, and has so many different departments, the social scene is great! You can join any sort of club, for sports, board games, politics discussions — you name it! Since you’re working in London (or I was anyway), there’s also the chance to go out to many different restaurants and clubs if you’re feeling like. The diversity of people along all axes means that you will find someone whom you get along with!

Yes. As I indicated before, there are several clubs which you can join. The company pays for venue hire for activities such as sports (which can be otherwise expensive in a city like London), which is nice. There are frequently team-building activities and lunches as well, which are genuinely fun — not like some corporate team-building activities you sometimes see!