Is there an alternative to Bloomberg? I haven't ever heard of traders using anything else.
Depends on exactly what but FactSet. Have used both, FactSet is more user friendly, Bloomberg is way faster once you get used to it.
Finance world in the dark as Bloomberg terminals go offline
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Re: Finance world in the dark as Bloomberg terminals go offline
#22Former bloomberg employee here. While the bloomberg service usually runs very well, its built mostley on spaghetti code that has been copy pasta'ed since the 80s and 90s. It might have improved since I worked there, but there were some serious deficiencies in development methodology.
I don't know when you worked there, but that is not how things are run. Source: I work there.
This is the same BBG where the huge hairball of C++ wrapped around C wrapped around Fortran makes up the crustry codebase? Where the interview process is still shitty pointer and char array questions? Where they implement their own borked version of the STL? Does anyone internally follow Lakos's books there? (if so or if not, why?)
Re: Finance world in the dark as Bloomberg terminals go offline
#23Is there an alternative to Bloomberg? I haven't ever heard of traders using anything else.
Depending on what they trade, traders aren't going to be using anything else because of the messaging on Bloomberg. There are a lot of services popping up solely as a replacement for the messaging service due to that Bloomberg reporter really fucking up and letting people know that they snoop on things and the many bank collusion scandals.
Re: Finance world in the dark as Bloomberg terminals go offline
#24I don't understand how Bloomberg could be down worldwide. Worldwide??? 99% of what Bloomberg terminals are useful for can easily be replicated in multiple data centers. Why not, at a minimum, three separate regions, e.g. Asia, Europe, America? These terminals lease for $24,000 a year. No discount for multiple terminals. I wouldn't be surprised if a single big investment bank pays $50 million a year to Bloomberg for i…
Anytime humans are involved mistakes will be made. Where I work when something goes down it's a total panic and later it always has to be someone's fault. Sure lends itself to lots of CYA and working scared.
Re: Finance world in the dark as Bloomberg terminals go offline
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know when you worked there, but that is not how things are run. Source: I work there.
This is the same BBG where the huge hairball of C++ wrapped around C wrapped around Fortran makes up the crustry codebase? Where the interview process is still shitty pointer and char array questions? Where they implement their own borked version of the STL? Does anyone internally follow Lakos's books there? (if so or if not, why?)
My interview at BB involved zero shitty pointer and character array questions. It was challenging but included virtually no trivia whatsoever. And that was in 2004.
Re: Finance world in the dark as Bloomberg terminals go offline
#26Re: Finance world in the dark as Bloomberg terminals go offline
#27I don't understand how Bloomberg could be down worldwide. Worldwide??? 99% of what Bloomberg terminals are useful for can easily be replicated in multiple data centers. Why not, at a minimum, three separate regions, e.g. Asia, Europe, America? These terminals lease for $24,000 a year. No discount for multiple terminals. I wouldn't be surprised if a single big investment bank pays $50 million a year to Bloomberg for i…
Bloomberg has just paid a lot for their experience of what mistakes to not make in the future. Walking them out the door would be a fantastic waste of money.
That's the way a smart business would think. I wonder how smart Bloomberg is? It's not uncommon for the goals of employees ]assign blame, cover ass, grab more power, short term profit] to be misaligned with the long term goals of the business.
Re: Finance world in the dark as Bloomberg terminals go offline
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the same BBG where the huge hairball of C++ wrapped around C wrapped around Fortran makes up the crustry codebase? Where the interview process is still shitty pointer and char array questions? Where they implement their own borked version of the STL? Does anyone internally follow Lakos's books there? (if so or if not, why?)
My interview at BB involved zero shitty pointer and character array questions. It was challenging but included virtually no trivia whatsoever. And that was in 2004.
I agree, the interviews I did with them recently didn't involve pointer/char array questions. Most of the questions were a lot more interesting compared to interviews I had with other companies at the time.
Disclosure: I start at BBG in June.
Re: Finance world in the dark as Bloomberg terminals go offline
#29Former bloomberg employee here. While the bloomberg service usually runs very well, its built mostley on spaghetti code that has been copy pasta'ed since the 80s and 90s. It might have improved since I worked there, but there were some serious deficiencies in development methodology.
I don't know when you worked there, but that is not how things are run. Source: I work there.
2005 to 2007, but things might have changed since then.
One of the "fond" memories was during our training where the guy basically said that when you compile your function (or app) the first time, you run the command and then get a cup of coffee cause it gonna take at least 20 mins, due to cyclic dependencies in the codebase.
Re: Finance world in the dark as Bloomberg terminals go offline
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the same BBG where the huge hairball of C++ wrapped around C wrapped around Fortran makes up the crustry codebase? Where the interview process is still shitty pointer and char array questions? Where they implement their own borked version of the STL? Does anyone internally follow Lakos's books there? (if so or if not, why?)
My interview at BB involved zero shitty pointer and character array questions. It was challenging but included virtually no trivia whatsoever. And that was in 2004.
My interview at BB actually was 90% about pointers and character arrays, 10% about the keyword static in C. I got the job worked a great 3-4 years there. Also, that was 13 (!) years ago.