Was just offered summer SE internships from both companies. Both companies offer similar compensation and similar (tech-wise) projects. The main thing I’m trying to figure out is which company will help to excel my future career as a Software Engineer / Tech-Entrepreneur? I enjoy finance, but I don’t know if my future career will necessarily be in it. What is the consensus on the prestige of these two companies relative to each other in the tech-world? Any input is appreciated. Thank you!
Depends on Microsoft team
I've interned at both, Bloomberg tech is a bit old, but for an internship it's not a bad place to learn some technical things and check out how it's managed to basically own the financial software space (more business than tech but still). Microsoft experience will be very team dependent, you might feel bored by the limits of your project and a bit bogged down by some bureaucratic things depending on where you are. Prestige is hard to quantify, and depends on what you do. Bloomberg does have quants, and if this is something for which you have the background/interest for it would be a great opportunity to learn about. Quants can move fairly easily between Bloomberg and various hedge funds and can be much better compensated than SE. For purely SE "prestige", I can say anecdotally that looking for jobs/internships became much easier after adding Microsoft to resume. Hope this helps, good luck have fun!
This is a great answer! Thank you!
I can't add an unbiased opinion but, interns on my team have worked on sume pretty awesome projects that live on well beyond the internship. So if you get a good team, you'll definitely do work that matters.
With any big company, it's highly team dependent. I think Microsoft is the better brand name. There's lots of interesting work, particularly in azure and ai+r. I've interviewed a few Bloomberg people. Smart, but they worked on proprietary tech and their skills weren't very transferrable. That's certainly a risk at Microsoft, but probably less so. That said, for the typical 21 year old, they're going to have way more fun in NYC. Seattle is more a town for raising a family. If I was 21, I'd pick Bloomberg and NYC in a heartbeat, if the opportunity for growth and the comp were comparable. That said, it sounds like you might be the type that is optimizing for career above all else. If that's true, I'd pick Microsoft.
This is nuts. Definitely msft. You should not even consider bloomberg.
Bloomberg. Just stay away from Trading Systems. That’s where all the legacy tech is.
I don't think the team even matters, MSFT is great for summer interns. If you intern at MSFT and somehow want to go to Bloomberg after, it will be super easy anyway. But MSFT really cares about their interns and the events are pretty awesome. It's an experience of its own.
A lot of teams at Bloomberg now use open source tech you just have to make sure to join the right one.
Microsoft definitely! In tech industry, Bloomberg is B- while Microsoft is B+
Microsoft. End of discussion :)