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the Software Engineer position at Bloomberg

Posted on March 14, 2008 at 11:53 AM for Software engineer
Interviewer Professionalism
Question Difficulty
Impression of Company
Explanation of Position
Number of Interviewers: 2

Total Hours Interviewed: < 1

Interview Comments:
Phone screen interview. 6 subjects asked: 1. Projects that I've worked on. 2. Java techinical questions. 3. Polymorphism 4. Interfaces. 5. Data structures 6. Dynamic memory allocation, and stack allocation Sample questions include: 1. Explain what polymorphism is. 2. Explain how Java programs are executed. 3. Explain what dynamic memory allocation is. Tips: 1. Review your data structures. 2. Take another look at things you've taken for granted. For example, why there are two types of memory allocations, heap and stack, and what the difference between the two is and what they're used for.

Posted on January 14, 2008 at 7:40 PM for Financial Software Developer (FSD)
Interviewer Professionalism
Question Difficulty
Impression of Company
Explanation of Position
Number of Interviewers: 8

Total Hours Interviewed: 4

Interview Comments:
Started with an on-campus technical interview with four software developers. Was then invited to the new york city location for another round of interviews. Onsite started with an hr interview, followed by a 1.5hr technical interview with two senior developers. Finally, interviewed with a senior manager. Sample questions include: What's the difference between Java/C++/C. How would you create automatic garbage collection in C++? How does garbage collection work in Java? What are threads and processes? Various issues with real-time systems. Unix/Systems/C++... If you have an operating systems book, study it! Although you don't have to have any C++ experience for the interview (they ask if you want java or C++), you are at a huge disadvantage if you're not comfortable with pointers, memory management and basic systems knowledge.

Posted on November 27, 2007 at 9:05 PM
Interviewer Professionalism
Question Difficulty
Impression of Company
Explanation of Position
Number of Interviewers: 4

Total Hours Interviewed: 4

Interview Comments:
The process itself was very awkward for me. The on-campus interviewer wasn't nice at all. He asked me a bunch of questions in a very intimidating manner, most if which I believe I answered correctly. He threw all sorts of questions at me, and even asked about my grades/transcript. Then I went through an online exam of some sort, after which I did an hour long phone interview with two guys who kept swapping turns tossing questions at me. Finally came the on-site interview - they fly you to NYC and interview you for about 3-4 hours and you hear back from them in a few days. There were too many questions to write them all down. All had to do with C/C++, memory management, classes/objects in C++, processes & process address spaces, a bit of Java: abstract class vs interface, multiple inheritance, etc. My programming question had to do with passing character pointers around. So if you're in main() and have a variable char *str and wish to populate str with 'Hello World' in another function foo(), how would you do it. Seems simple enough. Was surprisingly asked the same question twice - once for the on-campus interview, another on site. The other question was how to convert an integer to a char array (i.e. implement itoa()) If you haven't covered all this stuff in a class such as OS or any of the more advanced programming classes, it'll be a very tough interview. I recommend 'Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment' by Stevens or any other OS book really. Learn it.

Posted on January 14, 2008 at 7:40 PM for Financial Software Developer (FSD)
Salary Satisfaction
Bonus/Perks Satisfaction
Vacation Package Satisfaction
Health Care Package Satisfaction
Retirement Package Satisfaction
Compensation Amount: $85,000 - $89,999

Education Level: Masters

Years of Experience: < 1

Compensation Comments:
Bloomberg offers some of the best packages for software developers. Bonuses+raises are evaluated once a year, at your hire date anniversary. Great compensation!

Posted on January 14, 2008 at 7:40 PM for Financial Software Developer (FSD)
Work Recognition
Job Stress
Advancement Opportunities
Job Security
Clock In: 9:00am

Clock Out: 6:00pm

Work Environment Comments:
Some groups work very long hours (+10hrs) every day. Bloomberg follows a different paradigm from other software companies - short, fast, release cycle. Be ready to write production ready code without requirements! You will either love fastpaced, adhoc approach to development or you will hate it. Almost no formal requirements for projects both big and small.